Approach
A retained search should feel like a project with a plan, not a stack of CVs arriving by email. Here is how ours works, and the standard we expect you to hold us to.
When a search runs long, the brief was usually wrong. So we spend the first week getting it right.
The principles below apply to every mandate we take. We publish them because a client should be able to point to the one we are not living up to.
Principles
01
We will not start calling the market until we have written down, with you, what this person owns in year one, the two or three trade-offs you are willing to make on background, and the ones you are not. Most searches that stall were vague here.
02
You will get four or five candidates, not forty. Each one comes with a written case against the brief that names the risks as well as the fit. If you turn a finalist down, you should be able to say exactly why in a sentence.
03
The brief, the interview notes, the reference calls and the offer are documents that both sides can see. A verbal offer is not an offer, and a number mentioned in a corridor is not a compensation plan.
04
At the start of a mandate we agree in writing whose people we will not approach, and we keep to it. We have walked away from fees to protect that. It is the whole basis of the business.
05
Every search has a compensation range agreed with the client before it opens. We put it in front of candidates on the first call, not the fourth. It saves everyone weeks and it produces better negotiations.
06
We ask each finalist to name someone they let down, and we call that person. A list of advocates tells us a candidate has friends. We are trying to learn how they work when it goes wrong.
Method
01
One working session with the people who will interview. We leave with a written specification and a compensation range, and you sign both.
02
We build the real market for this role, agree the off-limits list, and decide together who is worth approaching. Rarely more than forty names.
03
Structured interviews against the brief, a work sample, and reference calls that include someone the candidate disappointed. You see the notes.
04
A written offer, a start date that holds, and a first-90-days plan agreed before signing. We stay involved through the candidate's notice period.
A board that cannot describe the first year of a role in three sentences is not ready to hire for it. Getting those three sentences right is the first thing we do, and often the hardest.
We are hiring judgement under pressure, not a CV. The interview that matters asks someone to reason out loud through a decision they will actually have to make in the job.
The pool of people who can do a senior role well is smaller than any database suggests. You keep track of it in the quarters when you are not hiring, or you do not really know it at all.
Send us the role and what the board has decided so far. A partner replies within two business days with a candid read on the search, the market, and the retainer.