Insights · Topic
Talent & recruitment
The mechanics of hiring well in a market that rewards speed over judgment — and the judgment part is the part that decides whether a search closes or churns.
A short shortlist beats a long candidate pool
Volume is easy to produce and hard to act on. For senior roles, three names assessed against the brief outrun thirty who were merely available.
The calibration meeting nobody wants to have
The most uncomfortable hour in a search is also the one that decides whether it closes. If the brief never gets challenged, the search runs forever.
Assessing for judgment, not just skill
Skill is easy to test and a weak predictor of whether a senior hire holds. Where the signal actually lives, and how to read it in an interview.
When the must-have isn’t
Most stalled searches carry a fake requirement bundled in with the real ones. Finding it is usually how the shortlist appears.
What sourcing signals actually predict a hire
We looked back across a run of closed senior searches to see which early signals separated the candidates who converted from the ones who didn’t.
Designing an interview process that measures the right thing
Most loops test whether a candidate can survive the loop. A few extra rounds rarely add signal — they add drop-off. What to cut, and what to keep.
Speed is a feature until it costs you the judgment
Be fast where speed is free — scheduling, decisions, calibration. Be slow where it isn’t — the assessment of the things a CV won’t show.
The Science of Hiring: closing a senior candidate
A working GCC head on the last mile of a search — what actually moves a passive VP off the fence, and where the offer conversation goes wrong.
How to brief a search so it doesn’t stall
A good brief agrees the profile, the band, and the real market before anyone starts sourcing. The searches that drag usually skipped that hour.
Five minutes: why a shortlist can be worse than the pool
A quick walkthrough of how a miscalibrated search filters for the wrong things — and screens out the person who actually fits.
The assessment methods that survive contact with senior hires
Case studies, back-channels, working sessions — each reveals a different thing. Which ones earn their place in a Director-and-up loop.
Where senior searches actually stall — a breakdown
Mapped across a set of Director-and-up mandates, the failure point clusters at calibration far more than at sourcing. The pattern, stage by stage.
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One pattern worth knowing, every week.
Thursday morning. Five minutes. Our weekly read on the senior GCC talent market — including the craft of talent & recruitment itself. One chart, one pattern, no noise.
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