Zenith Search Partners

09/04/2026

Reading the monthly Jobs Report usually requires a strong cup of coffee and a healthy dose of emotional management.

So when today's August numbers landed with 162,000 jobs added (well past forecasts), my initial reaction was a cautious sigh of relief.

Unemployment held at 4.1%. But before we break out the confetti, let's look under the hood. Most of those gains were in restaurants and local schools. Tech actually lost 23,000 jobs, while manufacturing saw a modest bump of 16,000.

In the technical and industrial space, this is not a hiring stampede. It is surgical.

Companies are not expanding wildly, but they are quietly filling critical operational gaps when the right person comes along. The market is thawing, even if it is not boiling.

Progress is progress, even in sensible doses.

Are things loosening up in your corner of the world, or are you still holding your breath?

Article:

Employers added 162,000 jobs in August, and the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1 percent. But wage growth is not keeping up with rising inflation.

09/03/2026

I have watched Tilley Distribution operate for over 25 years. Long before I ever sat in a recruiter’s chair, I respected how they did business. They usually get it right, and this recent ICIS interview with their CCO, Sean Tilley, is absolutely spot on.

The era of buying strictly on the lowest cost per pound is officially over. Today, the most valuable currency in chemical distribution is security of supply.

Sean pointed out something critical that buyers are finally waking up to. It costs a company significantly more to shut down a manufacturing plant due to a stockout than it does to pay a few pennies more to a reliable distributor.

Between geopolitical conflicts, volatile ocean freight, and tariff whiplash, buyers are realizing that a cheap price tag is completely useless if your product is currently taking an unplanned scenic tour of a global shipping bottleneck.

Today, a good distributor is not just a vendor. They are an insurance policy.

Companies like Tilley are winning because they act as an extension of their clients' operations. They manage the just in time inventory. They handle the packaging complexities. They let the manufacturers focus entirely on manufacturing.

From a talent perspective, this shifts everything.

The market no longer rewards the traditional "charismatic order taker" in chemical sales. To win today, you cannot just sell a chemical compound. You have to be a supply chain strategist. You need to understand operational risk, working capital, and how to genuinely insulate your customers from global chaos.

If you are in chemical distribution, the article is worth your time. It is a masterclass in where the industry is heading.

Check out the article here: https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2026/08/03/11227245/security-of-supply-more-highly-valued-by-strategic-buyers-tilley-distribution-exec/

09/01/2026

Hiring managers: Be honest. When was the exact last time you had to dust off your own resume? (It’s probably buried in a desktop folder from 2018...if not way before...).

When you sit on the hiring side of the desk long enough, it’s easy to forget what it feels like to be the one answering the questions instead of asking them.

In chemical distribution and water treatment, it’s tempting to treat hiring like a strict formulation. You have a gap, you need a highly specific compound to fill it, and you filter out the rest. I get it. I sold in this industry for years. I know the grind, and I know how busy you are.

But here is the reality of the person sitting across from you: They aren't just bringing you a piece of paper. They are carrying in career anxiety, uncertainty, and the heavy weight of their own future. They walked a stressful mile just to get to that chair.

Now, I am not suggesting we hand out participation trophies. Your standards are your standards, and in technical sales, you can never lower the bar.

But what if you know within the first three minutes that this candidate isn't the right fit? The chemistry just isn't there.

My question is: What can you give them before they leave?

It’s easy for the interview process to become entirely transactional, just two people staring at each other thinking, "What can you do for me?" But if you already know they aren't getting the job, you can still give them something of value to walk out with.

Give them a solid piece of industry advice.
Give them candid, constructive feedback.
At the absolute bare minimum, give them your sincere respect and build them up on the way out.

At the end of the day, we aren't just trading human capital. We are dealing with people. Put yourself in their shoes for a few minutes. It changes the entire dynamic of the room.

How do you make sure candidates walk away feeling respected, even when it's a "no"?

08/27/2026

Somehow we’re already looking at the final stretch of 2026. I’m not entirely sure who authorized that.

This is usually the point in the year when the list of things we wanted to accomplish meets the reality of the calendar.

Growing revenue. Building the team. Keeping good people. Improving efficiency.

All important. Probably not all getting equal attention between now and December.

So maybe the better question isn’t “What else can we get done this year?”

It’s “What deserves our attention most?”

There’s still plenty of year left. Just enough less of it to make prioritizing a little easier.

08/25/2026

Last week I shared an article about the packaged ice industry.

Then I made the mistake of wondering what actually goes into treating water for commercial ice production.

Down the rabbit hole I went.

Turns out, water treatment can affect everything from scale buildup inside the equipment to the taste and appearance of the ice itself.

Which reminded me of something I've always enjoyed about the water treatment industry: once you start looking for it, it's everywhere.

The ice in your cooler. The water in a manufacturing process. A cooling tower. A data center. The list goes on.

Most people never think about any of it.

The people in this industry think about it for a living.

And apparently, some of us think about it after hours too. Am I the only one?

08/20/2026

“I don’t know.”

Three words that can be surprisingly hard to say when you’re supposed to be the person with the answers.

Earlier in my career, I probably thought experience meant getting to the point where I’d know what to do in just about every situation.

Turns out, experience mostly teaches you how many situations you haven’t seen yet.

Over the years, I’ve gained a lot more respect for leaders who can say, “I don’t know. Let’s figure it out.”

That might mean calling someone who knows more than you do. Asking the person closest to the problem. Digging into the data. Or simply asking a better question before making a decision.

There’s a big difference between not knowing and not finding out.

I still like having the answer. Who doesn’t?

I’m just a lot more comfortable these days admitting when I don’t.

How comfortable are you saying “I don’t know” at work?

08/18/2026

I work in and around industries where people think about water a lot more than the average person.

And yet, I have to admit, I’ve never given much thought to the bag of ice I grab on the way to a cookout.

Then I read this recent article from Texas Monthly about the packaged ice industry.

Turns out, there’s a whole lot going on behind that $3 bag of frozen water.

Water quality and treatment. Food safety. Manufacturing. Refrigeration. Distribution. Seasonality. And an operation that, during the summer, can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

For someone who has spent a good part of his career around water treatment, I probably should have thought about this before now.

But that’s also what I liked about the article.

Some of the industries we rely on most are the ones we barely notice because they work so well in the background.

Water treatment is like that in a lot of ways.

So the next time I grab a bag of ice for the cooler, I may have a little more appreciation for what went into it.

Although I’ll probably still complain about the price.

Check out the full article here and let me know your thoughts:

Ice is essential in so many ways. So why does thinking about it give some of us a case of brain freeze?

08/13/2026

Sometimes an interesting industry story is hiding in a pretty unglamorous place.

Cooling towers probably aren't dominating many dinner conversations.

But the U.S. cooling tower market is projected to grow from about $857 million this year to $1.4 billion by 2033.

For those of us who have spent time around water treatment, that gets my attention.

Growth in cooling tower industry creates ripples. Water quality, treatment chemistry, equipment, monitoring, service and the people who understand how all of those pieces work together become increasingly important.

It's a good reminder that some of the most interesting opportunities aren't necessarily in the newest industries. Sometimes they're created when new demands are placed on industries that have been doing important work for a very long time.

Hey, Water Treaters: Is this impacting you yet?

Interesting market outlook from Grand View Research for anyone following this space:

The cooling tower market in the United States is expected to reach a projected revenue of US$ 1,400.7 million by 2033. A compound annual growth rate of 7.3% is expected of the United States cooling tower market from 2026 to 2033.

08/11/2026

Every company has one.

The person everyone calls when something unusual happens.

They know the customer history. They remember why a process changed five years ago. They know what worked the last time things went sideways, and probably what was tried before that absolutely did not.

A lot of that knowledge is never written down.

It lives in experience. Relationships. Pattern recognition. And, in some cases, a frighteningly specific memory for details the rest of us forgot three meetings ago.

In specialized industries, those people are incredibly valuable.

They’re also a reminder that experience can be difficult to replace.

Sometimes you don’t realize just how much one person knows until they’re no longer the person you can call.

Who’s that person in your organization?

08/06/2026

When most people think about the infrastructure behind AI, water treatment probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

But I've been watching the connection between data center growth and the water treatment industry with a lot of interest.

As AI workloads increase, data centers are dealing with significantly greater cooling demands. And as this article points out, water treatment isn't something that can simply be addressed after the system is built. Decisions around water quality, corrosion, scaling, chemical treatment and monitoring increasingly need to be part of the design conversation from the beginning.

What interests me is the people side of this.

Growth in one industry has a way of creating demand for expertise somewhere you might not expect it.

Water treatment professionals have spent their careers understanding systems, chemistry, applications and customers. Now some of that expertise is becoming increasingly important to one of the fastest-moving areas of our economy.

That's one of the things I enjoy about working in specialized industries. The knowledge doesn't suddenly become obsolete when the market changes. Sometimes the market changes in a way that makes that knowledge even more valuable.

Interesting read for anyone in the water treatment space:

Mechanical engineers can enhance data center cooling system reliability and sustainability with strategic water treatment planning.