Mission

I help CEOs, executive committees and boards make better decisions that shape the business and get the organisation to actually execute them, bringing the judgment I have spent thirty years building with a P&L in front of me.

About me

I have spent thirty years working with companies, technology and people. Put like that it sounds as if it was all planned from the start. It was not quite like that.

I have led teams of up to 300 people, managed P&Ls of up to 70 million euros and worked in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Portugal and the United Kingdom. I have been through technology, energy, industry, construction and defence.

I have had very good years. I have doubled the revenue of divisions, tripled the size of a company in a year and multiplied the volume of Let's Talent by six in five years without losing profitability.

And I have also taken decisions that, looking back, I would have taken differently. You learn from both.

Over time I have reached a fairly simple conclusion: in a company, knowing how to do things matters, but knowing what to do, what not to do and when to do it matters considerably more.

I call that judgment. There is no great mystery to it. Although acquiring it takes time.

Let's Talent and me

That is my work at Let's Talent. And then there is my work as Carlos Cabezón. They are two different things.

Let's Talent

I am currently the CEO of Let's Talent, a senior headhunting firm. It is my company and a very important part of my professional life. We work with multinationals in technology, consulting, construction and infrastructure management, looking for profiles who are not usually waiting for someone to call them.

Carlos Cabezón

As Carlos Cabezón, I work with CEOs, executive committees, boards and business owners when they have an important decision to take and, for whatever reason, cannot quite close it.

Sometimes they have been going round it for months. Sometimes everyone has an opinion and nobody is entirely clear what the problem is. And other times the solution is decided before the question has even been asked.

That is where I am usually useful. I listen, I ask a fair amount and, when I think something does not add up, I say so.

I am not always right, of course. But that is not what I am hired for either. I am hired to bring an independent view and to help turn a complicated situation into something that can be decided. And then executed.

On AI

Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence now. I work with it too, but I try to start the conversation a little earlier.

Before asking which AI we need, I prefer to know what we want to achieve and with what criteria we are going to decide it. It may sound obvious, but it does not always happen.

I have lived through enough technology shifts to know that a tool can be extraordinary and still not solve the problem you have.

That is why I do not implement AI or sell technology. I bring judgment.

I work with the person who has to decide, and whether it makes sense to use AI, where and what for, is only one of the questions. Even if it is the fashionable one right now.

01Judgment
02Focus
03Solution

Judgment, focus and then the solution, technological or not. But in that order.

Where I come from

I was born in Bilbao. And I suppose something of that stays with you.

I am the father of Carlos and Isabel. They pass their enthusiasm on to me, argue a fair few things with me and make sure I do not accept some ideas as valid simply because I have been repeating them for years.

And then there are my grandmother Matilde and my mother Marina. If I have to explain where a good part of the way I think comes from, I would probably start with them rather than with an MBA.

Two hard-working women, with character, practical and well ahead of their time. Although they would never have put it that way.

When a problem appeared, they looked for a way to solve it. With what there was. Without much ceremony. And without waiting for every condition to be perfect, because they usually are not.

I think I also learned something from them that I try to apply when working with people: you can be very firm about a decision without neglecting how you treat the person in front of you.

An iron hand in a velvet glove.

The phrase is not especially modern. It still works for me.

Where I think best

I read a fair amount. And I walk through the La Herrería woods, in El Escorial, whenever I can.

It is one of the places where I think best. No screen, no agenda and no need to reach a conclusion in the next fifteen minutes.

A problemA different question

I often set out with a problem in my head and come back with a different question. That is usually a good sign.

After thirty years of working I do not have answers for everything. I have experience, I have got things right, I have got things wrong, I have led, I have built companies and I have had to answer for the decisions I took.

And perhaps because of that, when someone sits down with me with an important problem, my first reaction is not usually to give them a solution. It is to ask them: are you sure that is the problem?

Where I built my judgment

This is not consulting experience. These are the places where I took the decisions and where the result carried my name.

30: years deciding about people
€70M: of P&L under direct responsibility
300: people in the largest teams I have led
6: countries I have operated in

1995-1997
Consultant · Norsistemas, now Indra
Leading development teams before turning thirty
1997-1998
Business Process Analyst · Adecco
1999-2004
Operations Manager · Adecco WWIT
Built the technology spin-off: from department to company. 300 people across Madrid and Lyon, €20M
2004-2005
Sales Manager and Deputy Manager · MCC Graphics, Mondragón Group
Executive committee. Four plants, 150 employees, €20M
2005-2007
Founder and General Manager · Nomaders
2007-2012
General Manager · Adecco Information Technology
Member of the Adecco Professional Management Board. From €4M to €8M while the market fell by double digits. 150% of target in 2011
2012-present
Founder and CEO · my own company
Relaunched in 2020. Volume multiplied by six in five years, profitable every year
2015-2016
CEO · HRBI
From prototype to a product operating in Spain, Italy, Portugal and the United Kingdom
2016-2018
Sales Director · INIT Services
From €1.6M to €3.2M in a year, breaking five years of stagnation
2018-2019
CEO · SELECTIVA Staffing
€70M and 100 professionals across Iberia, up to the acquisition by Triangle Solutions
2019-2020
Country Manager and International Director · Dark&Noam
Entry from scratch into Italy and Germany. Spain tripled in a year
2020-2023
Interim Manager · technology company
Leading an area with a seat on the executive committee
2025-present
Board Member · FirstPort, Scotland
Board of FirstPort, Scotland's national social enterprise organisation

Thirteen chapters, six countries and one constant: in every one, the result carried my name.

If you have read this far

Then you already know how I think and where it comes from. What is left to find out is whether it fits what you have in front of you.

Take the diagnostic

Or write to me directly: carlos@carloscabezon.com