# Cerna > Cerna automates the executive candidate research phase of executive search — finding and vetting executives against the spec, with every claim sourced — and returns a shortlist ready for the recruiter to act on. ## Key pages - [Homepage](https://trycerna.com/): What Cerna is and who it's for - [How it works](https://trycerna.com/how-it-works): The pipeline — brief in, shortlist out - [Pricing](https://trycerna.com/pricing): $1,000 per search; first search free - [Get your first search free](https://trycerna.com/try): Submit a brief; get a sourced shortlist back - [vs. In-house research](https://trycerna.com/vs): How Cerna compares to manual research - [Blog](https://trycerna.com/blog): Content on executive search, executive candidate research, sourcing discipline ## Optional - [Privacy Policy](https://trycerna.com/privacy) - [Terms of Service](https://trycerna.com/terms) --- ## Full page content ### Homepage (https://trycerna.com/) Executive candidate research, without the week of work. Tell Cerna the executive role and what you need. Cerna finds the executives who match, vets each one against your spec, and returns a shortlist with the evidence behind every name. What used to take days of researcher time, ready to review. First search on us. $1,000 per search after that. **What you submit. What you get back.** You give Cerna a brief: the role, the must-have criteria, the geography. Cerna runs it through the full research pipeline — wide-net discovery, staged filtering, deep enrichment, per-criterion qualification, and an adversarial QA pass — and returns a shortlist. The shortlist has two parts. Section A: executives who satisfy every must-have criterion, each sourced. Section B: strong laterals — executives who miss a criterion but share the operational substance the role requires, with the specific reasoning for each. Both sections are required. Neither is optional. Every confirmed claim in the shortlist traces to a named, specific source — not "public sources," not "company website." A LinkedIn profile URL. A named press release. A named SEC filing. Where evidence is ambiguous, the ambiguity is named, not resolved by assertion. Cerna stops at the shortlist. Fit judgment, executive outreach, and the hiring decision belong to the recruiter. **What each executive entry includes** - Current role (title, company, confirmed and sourced) - Role history (confirmed prior roles with dates — relevant roles only, not a full CV) - Per-criterion rubric score for every must-have in the brief: confirmed, unconfirmed, or flagged with the specific reason - Source citation for every confirmed criterion - Contact information: personal email where verified, LinkedIn URL, mobile where available — provided as data for the recruiter's outreach; Cerna does not contact executives directly - Research depth signals beyond the CV: publications, conference talks, board seats, regulatory exposure, patents, notable projects — where relevant to the role and cited with a source - For Section B executives: the specific lateral reasoning — which criterion is missed, which are satisfied, and why this executive is worth the recruiter's attention **The sourcing discipline is structural** Most AI recruiting tools are optimized to return a result set — a list of names. Cerna is built around a different constraint: every claim must trace to a named source before the shortlist ships. A separate QA pass — running in a clean context, explicitly looking for what the generation pipeline got wrong — reviews every claim before delivery. Mis-attributed evidence, unsupported assertions, and vague sources are caught before the recruiter sees them. The shortlist you receive has already been challenged. A thin list with honest sourcing is a better product than a full list where some claims do not hold. Cerna does not optimize for list length. It delivers what survived the sourcing and QA bar. **$1,000 per search. First one free.** At $1,000 per run, Cerna represents roughly 1% of a typical retained engagement fee. A researcher spending three to five days per search at loaded cost runs $1,200–$4,000 of labor before a name is ready to discuss — and the output quality varies with who had bandwidth that week. The first search is on Cerna. Submit a brief, get a sourced shortlist back, see what the product does before paying for it. If it earns the next search, you pay $1,000 for it. No credit card required for the first one. No subscription. No trial that auto-converts. **What belongs to the recruiter** Cerna does not rank finalists. It does not recommend who to hire. It does not contact executives on behalf of the recruiter. It does not tell the recruiter who is right. The shortlist surfaces who matches the spec and who is worth a look as a lateral. The recruiter applies the judgment — knowing the client, the culture, and the intangibles that no brief fully captures. That layer of judgment is not automatable. It is not what Cerna is trying to do. Cerna finds the executives. You decide who's right. --- ### How it works (https://trycerna.com/how-it-works) Brief in. Shortlist out. You give Cerna a role and its requirements. Cerna finds the executives who match, researches each one against your spec, and returns a sourced shortlist — with the evidence behind every name. Step 1 — You submit a brief: role, must-have criteria, geography, disqualifiers. Vague criteria get flagged back before the search begins. Step 2 — Wide-net discovery: 150–200 executives, designed for recall, not early narrowing. Step 3 — First-pass filter: surface screening against must-have criteria. Output: ~50 executives worth deep research. Step 4 — Deep enrichment: confirmed role history, dates, scope detail. Entity resolution. Every claim recorded with source. Step 5 — Per-criterion qualification: Confirmed (direct evidence with named source), Unconfirmed (no sufficient source), or Flagged (ambiguous, partial, or indirect evidence with specific reason stated). Step 6 — Qualify + recall pass: Qualify pass assigns Section A (on-spec) or Section B (lateral). Recall/wildcard pass reviews near-misses for Section B executives a keyword filter would miss. Step 7 — QA: Separate adversarial pass in clean context. Checks sourcing, attribution, assertion vs. implication, ambiguity flags, Section B lateral reasoning. Shortlists that fail QA are not delivered. Step 8 — Delivery: Shared Slack Connect channel, one per client firm. Self-contained document — every confirmed claim has its source. Section A: on-spec matches. Section B: strong laterals. Both required in every delivery. Cerna does not rank executives, recommend who to hire, or contact executives directly. --- ### Pricing (https://trycerna.com/pricing) First search: free. Submit a brief, get a sourced shortlist back. Same product, same pipeline, same QA bar. No credit card required. No subscription. No trial that auto-converts. After the first search: $1,000 per search. One price. One deliverable. No tiers, no seat licenses, no annual commitment. Every search includes: Section A (on-spec matches, every claim sourced), Section B (strong laterals, specific reasoning per executive), confirmed role history with dates and sources, per-criterion rubric scores, source citations, contact information, research depth signals, adversarial QA pass, delivery via Slack Connect. $1,000 represents roughly 1% of a typical retained engagement fee. In-house researcher cost: $1,200–$4,000 of loaded labor per search, with inconsistent sourcing documentation. $1,000 does not buy: fit ranking, hire recommendations, executive outreach, search engagement management, or tool access. Frequently asked questions: - Thin shortlist: thin with honest sourcing is better than padded with weak sourcing. Cerna states explicitly why the pool was thin. - Volume: each additional search is $1,000. No per-search discount for volume at this stage. - Sourcing disagreement: every confirmed criterion has a named source. Flag it; Cerna will review. - Subscription: no. Transactional per-run. --- ### vs. In-house research (https://trycerna.com/vs) The useful comparison is Cerna vs. the research work your team is currently doing — work that takes days, produces output whose quality depends on who had bandwidth, and rarely leaves a documented sourcing trail. Side by side: In-house takes 3–5 days; Cerna returns same-day, not gated on researcher availability. In-house costs $1,200–$4,000 of loaded labor; Cerna costs $1,000. In-house sourcing is inconsistent and often implicit; Cerna's is structural — named source per confirmed criterion per executive. In-house quality varies with researcher experience; Cerna's is the same QA bar on every run. In-house has bottleneck at 3–4 concurrent searches; Cerna runs parallel. In-house QA depends on the researcher; Cerna runs a separate adversarial pass. In-house Section B depends on time left; Cerna's recall pass runs every time. Who decides who to hire: the recruiter, in both cases. What in-house research does better: proprietary network, institutional memory, early qualitative judgment. Cerna does not have access to the Managing Partner's private contacts or the researcher's accumulated knowledge. What Cerna does differently: source per claim (not per shortlist), adversarial QA before delivery, both outputs every time, cost that scales with searches not headcount. The right framing: Cerna and the in-house researcher are not mutually exclusive. The researcher becomes the judgment layer; Cerna handles the upstream sourcing layer. Other AI tools (LinkedIn Recruiter, SeekOut, Findem, Beamery): provide pool access, not qualification. Someone still does the research. Different product. --- ### Get your first search free (https://trycerna.com/try) Get Your First Search for Free. Give Cerna a brief. Get a sourced shortlist back. See what a $1,000 search looks like before you pay for one. Form fields: Name, Firm name, Work email, Role (title/function/seniority), Must-have criteria, Geography, How you heard about us (optional). What happens next: Step 1 — You submit the brief; acknowledged within one business day, not an automated sequence. Step 2 — We confirm the rubric; vague or unverifiable criteria flagged back. Step 3 — The pipeline runs; shortlist delivered to a shared Slack Connect channel. What you get: Section A (on-spec matches), Section B (strong laterals), QA-cleared before delivery. Same product as every paid search. The catch: one search, not unlimited. $1,000 for the second search if Cerna's shortlist earns it. No credit card required. No subscription. No trial that auto-converts. What backs it: adversarial QA pass, named sources (LinkedIn profile URL, named press release, named SEC filing), no "public sources" citations.