blog

On executive search, executive candidate research, and sourcing discipline.

Writing for recruiters who care about what their shortlists are actually built on.

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firm-operations

What Changes When an Operations Search Narrows to Manufacturing

Manufacturing executive search sounds like operations search with a narrower label. It isn't. The plant network's own logic decides more about the job than the sector label suggests, and a shared title hides most of it.

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firm-operations

What Private Equity Ownership Changes About an Executive Search

A private equity fund owns a company for a defined window, not indefinitely. That single fact changes what the operator hired into it is actually being asked to do — and it's the part a services page selling into this space tends to assert rather than explain.

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firm-operations

Healthcare Executive Search: How the Field Is Structured

A hospital COO search and a manufacturing COO search share a title and little else. Healthcare carries a real professional credential, a clinical/administrative leadership split, and a system-vs-standalone divide — none of it visible from a resume title.

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firm-operations

Technology Executive Search: What Changes Above the VP Line

At a technology company, an operations title's scope tracks funding stage more than headcount does. The reconstruction discipline built for industrial operations searches has to run through different proxies here — reporting line and funding stage, not site count.

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comparisons

AI in Talent Acquisition: What It Means for Executive Search

Most AI-in-talent-acquisition tooling exists to filter a large applicant pool efficiently. Executive search does not have one — the candidates were found, not received. Here is what part of the category actually transfers, and what does not.

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search-process

How Does Executive Search Work?

A plain-language explanation of how executive search works: what makes it different from a job posting, who it's for, and the shape of the process — with the stage-by-stage depth linked separately.

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search-process

What Is Retained Search, and Who Is It For?

Retained search is often used loosely, as a stand-in for executive search generally. It is actually defined by one specific thing: how the firm gets paid across the engagement, and what that lets it afford to do.

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firm-operations

What Atlanta's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

85 Atlanta-metro firms describe themselves as executive search firms on their own sites, in our research — the fifth-largest population of any US metro we've mapped. Almost a third of them say next to nothing about who they are beyond their own name. Here's an honest read of the rest.

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firm-operations

What Boston's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

56 firms in the Boston metro describe themselves, on their own sites, as executive search firms — smaller than every metro this series has reviewed. One cluster survives the test cleanly; a second holds at smaller scale; a third does not survive at all.

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firm-operations

What Chicago's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

Chicago carries the fourth-largest population of self-described executive search firms in our research, behind New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. No single industry dominates here — the closest thing to a through-line is private equity, more often as a client base than a placement specialty.

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firm-operations

What Dallas's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

76 Dallas-area firms describe themselves, in their own words, as executive search firms — the smallest population we've reviewed so far, against a search term that gets more monthly volume than almost any other metro. Here's what a market this size can honestly tell you, and what it can't.

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firm-operations

Executive Search in Denver: A Snapshot of the Market

37 Denver-metro firms describe themselves, in their own words, as executive search firms. That's a small population next to the metros we've already reviewed — small enough that this is a snapshot of what's there, not an account of how the market works.

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firm-operations

What Houston's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

63 Houston-metro firms describe themselves as executive search firms — the smallest population this series has reviewed, below Dallas's 76. Energy is the largest named specialty, as expected, but it's 4 firms out of 63. Here's what the rest of the market actually says.

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firm-operations

What Los Angeles's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

152 firms across the Los Angeles metro carry site copy naming them an executive search firm — the second-deepest bench of any US metro we have reviewed, after New York. Here is what that population looks like, tested against the entertainment assumption rather than assumed from it.

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firm-operations

What Miami's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

72 Miami-area firms describe themselves, in their own words, as executive search firms — against the lowest search volume of any metro in this series. Real estate, hospitality and Latin America are the obvious Miami stories. None of them show up the way you'd expect.

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firm-operations

Executive Search in Minneapolis — A Snapshot of the Market

39 Minneapolis-area firms describe themselves, in their own words, as executive search firms. A small enough population that this piece is a plain read of the sample, not an analysis of a market.

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firm-operations

What New York's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

New York carries more executive search firms than any other US metro in our research — 359 that describe themselves as executive search firms directly, on their own sites. Here's what that population actually looks like, and who shows up when you search for it.

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firm-operations

A Snapshot of Executive Search in Phoenix

Forty-eight metro-Phoenix firms call themselves executive search firms in their own words. A sample that size can't carry a structural read — here's what it can say plainly, including a real split between Phoenix and Scottsdale.

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firm-operations

What San Francisco's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

San Francisco carries the third-largest population of self-described executive search firms in our research, after New York and Los Angeles. Technology and finance/CFO search are tied as the largest named specialties — together under a fifth of the market.

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firm-operations

Executive Search in Seattle — A Snapshot of the Market

28 firms in the Seattle area describe themselves, in their own words, as executive search firms — the thinnest sample in this series. Here's what a sample that size can honestly say, in the space it actually needs.

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firm-operations

What Washington DC's Executive Search Market Actually Looks Like

Washington DC has the smallest firm population this series has reviewed. Government contracting, defense, and nonprofits are the obvious story, and it only partly holds. The real defining fact is where the firms sit.

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research-practice

Active Sourcing in Executive Recruitment: What It Actually Means

In most recruiting, active sourcing is a lever you pull when the responsive channel underperforms. In executive search, there is no responsive channel to fall back on — which changes what the term should tell you.

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research-practice

What AI Candidate Screening Actually Involves

Screening is a rubric applied to evidence, one criterion at a time, with three possible verdicts. That is a specific job. Here is what an AI model does well inside it, and what it needs around it before the verdicts can be trusted.

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comparisons

Artificial Intelligence Recruiting: What It Does, What It Doesn't

The term covers extraction, sourcing, scoring, and verification. Each holds up differently under scrutiny, and the reasons why are mechanical, not a matter of trying harder.

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research-practice

What LinkedIn Recruiter Actually Covers, and Who It Never Sees

LinkedIn Recruiter searches one of the largest indexes of working professionals ever assembled. The index is written and kept up to date by the people in it — which is exactly why the most senior, least visible candidates are the ones it's built to miss.

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research-practice

Candidate Sourcing Tools: What Each Category Is Actually Built For

Executive search firms rarely settle on one sourcing tool. They stack several — because each covers a different edge of the problem, and none of them tells you whether what it found is actually true.

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comparisons

ChatGPT for Recruiting: What It Can Do for Executive Search

You have a role to fill and a ChatGPT tab open. It will produce something. The useful question isn't whether that's impressive. It's what you'd still have to do yourself before sending it anywhere.

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firm-operations

COO and VP Operations Interview Questions That Actually Discriminate

A COO or VP Operations candidate can talk fluently about a P&L they were adjacent to without ever having owned it. The questions that catch the difference are not harder — they ask for the specific mechanics only the person who actually ran it can produce.

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firm-operations

Executive Interview Questions That Work

"Tell me about a time you led change" gets a rehearsed answer from anyone interviewed twice. The interview still works at executive level — if the questions surface evidence instead of narrative, and the interviewer knows where the room stops being able to tell them anything.

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firm-operations

Executive Succession Planning: A Name on a Page Is Not a Plan

A plan that names one person and stops is not foresight. It is a single point of failure with a title on it — and the gap between the two is what a search firm inherits when the seat actually opens.

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research-practice

What Makes an Operations Executive Search Different

A VP Operations title tells you almost nothing on its own. Here is what a strong operations executive search reconstructs instead, and where the usual proxies mislead.

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firm-operations

What Boutique Search Firms Actually Compete On

Two advantages boutique firms claim hold up structurally regardless of effort. Two more depend entirely on how the week is going. Here is which is which.

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research-practice

How a Board Search Differs from an Executive Search

A board search runs through the same motions as any other executive search. What is actually being evaluated is different enough that treating a board seat like another senior role produces a candidate who looks right and fits badly.

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firm-operations

How to Start an Executive Search Firm

The offer letter you're leaving behind priced you as a producer. Starting your own firm prices you as the whole business — cash timing, delivery, and the work nobody warns you about.

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firm-operations

What AESC Membership Means for a Search Firm

A prospective client asks if you're AESC members. Here is what that badge actually requires a firm to have agreed to, what it signals versus what it guarantees, and what AESC does not make public — sourced directly from aesc.org.

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research-practice

What Candidate Sourcing Services Actually Include

The label covers everything from a raw list of profiles to a fully evidenced research pass. The variation is almost never in what's promised — it's in what's checked before a name reaches you.

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firm-operations

What CFOs Earn, and What Actually Sets the Number

A single CFO salary figure hides more than it shows. Company scale, sector, the scope of the role, and how much of the package is equity explain a gap far wider than any headline number suggests — with two real, filed compensation figures to show it.

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firm-operations

What COOs Actually Earn — and Why the Number Won't Hold Still

A COO at one company runs everything the CEO doesn't touch. At another, the same title is a named successor waiting for the seat to open. Two real, filed compensation figures show what that scope difference is worth — and why benchmarking the title alone gets a board nowhere.

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search-process

What a Headhunting Fee Actually Pays For

The percentage is the easiest part of a headhunting fee to compare and the least useful part to compare on. What actually decides the number rarely gets said out loud.

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comparisons

How AI Is Actually Used in Executive Candidate Research

The interesting question is not whether AI can help with candidate research. It can. The question is what has to be built around the model before its output is safe to send a client.

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research-practice

Executive Search Best Practices for Candidate Research

Most best-practice lists are things nobody disagrees with. These are the six that cost something to follow — which is why they are the ones that get dropped.

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search-process

Executive Search Methodology: How to Tell Firms Apart

Read four firms' methodology pages and you will read the same page four times. The differences are real — they just do not live where the marketing does.

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search-process

The Executive Search Process, Step by Step

Every stage of an executive search has a failure mode that only shows up two stages later. Here is the sequence, what each step is for, and where each one breaks.

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search-process

Headhunter vs Recruiter: What the Difference Means

The titles are used interchangeably and the work is not the same. The useful distinction is not seniority — it is whether the person you want is currently looking.

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research-practice

How a CEO Search Actually Works

The research is not what makes a CEO search hard. The hard part is that the client is a committee that has not yet agreed what it is hiring for.

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research-practice

How to Screen Executive Candidates

Executive CVs are written to survive a scan. Screening at this level means reconstructing what someone actually ran — from sources other than their own description of it.

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research-practice

How Executive Search Researchers Actually Find Candidates

The candidates you never see cost more than the ones you reject. Discovery is a recall problem, and recall is decided early — before anyone starts judging.

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research-practice

How to Shortlist Candidates for an Executive Role

Every shortlist is built by throwing people away. The question is whether you can say, for each person you cut, which requirement they failed and what you looked at.

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search-process

How to Write an Executive Search Brief That Actually Works

A brief is not a job description with extra detail. It is the rubric every downstream decision gets made against — and vague criteria do not stay vague, they get resolved silently.

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firm-operations

The Research Bottleneck in Boutique Executive Search

Boutique firms rarely run out of mandates. They run out of research capacity — and the constraint shows up as quality that varies by who had bandwidth that week.

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search-process

Retained vs. Contingency Search: What Actually Differs

The fee structure is the visible difference. The consequential one is that payment timing decides how much research a firm can afford to do before it knows it will be paid.

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sourcing-standards

Sourcing Evidence: What "Confirmed" Actually Means

A confirmed claim and a well-reasoned guess read exactly the same in a shortlist. That is the entire problem, and it is why sourcing has to be a structure rather than an intention.

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search-process

What a Retained Executive Search Firm Actually Does

Retained firms describe their work in stages. Clients experience it as long stretches of silence punctuated by a document. Here is what is happening in the silence.

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research-practice

What a Good Executive Search Shortlist Actually Contains

Most shortlists are a list of names with a paragraph attached. That is not enough to walk into a client call with. Here is what each entry owes you.

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