Retained Executive Search · [CITY, STATE]
We run a documented assessment process instead. Exclusive, partner-led, and built for the roles where a wrong hire is expensive to unwind.
~40%
of externally hired C-suite executives fail within 18 months. Almost never because the search firm could not find people. Because the process assessed on pattern-matching rather than evidence.
A widely cited figure. We are happy to walk you through the underlying research and its limitations — including where we think it is overstated.
What usually goes wrong
Sourcing is now close to free. Any competent firm can produce a list. What separates a search that works from one that quietly costs you eighteen months is what happens between the list and the offer.
Every candidate has the title, the logo, and the tenure. Nobody has established what any of them actually did, or under what conditions.
Different interviewers ask different questions, form impressions in the first four minutes, then confirm them. The research puts the predictive validity of that at roughly half a structured process.
Three names the candidate chose, two of whom confirm the candidate is great. No skip-levels. No former direct reports. No disconfirming question asked of anyone.
How we work
Our approach is adapted from published research on assessment and selection — including RAND's work on attribute-based selection for special warfare, and the current peer-reviewed evidence on what actually predicts job performance.
We will send you the full methodology document before you sign anything. You should be able to evaluate how we assess people. That is more useful to you than anything we could say about ourselves.
Structured interviews predict job performance roughly twice as well as unstructured ones. Structure costs nothing. Most firms still do not use it.
We start with a job analysis, not a job description. What outcomes define success in the first eighteen months, what competencies produce them, and which attributes are trainable versus not. Signed off by you before a single name is approached.
Competencies can be taught. Drive, integrity, adaptability, and tolerance for ambiguity generally cannot. We assess both, separately, against behaviorally anchored scales rather than impressions.
Chronological, job-by-job interviewing. Every claim traced to a specific situation, a specific decision, and a specific result. The same questions, in the same order, for every candidate — because that is what makes them comparable.
Seven to ten references per finalist, including at least two skip-levels and one former direct report — not three names the candidate curated. We ask disconfirming questions and we write down what we hear.
You receive a documented assessment per finalist: evidence, ratings, dissent, and the specific risks we would watch in the first year. Including the ones that argue against hiring.
Why a small firm
Large firms are off-limits from thousands of companies they serve. Our client list is deliberately small, so the market we can approach on your behalf is nearly all of it. Ask any firm you are considering exactly which companies they cannot touch.
At most firms the senior partner sells the engagement and a junior team executes it. Here there is no junior team. Every conversation with every candidate is had by the person you hired.
Specialist boutiques typically present a first slate in three to four weeks. Large generalist firms typically take eight to twelve. We hold ourselves to the former and tell you at kickoff what would cause that to slip.
| Practice | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Executive search | Retained, exclusive, partner-led. Chief executive, chief operating officer, chief commercial officer, chief financial officer, and functional vice president mandates. |
| M&A human capital diligence | Pre-close assessment of the leadership team for sponsors and acquirers. Who stays, who scales, who is a retention risk, and what the first hundred days actually require. Fixed fee, no placement obligation. |
| Embedded & project recruiting | Recruiting capacity on a defined engagement, for teams that need to be built quickly where a search-by-search model does not fit. |
| Advisory | Succession mapping, internal-candidate benchmarking, organization design, and executive compensation market studies. |
| Research & market mapping | Standalone market maps and competitor talent studies, delivered without a search commitment. |
About
I spent [X] years in [UNIT TYPE], and a meaningful part of that was selection and assessment — deciding which people could be relied on when the cost of being wrong was not recoverable. That work is unglamorous. It is mostly building rating scales, training raters, arguing about evidence, and resisting the urge to go with your gut.
Afterwards I ran businesses. That taught me the other half: that a hiring decision is a commercial decision, that the best assessment in the world is worthless if the candidate will not move, and that boards care about outcomes rather than process.
You should not hire this firm because of where I served. A military record does not tell you whether I know the candidate universe in your market, and it is not what you are buying. What it did was force me to spend a career being unable to assess anyone casually — and that is the habit this firm is built around.
Happy to send the full methodology document, our standard search agreement, and client references before any commitment.
[Placeholder — replace with two or three named advisors from your target market, with their written consent, or delete this section.]
Fees and terms
These are our standard terms. They are negotiable on structure, not on exclusivity — retained search only works when one firm is accountable for the outcome.
| Term | Our standard |
|---|---|
| Fee | A percentage of first-year total cash compensation, agreed in writing before we begin. Total cash compensation means base plus target bonus; we define exactly what is in and out in the agreement. |
| Minimum fee | A stated floor per engagement, so we are never incentivised to push a search we cannot resource properly. |
| Billing | Three installments: at engagement, at shortlist or day 45 (whichever comes first), and at offer acceptance. |
| Exclusivity | Exclusive. One firm, one assignment. If you want to run parallel firms, we will tell you honestly that you want a contingency arrangement, not us. |
| Guarantee | Six months. If the placement does not hold, we re-run the search with the professional fee credited. |
| Off-limits | Twelve months from our last placement with you. Shorter than the industry norm, deliberately — a long off-limits list helps us and constrains you. |
| Expenses | At cost, capped at 3% of the fee, with anything over $500 pre-approved. No administrative surcharges. |
| Timeline | First slate in three to four weeks. Ninety to one hundred and twenty days from kickoff to signed offer is normal; we tell you at kickoff what would make it longer. |
| Diligence & research | M&A human capital diligence and standalone market mapping are fixed-fee project engagements, quoted before work begins. |
Start a conversation
Twenty minutes. I will tell you honestly whether this is a search I should be doing, whether the market you want exists at the compensation you have, and what I would do differently. If it is not a fit, I will say so and point you somewhere better.