Insights

Notes from doing this work

Short pieces on how searches succeed and fail, what compensation conversations should look like, and the roles that are hardest to fill. Written by the partners, not a content team.

Search · 2026-08-14 · 7 min

The brief is the search

By the time a retained search is going badly, the problem is usually months old and sits in the specification everyone signed and nobody believed.

Compensation · 2026-08-20 · 5 min

Say the number on the first call

Keeping the compensation range back until the final round does not protect anyone. It just wastes the first two weeks.

Search · 2026-06-18 · 4 min

Ask each finalist who they let down

A reference list made of advocates confirms the candidate has friends. It does not tell you how they behave when it goes wrong.