Executive hiring differs from all other recruitment in one decisive respect: the people you most want are not available. They are performing well in roles they are not unhappy in, they are not reading job advertisements, and they will not respond to a generic approach. Any executive hiring strategy that depends on candidates coming to you is a strategy for appointing the people who happen to be looking, which is a materially different population from the people who are best.<\/p>\n
The cost of getting this wrong is disproportionate. A failed senior appointment carries not only recruitment and severance costs but twelve to eighteen months of strategic drift, the disengagement of a leadership team that watched it happen, and often the loss of good people who reported to the wrong hire.<\/p>\n
Most executive searches begin with a specification describing an idealised biography — sector background, company size, years of experience — and never articulate what the appointment must actually achieve. Invert this. Agree, in writing and among all decision-makers, the three outcomes this executive owns in their first eighteen months and the conditions they will face while delivering them. A turnaround mandate and a scale-up mandate require genuinely different people, and boards that skip this step frequently discover the disagreement at final stage, after months of work.<\/p>\n
Senior people respond to a compelling problem, not an opening. The approach that works describes the strategic challenge, the scope of authority, the quality of the team and board, and the reason this appointment matters now. It respects their time and expects nothing on first contact. This is slow, relationship-led work, and it is the substance of retained search.<\/p>\n
Where an incumbent is still in post, or where the appointment signals a strategic shift to competitors, discretion is a commercial requirement rather than a courtesy. This means controlled information release, named client identity disclosed only at advanced stages, and secure candidate data handling under GDPR. Leaks at executive level damage share price, customer confidence and internal stability.<\/p>\n
By the time a candidate reaches an executive shortlist, technical competence is largely established. What remains genuinely uncertain is judgement under pressure, ability to build followership and integrity when nobody is watching. Assessing these requires structured behavioural interviewing against agreed criteria, realistic scenario work drawn from the actual challenges of the role, psychometric input used as one signal among several, and referencing that goes beyond nominated referees to people who have worked below and alongside the candidate. Panels that rely on chemistry consistently appoint people who interview well.<\/p>\n
Executive processes fail as often through delay as through poor assessment. Strong candidates who are courted over five months by an indecisive board withdraw, and they tell their networks why. Agree the process, the panel, the dates and the decision rights before the search opens, and hold to them.<\/p>\n
The appointment is not complete at signature. Executives who fail usually fail in the first six months, through unclear mandate, unresolved inherited conflict or an absent stakeholder map. A structured first hundred days, an explicit statement of authority and a named internal sponsor materially improve retention. Erdobar builds onboarding support into every retained search for exactly this reason.<\/p>\n
Roughly a fifth of leadership roles are held by candidates from under-represented groups, and the primary mechanism is not overt bias but narrow sourcing from familiar networks. Structured criteria applied consistently, blind initial screening and deliberate outreach beyond existing networks expand the pool without lowering the bar — and they demonstrably improve the quality of shortlists.<\/p>\n
Erdobar runs confidential retained executive search for C-suite and senior leadership appointments, combining AI-assisted mapping of passive candidates with rigorous human assessment. Clients typically see hiring cycles shorten by around thirty per cent against their previous experience. Explore our executive search practice<\/a> or arrange a confidential conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Get the latest insights, market trends & inspiration!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[26,27,28],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-for-employers","tag-leadership","tag-marketing","tag-productivity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n