Contact
Start a conversation.
The most useful first conversation happens before the brief is written, while the role can still change shape.
Direct
It goes straight into the calendar and you get somebody senior on the call, not a qualifying conversation with a coordinator. Fifteen minutes is usually enough to work out whether there is anything worth doing together.
- Bengaluru, India · IST
If you are hiring
Four things make that first call useful straight away. None of them are required.
- The role, and who it reports to
- What has to be different twelve months after they join
- Whether an internal candidate is in play
- What has already been tried, if anything
If you’re early enough that you can’t answer the second one yet, that’s a reason to talk sooner, not later.
What happens on the call
Mostly questions, and not the ones a job description answers. What has to be different a year after this person starts. Who has tried to fix it already. What the board will and won’t tolerate. Whether the role as written is the role that needs doing.
Fairly often that conversation ends with a recommendation not to run a search yet, because the role isn’t specified well enough for anyone to succeed in it, or because the internal candidate is stronger than the market will offer. That costs a fee and saves everybody a wasted quarter.
If it does go further, you get a written brief before any names, and a view on whether the package and the story are good enough to land the person you have described.
If you are a candidate
We don’t keep a general database and won’t ask you to fill in a profile. If you run a function at a senior level and want to be known here for the right role later on, the quickest route is a message on LinkedIn saying what you run now and what you’d want next.
Your details don’t go to anyone without asking you first, and that includes telling a client you exist. Most of the senior people we speak to are not looking and have careers that would be damaged by the wrong person hearing they took a call.