How We Work
Every mandate follows the same structure, produces the same deliverables, and is held to the same standard. Here is exactly what that looks like.
How We're Different
Volume shifts the filtering burden back onto you and calls it choice. We calibrate hard enough before the search that roughly one in three candidates we present becomes the hire. Fewer conversations, each one worth having.
We decompose a mandate into the capabilities, scale context and situational archetype the seat actually demands, then search against those. It surfaces strong candidates whose titles would never have matched — and screens out those whose titles matched but whose context does not.
Nominated referees confirm a story the candidate chose to tell. We find people who worked alongside them and ask what they would say if they were not being watched. It is slower, and it is where the real signal lives.
We assess for who a person could become in five years and who they would develop beneath them, not only whether they can do the job on Monday. The marginal cost of asking is nil; the cost of never having asked is measured in years.
The Engagement
A search should be legible from the outside. At every stage you know what is happening, what you will receive, and when.
Week 1
We interrogate the role before we search it. What does success look like in eighteen months, which relationships make or break the seat, what has failed here before, and is this genuinely one job or two.
You receiveRole thesis, competency framework and search narrative — agreed with you in writing before any approach is made.
Weeks 2–4
We map the market organisation by organisation rather than working a visible shortlist, then approach privately. Most of the people who matter at this level are not looking, and will not respond to a posting.
You receiveCalibrated longlist with the rationale for each target company and function, plus live coverage of who has engaged.
Weeks 3–7
Structured interviews against the agreed framework, probing behaviour under ambiguity, ownership and how someone reads a room they have never sat in. Back-channel referencing runs in parallel, not as a final formality.
You receiveWritten assessment per candidate, with the reservations stated as plainly as the strengths.
On selection
We manage the negotiation candidly on both sides, including the conversations about counter-offers and internal equity that tend to derail closes late.
You receiveManaged offer process, and a documented view of the candidate's real motivations for moving.
First two quarters
Most senior hires that fail do so for cultural and relational reasons within the first year. We stay in contact with both sides through that window, surfacing misalignment while it is still fixable.
You receiveStructured 30-60-90 check-ins with hire and hiring manager, and an honest read-out to you.
Our Method
Every search firm now claims an AI capability, usually without saying what it does. Here is ours, stated plainly enough to hold us to.
Each mandate is broken into skill and competency vectors rather than job titles, then matched against structured candidate data. This widens the pool in a direction manual search reliably misses.
We map target organisations function by function, by hand. It is the only way to find where capability actually sits rather than who happens to be visible.
Candid discussions that surface motivation, constraints and genuine interest before a CV changes hands — so the candidates who reach you are ones who would actually move.
Our founders have spent two decades in these markets. A search starts from warm relationships rather than a cold list, which materially changes who takes the call.
We reference through people who have worked with a candidate directly, found independently of the names they supply.
Nothing here decides anything. It determines who gets considered — the judgment stays with people.
Ranking target companies and functions into a calibrated longlist, so mapping starts from evidence rather than assumption.
Flagging when a mapped candidate is likely open to a conversation, so approaches land at the right moment.
Consistent signal extraction from interview and reference notes, to reduce the variance between assessors.
We'll describe these as live only once they are running in real mandates.
Where We Operate
Common Questions
Contingency rewards speed and volume — the firm is paid only if its candidate wins, so the incentive is to send many profiles quickly to many clients. Retained search is paid to do the work properly whether or not the first slate lands, which is what makes deep calibration and independent referencing economically possible. For a seat where a wrong hire costs a year, that difference matters more than the fee does.
It depends on the seat, the depth of the market and how confidential the mandate is. What we commit to is a realistic timeline agreed at briefing rather than an optimistic one, visibility of coverage as the search runs, and telling you early — not late — if the market suggests it will slip.
Fee structure, invoicing and the terms around a hire that doesn't work out are set per engagement, because they depend on the level of the role, the scope of the search and the shape of the partnership. We put all of it in writing before any work begins. Nothing is buried in a schedule you find out about later.
Many of our mandates are confidential, including replacements for incumbents still in seat. Candidates are briefed on the role and the context before they learn the client's identity, and only once there is genuine mutual interest. On the other side, we never disclose that someone is in a process to anyone outside the agreed group.
By replacing proxies with measurement. Filters like sector pedigree or continuous tenure are convenient shorthand for qualities nobody has defined, and they quietly exclude strong candidates. We name what each requirement is actually standing in for, then assess that directly. The bar goes up; the eligible population goes up with it.
Yes, in a specific and limited way. Data is genuinely better than we are at decomposing a mandate into competencies and ranking a wide market against them. It is not capable of judging motivation, ownership or how someone will behave when the plan stops working — those come from conversation and referencing. Data widens and ranks the field; people decide.
Tell us what the role has to deliver in eighteen months. We'll come back with a candid read on the market, the compensation reality, and how we'd run it.
