Exec search | How to ensure your candidates get noticed by Executive Search firms

Whilst the nuanced Executive Search process relies on a progressive program of research and development, in many ways the essence headhunting process hasn’t changed for decades. And why should it?

Most top-ranking recruiters would argue that when searching for the best, the age-old techniques are the ones that yield the best results. In exchange for their attention, CEOs and C-suite execs need to be impressed, wooed and slowly coerced into making a drastic change in their professional career. As far as executive search firms are concerned, if they achieve this, then they’ve succeeded – regardless of what they had to do to make that happen.

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So, what do they have to do to make it happen? Well, that’s a tricky question. The industry is shrouded in professional discretionary secrecy and for outsiders, very little is known about how it operates, which in the modern era of ever-increasing corporate transparency, is something of a unique beast.

In traditional recruitment, the format is so solid that it almost runs like clockwork. Candidates apply, send in their credentials, are either given an interview or cut form the process, maybe offered a job or maybe asked to attend another interview, offered a package and then they sign the contract. However, for candidates in the Executive Search process, the secretive nature of such firms makes it almost impossible for clients to anticipate what the process of being headhunted will look like.