THEExecutive Search Ten
Get to know the ten people who find the people who run corporate Britain: how they think, what they have learned, and where they differ, in their own words.
Production has started, and we are inviting executive search leaders into the series now. Apply for consideration, or nominate a leader.
Hiring at the top is the decision a business gets fewest chances to practise, and hears least about how it is actually done. Get it right and nobody notices for three years. Get it wrong and everybody does, quickly.
The ten people in this series do it every week of their working lives, and this is the chance to hear them at length. Each comes from a different corner of the market, with an episode of their own. The same twelve questions go to all of them: what separates the executives who succeed from the ones who fail, why good appointments come apart, when a company should not use a search firm at all.
Ten episodes.
One leader in each.
Ten people who have put thousands of leaders into Britain’s boardrooms, and watched what happened next.
- 01
Their story
How the company started, what they built, and what it taught them.
- 02
The twelve questions
The same twelve, put to every leader, answered at length and in their own words.
- 03
The quick-fire round
Short questions, straight answers, no time to polish.
No host. No panel. Just the person in the chair.
The Series 1 questions.
Put to every leader, in every episode.
01What separates the executives who succeed from the ones who fail?
Between them the ten have appointed several thousand senior people and watched what happened next. Almost nobody else has that view.
- What do the ones who work out have in common?
- What is the most common reason someone does not?
- Is any of it visible before they are hired?
02AI is doing more of the work every year. What happens to the people you place?
Not what the industry says on stage: what ten owners are actually seeing, and what it means for who ends up on a shortlist.
- Where does it already do the work better than a person?
- Can a company in this industry stay out of it?
- What does it mean for the quality of who a client ends up hiring?
03What is the most overrated quality in a leader?
Every job specification asks for the same handful of things. Ten answers on which of them are worth anything.
- Which quality gets someone appointed and then does not help them?
- What is underrated instead?
- What do you weigh differently now to five years ago?
04Is culture fit a real assessment, or an excuse?
The most used phrase in hiring, and the least examined. Ten answers on whether it means anything.
- What does it actually describe, when it is used well?
- When is it cover for something else?
- How would you assess it if you had to?
05What kind of leader does a business need now that it did not five years ago?
The brief has changed even where the job title has not. Ten answers on what companies are actually asking for.
- What has appeared in briefs that was never there before?
- What has quietly dropped off?
- Is it a real shift, or a fashion?
06What do boards get wrong about succession?
The appointment every board knows is coming, and most leave too late. Ten answers on what goes wrong.
- When should the work actually start?
- Why is the internal candidate so often mishandled?
- What does a board do when the answer is nobody inside?
07Is the market for senior people rational?
Packages, scarcity, and the premium on a name. Ten answers on whether any of it makes sense.
- What is a senior appointment actually priced on?
- Where is the market paying for the wrong thing?
- Has any of that changed in the last five years?
08When should a company not use a search firm?
The honest map of where search earns its fee, and where it does not.
- Which searches never needed a firm?
- When have you turned work away, and why?
- What does the industry sell that it should not?
09Twenty years of diversity targets. What has actually changed at board level?
The industry that fills the boardroom answers for the boardroom.
- What has moved, and what has not?
- Where does the pipeline actually break?
- What has your own company changed, specifically?
10How much of a leader’s success is the person, and how much the company they land in?
The oldest argument in leadership, put to ten people who have watched it settle itself several hundred times.
- Give us a split. Sixty forty? Ninety ten?
- Have you seen the same person succeed in one place and fail in another?
- What should that change about how a company hires?
11Who did you back when everyone else thought you were wrong?
The appointment nobody else believed in. Ten stories, and what happened next.
- What did you see that the room did not?
- How hard did you have to push?
- What happened?
12The question they each wanted to be asked.
Every episode closes on a different question. Each leader chooses the one they have been waiting for.
- What is the question you never get asked?
- Why does it matter?
- What is your answer?
Ten chairs. Ten specialisms.
Executive search is not a single market. Each chair is held for one specialism, so the ten together account for the breadth of the industry rather than duplicate one part of it.
Selection criteria.
Every chair is held by invitation. Each invitation is assessed against the same five criteria, checked from public record before it is extended.
Everyone in the series runs the company, has years of the work behind them, and something of their own to say about it.
Who belongs in these ten?
Who should the industry be hearing from? If there is someone you would put in one of these chairs, tell us who.
Every nomination is read.
Know the moment Episode 1 airs.
Contributing
Chairs are held by invitation, one company to a specialism. If you lead a company in one of our industries and think you should hold one, tell us about your company.
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