What happens after you send us a role

The reason to write this down is that “contact us” is a request to enter a process nobody has described. For somebody who has not bought retained search before — which is most first-time buyers, and explicitly includes the founder-owned companies we work with — the honest reading of an unlabeled contact form is this is where the sales calls start.

So here is the actual sequence, including what we ask for, what you are committing to at each step, and where you can stop.

Same day

You get a reply from a person. Usually within a few hours during the working day.

It contains one of three things:

“We have people for this.” If the role matches somebody already in the pool, we say so immediately and describe them — anonymously, which is how the profiles work. This is the fastest useful outcome and it happens more often than you would expect, because the pool is built ahead of demand rather than in response to it.

“We do not, and here is what the search looks like.” An honest read on whether the role is straightforward, hard, or hard in a way you may not have priced.

“We are the wrong firm for this.” Sometimes the sector is outside what we do, or the seniority is below where we are useful, or the thing you need is a contract resource rather than a hire. We would rather say it on day one.

You have committed to nothing at this point. No agreement, no fee, no exclusivity.

Within the week: the onboarding call

An hour, usually. Two people from our side: our COO and the lead recruiter who would actually run the search. That pairing is deliberate — the person selling should not be a different person from the person doing the work, and in a lot of firms it is.

From your side we want whoever the hire will report to. Not a proxy. Most of the value of this call comes from the hiring manager’s answers, and a briefing relayed second-hand loses exactly the parts that matter.

What the call covers

What the job actually is, rather than what the description says. These differ more often than not, and the gap is usually where a previous search failed. A job description is a list of duties. What we need is the two or three outcomes this person owns, and what has to be true in twelve months for the hire to have been worth it.

What authority the seat carries. What can this person decide alone, and what is the largest commitment they can make without asking? This is the question that most reliably predicts whether a senior hire stays, and it is the one companies find hardest to answer. If the honest answer is “not much yet,” that is workable — it just has to be said out loud to the candidate rather than discovered by them in month three.

Where the constraint is. Compensation band, location, the credential you think you need, the industry background you think you need. Usually at least one of those is a proxy requirement that will cost you two months, and this is the call where we say which one.

What has already been tried. If the role has been open a while, what happened. Who was rejected and why. A role that failed once has usually failed for a reason nobody diagnosed.

Whether the search should happen at all. Sometimes the answer is that the role is not defined yet, or two people disagree about what it is, or your network already has the person. We will say so. A search started over an unresolved disagreement surfaces it in week five at your expense.

What you leave with

• A read on whether the role is fillable as specified, and what to change if it is not
• What the market looks like for it — roughly how many plausible people exist, and where they are
• Whether anybody in our pool fits today
• A recommendation on which engagement model suits this role, including when the answer is the cheaper one or none of ours
• The commercial terms in writing

Still no commitment. The onboarding call is not a pitch with a close at the end, and you can take the market read and go and run the search yourself. That happens, and it is a reasonable outcome.

After that, if you engage us

Sourcing and screening runs without pulling your team off their own work. That is the point of the exercise. We screen against the standard and you see people who have cleared all three parts of it.

You get a shortlist with reasoning, not a stream of resumes. Each candidate comes with why they fit, where they are light, and what we would ask you to probe. The “where they are light” section is not optional and is not decorative — a shortlist with no weaknesses named is a shortlist somebody has not read properly.

The full record is released under agreement, one employer at a time. Identity, contact details, complete history, and our verification record of what was actually checked and by whom. Never our own private assessment of the candidate; that stays with us.

We stay engaged after the start date. This is the part clients use least and benefit from most, and the reason is in the five ways these hires go wrong — four of the five are visible in the first ninety days and fixable if somebody is looking.

What we ask of you

Three things, and they are the difference between a search that closes and one that does not.

A decision-maker on the onboarding call. Covered above, and it is the one that matters most.

Honesty about the constraint. If the band is fixed, say it is fixed. If the location is non-negotiable, say so. A search scoped against a flexibility that does not exist produces candidates who withdraw at offer, which costs everybody two months and costs the candidates more than it costs you.

Feedback within a few days on a shortlist. Not because we are impatient. Because the people on it are employed, are not desperate, and read a slow process as an organization that cannot make decisions. That impression is difficult to reverse and it loses good candidates.

If you are not ready

Ask for a market read instead. Describe the role, and we will tell you what the market looks like for it and roughly what it costs, without starting anything. It takes a conversation and there is no charge for it, because the firm that gives you a straight answer now is the firm you call when the role is real.

Tell us the role. One sentence is enough to start.