Executive search is our main product. We search for executives, who are senior managers, professionals with a high level of responsibility in an organisation; we also search for rare and narrow professionals. Our is retained and exclusive. We work carefully and in stages, finding, briefing, attracting, assessing and consulting.
It is direct search meaning that we directly approach potential candidates who are not necessarily open to new opportunities, may not be in any public database, and who are not necessarily in our database. Rule of the thumb is that the best candidate is not the one who is now looking for a job, or who applies to job openings.
This approach works best in the following situations.
- Senior or Rare Professionals – The position is rather high in our client’s hierarchy and much is at stake, we cannot make a mistake in this appointment or leave it to chance. Or the search is for a highly rare professional, for instance, for a senior sales director specialising in sales of a special kind of automotive glue to automobile manufacturers.
- Saving Client’s Time – The client wants to save the time and efforts of their own employees who might otherwise be doing this search themselves.
- Complete Confidentiality – The client needs to find a replacement for their current employee and wants to do so in total confidence from their own colleagues and also from the market, until the very day when this replacement is made. We give full guarantee that such confidence is maintained, until the very moment when our client meets our candidate.
- Candidates Abundant and/or Hard to Reach – The search is among a wide group of professionals, but most of the members of this group are highly difficult to reach – for instance, government officials.
- Faraway, Unknown Place – The search is to be performed in a faraway geography where our client has no contacts and where our trusted advice is so much needed.
- Search in Several Countries – The search is to be done simultaneously in several countries or regions.
Every search we do is truly bespoke meaning it is performed each time from scratch, we never rely on our database or any open CV databases available on the Internet. Every search lasts approximately 6 weeks from the day the contract is signed until the day when the last candidate has been presented by us to the client. Each search consists of the following stages (which may sometimes overlap):
- Negotiating Job Order – Getting a complete job order from the client meaning getting the whole picture about the organisation and the job in question, consulting the client on candidate criteria and characteristics, search universe, attraction tools, remuneration and other particulars of the search.
- Discussing Terms of Business – Presenting our terms of business together with our vision of who, where and how we will be searching for.
- Maintaining Contact – As soon as the terms of business have been approved we report to the client weekly or biweekly on the status of the search showing exactly what has been performed, as well as discuss with the client our work in progress.
- Discussing Long List – Building up our search universe and presenting the long list to the client, meaning list of individuals to be approached.
- Evaluating and Discussing Candidates – Contacting the potential candidates on the long list, meeting the ones who are both qualified and interested in the opportunity, having detailed several-hour discussions with each one, discussing the opportunity and assessing their qualifications in detail, presenting the selected candidates to the client together with our assessment.
- Managing Meetings and Final Negotiation – Arranging all meetings between the final candidate and the client and helping both sides in negotiating with each other all the way through up to and beyond the offer, acceptance, start date and the first months in the new job.
We of course maintain contact with client and candidate for a long time after the placement has been made to make sure that both sides are happy with each other and also to consult them if needed within the probation period and beyond.
