HOW WE SEE IT
The obvious candidate isn't always the right candidate.
Good search means seeing clearly enough to know where to look, what matters most, and when to stop, not simply making the market bigger.
Clients know what they need the appointment to achieve. Our role is to translate that into a realistic combination of capability, experience and priorities, and understand how it shows up in the market, sometimes as a title, sometimes as a combination of experience no single title quite captures. The brief we start a search with and the brief we finish it with aren't always the same; noticing the difference, and adjusting for it, is part of the work.
Turn the requirement into a search.
Broaden the search for a reason.
Clients know what they need the appointment to achieve. Our role is to translate that into a realistic combination of capability, experience and priorities, and understand how it shows up in the market, sometimes as a title, sometimes as a combination of experience no single title quite captures. The brief we start a search with and the brief we finish it with aren't always the same; noticing the difference, and adjusting for it, is part of the work.
Leadership is more than experience.
Career history explains where someone has been. Senior appointments also need judgement and character: the ability to act well when the answer is contested, incomplete or unpopular. Who they are. What they know. What they do with it.
Who they are. What they know. What they do with it.
Getting the offer right isn't the finish line.
Presenting the right candidate isn't the end of a search. Counter-offers, competing processes, a package that has to work for both sides: that's where appointments are actually won or lost. I stay closely involved in that conversation, guiding both sides through it until the offer is accepted and the start date is fixed.
Four instincts. One discipline: knowing where to look, what matters, when to stop, and how to get it over the line.