Retained Executive Search · Charlotte, North Carolina
We run a documented assessment process instead. Exclusive, partner-led, and built for the roles where a wrong hire is expensive to unwind.
Two years
is how long a senior external hire takes to match someone promoted from inside — while being paid about 18% more on arrival.
Part of that is a ramp no search process removes. The rest is information. You know your internal candidate from years of evidence. You know the outsider from a résumé and four conversations.
Our job is to make the outsider as known to you as the insider. That is the entire product.
Bidwell, Administrative Science Quarterly (2011) — personnel records for 5,260 workers at one firm’s US investment bank, 2003–2009. Not a survey.
What usually goes wrong
Sourcing is now close to free. Any competent firm can produce a list. What separates a search that works from one that quietly costs you eighteen months is what happens between the list and the offer.
Every candidate has the title, the logo, and the tenure. Nobody has established what any of them actually did, or under what conditions.
Different interviewers ask different questions, form impressions in the first four minutes, then confirm them. The research puts the predictive validity of that at roughly half a structured process.
Three names the candidate chose, two of whom confirm the candidate is great. No skip-levels. No former direct reports. No disconfirming question asked of anyone.
A number we do not use
You may have seen the claim that 40% of executives fail within eighteen months. It traces to a 2009 newspaper interview with a search firm’s chief executive, not to a study, and no underlying research has been published in the seventeen years since. We cite what we can show you.
How we work
Our approach is adapted from published research on assessment and selection — including RAND's work on attribute-based selection for special operations, and the current peer-reviewed evidence on what actually predicts job performance.
We will send you the full methodology document before you sign anything. You should be able to evaluate how we assess people. That is more useful to you than anything we could say about ourselves.
There is no single right process. We choose between four assessment designs at kickoff and tell you why — a track record review, a live exercise, staged screening, or a panel. The full reasoning is written up if you want it →
The current meta-analytic estimates put structured interviews at .42 and the unstructured version of the same conversation at .19. Structure costs nothing to add, and most firms still do not use it — that is our view, not the authors’.
We start with a job analysis, not a job description. What outcomes define success in the first eighteen months, what competencies produce them, and which attributes are trainable versus not. Signed off by you before a single name is approached.
Competencies can be taught. Drive, integrity, adaptability, and tolerance for ambiguity generally cannot. We assess both, separately, against behaviorally anchored scales rather than impressions.
Chronological, job-by-job interviewing. Every claim traced to a specific situation, a specific decision, and a specific result. The same questions, in the same order, for every candidate — because that is what makes them comparable.
We target three to five references per finalist, and who they are matters more than how many: skip-levels and former direct reports, not three names the candidate curated. Reference access is not ours to control — in a confidential search it is frequently constrained — so where we cannot reach someone, we tell you who, and what it leaves unestablished. We ask disconfirming questions and we write down what we hear.
You receive a documented assessment per finalist: evidence, ratings, dissent, and the specific risks we would watch in the first year — including the evidence that cuts against our own recommendation. A finalist presented with no stated risks has not been assessed. They have been sold.
You already have an interview process
Most of our clients do, and it usually works. It was built for people you can observe — internal candidates, and roles you fill often enough to calibrate on.
An external executive hire is a different problem. There is no prior performance data; everything you know, the candidate told you. Your panel sees this kind of candidate perhaps twice a year, which is not often enough to calibrate anyone. The decision gets made on four conversations, each with someone who formed a view in the first four minutes. And when it goes wrong in month fourteen, there is no record of what was concluded, or why.
We are not replacing your process. You will still run it. We give you something to run it on — documented evidence against a scorecard you agreed to, gathered the same way for every candidate, with the reasoning written down and the dissent left in.
If you would rather assess with your own tools, we will hand you the evidence and stay out of the way.
Why a small firm
A large firm’s off-limits list grows with its client base, and it is rarely disclosed. Our client list is deliberately small, so the market we can approach on your behalf is nearly all of it. Ask any firm you are considering exactly which companies they cannot touch.
At most firms the senior partner sells the engagement and a junior team executes it. Here there is no junior team, and no sourcer working from a call list. Every conversation with every candidate is had by someone who has run a business, carried a P&L and hired executives he then had to answer for — which is why the questions land where they do.
Specialist boutiques typically present a first slate in three to four weeks. Large generalist firms typically take eight weeks. We hold ourselves to the former and tell you at kickoff what would cause that to slip.
Four engagements built on one method, plus embedded work scoped case by case. Where a practice has a page, it sets out the scope, the deliverables and the fee — follow the link. Embedded work is scoped case by case; ask and I will tell you plainly whether it is the right instrument.
| Practice | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Executive search | Retained, exclusive, partner-led, with a written assessment of every finalist against an agreed scorecard. Chief executive, chief operating officer, chief commercial officer, chief financial officer and functional vice president mandates. |
| Human capital due diligence | Management team assessment across the deal cycle — sale preparation, buy-side diligence before you sign, and integration after close. Fixed fee, no placement obligation, no contingent element. |
| Succession & bench review | Assessment of your own leaders against the roles your plan requires. Readiness mapping, internal benchmarking and succession planning, written so the findings can be shared with the people named in them. |
| Embedded & project recruiting | Recruiting capacity on a defined engagement, for teams that need to be built quickly where a search-by-search model does not fit. |
| Research & market mapping | Whether the leader you want exists in your market at the compensation you have — how many there are, how many are reachable, and what would have to change. $12,000, three weeks, no search commitment, credited in full against a retained search begun within ninety days. |
Industries
The method does not change between industries. What we look for, and who we call to check it, does — and that is the part that requires having operated inside the business rather than read about it.
About
I spent eight years as a Force Reconnaissance Operator in the United States Marine Corps, and a meaningful part of that was selection and assessment — deciding which people could be relied on when the cost of being wrong was not recoverable. That work is unglamorous. It is mostly building rating scales, training raters, arguing about evidence, and resisting the urge to go with your gut.
The decade since has been spent running businesses with P&L responsibility and building the teams underneath them — sourcing, assessing and selecting the people a plan actually depends on, then holding the operation to measurable standards rather than stated intentions. Alongside that, human capital diligence across the whole deal cycle: preparing a company for sale, assessing a target’s management before close, and doing the integration work afterwards when the org chart meets reality.
That is also where the sector knowledge comes from — Aerospace and Defense, Manufacturing, Construction, Waste Management, Healthcare, Engineering and Technology. Operating inside those businesses, not reading about them.
You should not hire this firm because of where I served. A military record does not tell you whether I know the candidate universe in your market, and it is not what you are buying. What it did was teach me, early, to be incapable of assessing anyone casually — and that is the habit this firm is built around.
Happy to send the full methodology document and our standard search agreement before any commitment.
Fees and terms
These are our standard terms. They are negotiable on structure, not on exclusivity — retained search only works when one firm is accountable for the outcome.
| Term | Our standard |
|---|---|
| Fee | 25% of first-year total cash compensation, agreed in writing before we begin. Total cash compensation means base plus target bonus; we define exactly what is in and out in the agreement. |
| Billing | Three installments: at engagement, at shortlist or day 45 (whichever comes first), and at offer acceptance. |
| Exclusivity | Exclusive. One firm, one assignment. If you want to run parallel firms, we will tell you honestly that you want a contingency arrangement, not us. |
| Guarantee | Twelve months, because the assessment is what you are buying. If the placement does not hold, we re-run the search once with the professional fee credited in full. It covers the hire's performance and fit. It does not cover a role eliminated, materially re-scoped, or restructured after the start date. |
| Off-limits | Twelve months from our last placement with you. Shorter than the industry norm, deliberately — a long off-limits list helps us and constrains you. |
| Expenses | At cost, capped at 3% of the fee, with anything over $500 pre-approved. No administrative surcharges. |
| Timeline | First slate in three to four weeks. Ninety to one hundred and twenty days from kickoff to signed offer is normal; we tell you at kickoff what would make it longer. |
| Diligence & research | M&A human capital diligence is published by team size — $28,000 up to five executives, $45,000 for six to ten, quoted above that. Market mapping is published at $12,000 for three weeks, credited in full against a retained search begun within ninety days. |
Common questions
Our professional fee is 25% of the placed executive's first-year total cash compensation — base salary plus target bonus — agreed in writing before the search begins. It is billed in three installments: at engagement, at shortlist or day 45 (whichever comes first), and at offer acceptance. Expenses are at cost, capped at 3% of the fee. Every placement carries a twelve-month guarantee.
We present a first slate in three to four weeks. Ninety to one hundred and twenty days from kickoff to a signed offer is normal. At kickoff we tell you specifically what would cause that to slip, rather than discovering it later.
A contingency recruiter is paid only if you hire someone they introduced, so their incentive is speed and volume, and several firms may work the same role. A retained search is exclusive and paid in stages regardless of outcome, which is what makes a documented assessment of every finalist possible. If you want to run several firms in parallel, you want a contingency arrangement, and we will tell you so.
A market map answers whether the leader you want exists in your market at the compensation you have — how many there are, how many are realistically reachable, and which of your constraints is costing you the most candidates. It is $12,000 for three weeks of work, carries no obligation to run a search, and the full fee is credited against a retained search begun within ninety days. Individuals in the map are de-identified.
A scorecard is agreed in writing before anyone is approached. Every candidate is then asked the same questions, in the same order, by the same person. References are chosen for where they sat — skip-levels and former direct reports — rather than from a list the candidate supplied. You receive a written assessment of every finalist with the evidence behind each rating and the risks worth watching in year one. We are not replacing your interview process; we are giving you evidence to run it on.
Aerospace and defense, manufacturing, construction, waste and environmental services, healthcare, engineering and technology, roles requiring a United States government security clearance, and physical and cyber security.
Yes. The firm is based in Charlotte and engaged nationally across the United States.
Private equity sponsors hiring or assessing portfolio-company leadership, boards planning executive succession, and privately held companies making a hire where being wrong is expensive to unwind. We also run pre-close human capital diligence on management teams for acquirers.
Start a conversation
Twenty minutes. I will tell you honestly whether this is a search I should be doing, whether the market you want exists at the compensation you have, and what I would do differently. If it is not a fit, I will say so and point you somewhere better.
