Our Approach

Our process-oriented approach first strives to create a common understanding and language in the requirements of the leadership role. This involves extensive meetings with the executive team as well as key influencers and potentially Board members. Investing the time to “Interview the Interviewers”  is the only way to ensure alignment on what success looks like for the hire.

Our process of “Interviewing the Interviewers” is a key differentiator for our service and is done for the following reasons:

• Our network of candidates expects that we have met the team and that we can share more about the makeup and interviewer and/or executive personalities that they hope to meet with during the process.  Often this is a point of differentiation for candidates who are being courted for multiple opportunities. By meeting the interviewers and preparing candidates, our clients are sending a clear message they prioritize ensuring the candidate experience is positive and the function they are hiring for is a high priority within the company.

• We also want to get to know our client partners (vs simply reading their bios and profiles) and it offers the interviewers a chance to provide their own voice or tidbit about the search and ensure upfront there is complete alignment on the requirements for the role. 

• Finally, we appreciate the opportunity to hear everyone’s version of the company pitch, how each interviewer will work with the candidate hired and further dig into each interviewers understanding of corporate environment.

The main deliverable from the definition phase is our carefully crafted position description that is customized to the company’s tone, culture and posture. Furthermore we utilize our time spent in the internal interview process to ensure alignment on a common language while determining the must-have and nice-to-have requirements for the role.  

Once we gain alignment on the requirements, we customize a search strategy to understand the key players in the industry as well as the thought leaders who must be reached.  

Our initial introduction of candidates is designed to quickly calibrate with our client partners on attributes such as domain expertise, years of experience, cultural fit, etc.

As part of the design phase, we consider first and foremost a focus on Diversity & Inclusion candidates.

"Deliver" is one of our favorite words. We pride ourselves on maniacal process-oriented execution. We leverage our network, our database as well as our research resources to uncover candidates that are not necessarily actively looking for their next adventure. Our process forces us to network with candidates to understand their backgrounds as well as career trajectory to ensure we only introduce candidates that are relevant to each opportunity.

We hate wasting time introducing candidates that aren’t a fit (even if they look good "on paper").

We schedule a weekly cadence call with our client-partners to provide an overview of the search and align on strategy, status and action items. We prepare our client-partners for each candidate meeting. We prepare and debrief with candidates on their meetings as well.

References and Closing Evaluations are key:  We understand we cannot meet a candidate for an hour or two and assess their level of competence and fit for each role so we rely heavily on industry references to help us determine fit for each role. In certain cases we have also recommended, executed, and administered Candidate Case Studies with the goal being to better understand a candidate’s communication skills as well as their ability to perform in a group/peer setting. More details are available regarding our Case Study process.

Offer Stage: We think it’s silly to deliver an offer to a candidate that’s not ready to accept it. We understand there’s an extra amount of work required to ensure this doesn’t happen, however, it’s worth it. We invest the time required to understand each candidate’s career trajectory as well as their family situation to ensure compensation issues are removed from being a show-stopper.

Once an offer is accepted, we understand the search is not over. We are driving for LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIPS beyond the candidate's start date.  We stay in touch and ensure things don’t go off-the-rails and candidates are performing beyond expectations well into their tenures.