Zenith Search Partners

I look at the jobs report every month, but I try to remind myself that every number in it represents a person and a business making a decision.

September added 29,000 jobs, while unemployment remained relatively steady at 4.2%. August’s stronger number was also revised down from 162,000 to 133,000.

So, no, this isn’t exactly a report that makes you want to break out the confetti.

But I did find something encouraging: Manufacturing added another 9,000 jobs in September and is now up 72,000 since December.

Having spent a good part of my career in and around industrial markets, I know those numbers represent a lot more than positions on a spreadsheet. They represent companies investing, people getting opportunities, and businesses deciding there’s enough confidence in what comes next to add someone to the team.

The overall labor market may be moving slowly, but different industries continue to tell very different stories.

And those are the stories I’m usually most interested in.

What are you seeing in your corner of the market?

Here's an article to check out:

The U.S. added only 29,000 jobs in September as job market lacks spark U.S. employers added 29,000 jobs in September as the unemployment rate inched up to 4.2%. Job gains for July and August were revised down by a total of 60,000 jobs, extending a lackluster run for the job market.

After spending decades around chemical distribution and executive recruiting, you start to develop a certain rhythm. You begin to recognize the exact moment a leadership transition is about to go sideways, or the subtle warning signs that a company culture is fracturing. But there is a massive difference between having experience and thinking you have a crystal ball.

Experience does not mean you know every answer before the question is even asked. It simply gives you pattern recognition. It means when a complex situation lands on your desk, you do not panic, because you have seen a version of this movie before. You recognize the themes, the risks, and the common failure points.

The danger comes when experience turns into arrogance. The moment you assume a new situation is identical to one you handled five years ago, you stop listening. True pattern recognition should actually make you more humble, not less. It gives you better questions to ask, not a magic wand to wave.

How has your industry experience changed the way you approach problem-solving over the years? Has it made you more certain, or more curious?

When most people think about artificial intelligence, they picture algorithms, microchips, or maybe a slight fear of chatbots taking over the world.

When I think about AI, I end up thinking about water treatment.

Data centers generate an astonishing amount of heat. Keeping those servers cool requires massive scale, precise water chemistry, coolants, continuous monitoring, and absolute system reliability. Behind every futuristic cloud network is a very grounded team of water treaters making sure the whole thing doesn’t overheat.

I came across a piece in Water Technology recently (link in comments...) about ChemTreat expanding its work with Dow in Ohio to support data center infrastructure. The stat that really jumped out at me was that ChemTreat already services more than 200 data center sites.

That is more than just an impressive business milestone. It highlights a fundamental truth about specialized industrial fields.

Sometimes groundbreaking new technology does not replace old school expertise.

It simply creates brand new, high-stakes arenas where that expertise is essential.

If you spend your days worrying about cooling towers, chemical dosing, and corrosion control, you aren't just maintaining legacy infrastructure anymore. You are literally keeping the AI revolution running.

Are you seeing your client base or workload shift toward data center cooling in your corner of the industry?

Everyone is talking about the domestic microchip boom, but almost no one is talking about the water.

We hear endless news about new semiconductor fabs and battery gigafactories breaking ground across the country. But behind every pristine cleanroom is an ultra-pure water (UPW) treatment plant working behind the scenes.

Treating water to UPW standards means removing virtually every single contaminant down to the molecular level. If the chemical treatment or filtration balance is off by even a fraction, a multimillion dollar batch of microchips gets scrapped.

As these mega-facilities come online, the bottleneck isn't just silicon or equipment. It is the specialized water infrastructure and the technical talent required to run it.

In industrial water treatment, the companies winning these massive contracts are not just selling chemicals and hardware. They are selling absolute risk mitigation to facilities where zero downtime is the only acceptable metric.

It takes a very specific kind of technical leader to navigate that level of pressure.

If you operate in the high-purity water space, are you feeling the talent squeeze yet, or are you managing to stay ahead of the curve?

I am a massive fan of Angela Duckworth’s book, GRIT. But I have a bone to pick with how the business world has hijacked the word.

I hear leaders throw the term around constantly. "We just need our team to show a little more grit." Usually, this is corporate code for: "I need everyone to work 70 hours this week to fix a totally broken process."

I sold in the chemical industry for years. I know exactly what a grind looks like. Managing a sudden propylene glycol shortage or dealing with logistical nightmares is not exactly a glamorous, front page startup story. It requires a ridiculous amount of stamina.

But as leaders, we often confuse true grit with blind stubbornness.

Grit is passion and perseverance for a long term goal. Stubbornness is banging your head against a brick wall and expecting the wall to move.

If you are constantly asking your team to just "grit their teeth" and power through a bad strategy or a terrible supply chain setup, you are not building a resilient culture. You are just engineering burnout.

True leadership grit is keeping your team connected to the big picture when the day to day work feels like wading through wet cement. It is celebrating the boring, completely unsexy wins. Most importantly, it is knowing when to pivot the strategy so your team's hard work actually yields a result.

Take a look at your team this week. Are they showing true grit, or do they just need a nap and a better process?

I would love to hear from the leaders out there. How do you keep your people motivated and engaged when the daily grind gets heavy?

Switching gears from a chaotic weekend with the family back to work on Monday requires some serious mental gymnastics.

Yesterday I was negotiating with my kids over the last hot dog at the grill. Today I am back to discussing chemical supply chains and executive talent.

During a recent check in with my mastermind group, we got onto the topic of how leaders handle mistakes. We stumbled across a framework for the four steps of a meaningful apology, and I had AI whip up a quick graphic to keep it front and center (attached below).

We spend so much time in business pretending everything is completely fine. But imagine what your workplace would look like if this four step framework was the norm.

Think about hearing this kind of genuine accountability from your manager, or using it yourself when you drop the ball with your team. An apology is not a sign of weakness. It is a masterclass in building real trust.

Apologies start the healing process, but as the graphic says, actions are what actually rebuild trust.

How does your team handle mistakes when things do not go as planned?

The stakes in industrial water treatment have officially changed. We are no longer just talking about routine facilities maintenance. We are talking about front line public health defense.

Think about the water circulating through the HVAC system of a hospital. If there is a patient in the recovery room, their immune system is compromised. The water in that building must be absolutely flawless.

Because of this very real risk, the regulatory layers are stacking up fast. You have guidelines and mandates coming from all directions: the CDC, the EPA, the FDA, and critical industry standards like ASHRAE 188.

Some regions are moving aggressively to enforce these standards. Following recent outbreaks, New York City just implemented rigorous new regulations requiring cooling towers to be tested for Legionella every 31 days. That is a massive jump from the old 90-day requirement. Regulators are even using highly sensitive PCR testing that detects the genetic traces of dead bacteria, which can trigger immediate emergency cleaning protocols.

Put yourself in the shoes of a building owner or a hospital administrator. They do not know the chemistry. They are looking at their water treatment vendor and asking one very simple question.

"Can you keep me out of jail and off the evening news?"

If they get in trouble, you get fired. Or worse.

This landscape is an incredible opportunity for water treatment companies to evolve from vendors into true consultants. I see organizations like Tower Water in New York getting ahead of the curve and embracing this shift as early adopters. The companies that figure this out are going to dominate their respective markets.

But this requires a massive shift in how you hire.

When you are recruiting leaders and sales executives for these roles, you can no longer just look for technical chemical dosing expertise. The margin for error has shrunk to zero. You need people who can flawlessly navigate municipal compliance, liability, and risk management. You need professionals who can walk into a facility and immediately become the most trusted risk manager in the room.

Are you hiring chemical sellers, or are you hiring compliance experts? The new mandates do not leave room for anything in between.

If you want to see exactly how fast these regulations are shifting, take a look at this recent breakdown of NYC's new 31 day testing mandates:

Cooling Tower Legionella Compliance; NYC Moves to Monthly Testing New York City mandates monthly Legionella testing for cooling towers, highlighting the need for effective water management programs to prevent outbreaks.

Transitioning from Week 1 of college football back to corporate reality on a Tuesday morning is an absolute sport of its own.

My voice is halfway gone from yelling at the television, my body is trying to process three days of questionable barbecue, and now I am staring at my calendar trying to remember what a chemical distribution supply chain is.

Every September, Week 1 reminds me of two fundamental truths. First, hope springs eternal in college sports. Second, tailgate chemistry is an unappreciated science.

Whether your team dominated or gave you an existential crisis on Saturday, there is something wonderful about having football back in our lives. It gives us all something unified to debate, analyze, and stress over instead of our inboxes.

Did your team make you look like a football genius this weekend, or are you already counting down the days until next season?

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:

Jobs Report Live Updates: U.S. Hiring Jumps, an Encouraging Sign for the Economy 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.

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/