Executive Search

From the start of the project, our clients receive digital access to the candidate shortlist, including all relevant information, our assessment of fit from the first interviews and an interactive feedback function.

All information is thus available at any time and in real time as a shared single source of truth. This shortens coordination loops and makes the progress of the process transparent for everyone involved.

As an executive search boutique with a state-of-the-art ambition, we use AI where it measurably improves our work. We see it as an integral component of our process, not as an isolated tool.

Already when sharpening the requirement profile, AI surfaces facets that are critical to success in a position but not necessarily top of mind for decision-makers at the outset. The search profile thus becomes more complete before the search starts.

In research, AI helps us evaluate a broad data base systematically and narrow down the fit between profile and role earlier and more precisely. Evaluating candidates and making the final recommendation to our clients remain the task of our advisors.

We see our role as going beyond pure placement. From our experience in strategy consulting and numerous comparable placement processes, we understand the bigger picture in which a position sits.

On this basis we give a well-founded final recommendation as to which candidate is best suited to the specific situation, the ownership structure, for instance in a PE context, and the concrete tasks.

Through to contract signing, we see it as our task to actively win the selected candidates for our clients and to support them through the decisive phase to closing.

In leadership positions in particular, professional qualification alone falls short. By consistently integrating established testing procedures into our search processes, we make visible the personal fit a role demands in its specific situation.

These procedures capture cognitive abilities, personality dimensions and vocational interest structure. This places the decision on an objective basis that goes beyond gut feeling.

Diagnostic tools

We do not start with theoretical long lists. Across all our appointments, it is our declared aim to present only candidates who meet the parameters and requirements of the role and have expressed explicit interest in the position.

To this end, candidates undergo a thorough assessment before being presented to the client, in which we examine professional qualification, motivation and fit with the requirement profile.

Where the role calls for it, we additionally validate professional qualification through the review of references and employer testimonials.

We never limit ourselves to our own database. The focus is on the best talent the market actually offers for the role in question.

We reach them through an individual direct approach tailored to the role and the person, not through standardised mass outreach.

This approach is discreet and confidential, allowing us to reach highly relevant candidates who are securely employed and not actively looking.

Every mandate starts with a systematic mapping of the candidate landscape, based on in-depth market and competitor analysis.

From this we derive targeted search fields, ranging from direct competitors to the transfer from structurally comparable business models in which the required competencies are formed. The result is a clearly documented set of hunting grounds that steers the entire process. The deliberately broad definition of these search fields also increases the diversity of the profiles considered, beyond the obvious CVs.

Appointments are often decided in the first days of a mandate. The decision-makers involved frequently understand the role quite differently, without this surfacing at the outset.

Our project onboarding makes the must-haves of all parties transparent and brings them together into a jointly supported role profile. This sets the search on a clearly aligned course from the very start.

Should the candidate landscape later call for an adjustment, for example to compensation, we raise it early and openly, rather than letting the process run into a dead end.