Executive search software where the AI knows your candidates

Stop scrolling Bullhorn lists and chasing consultants for shortlists. Ask hice.ai who fits the Acme CFO mandate — get five names with rationale in 30 seconds.

Why Invenias and Excel can't keep up

Executive search runs on relationships and discretion, but most firms still manage retainers, shortlists and off-limits lists across three disconnected tools. Senior consultants end up doing admin instead of calling candidates.

Partners waste 6+ hours a week digging through CRM notes to find candidates they've already met
Retainer billing (one-third, one-third, one-third) is tracked in a shared spreadsheet that breaks every quarter
Off-limits and NDA constraints get missed — twice a year a candidate is approached when they shouldn't be
Shortlist documents are rebuilt from scratch for every client, in Word, by hand
Researchers and consultants duplicate work because nobody trusts the CRM enough to update it

A research assistant that actually remembers

hice.ai ingests your candidate notes, mandate history and retainer schedule, then acts as the single front door for the whole firm. Consultants ask, AI answers — and the CRM stays clean as a side effect.

«Do we have a CFO available for the Acme retainer? Off-limits respected.» → 4 candidates with last contact, salary band, off-limits cleared
«Compute the second tranche to invoice on the Hartmann CEO mandate, due this month» → billable amount ready to export with retainer schedule reference
«Who placed Sarah Chen, when, and what was her notice period?» → full placement record with consultant, fee and start date

Try it in chat

Examples you can ask:

Static demo of hice's AI chat.

What you get

Retainer billing data on autopilot

Set the engagement structure (1/3, 1/3, 1/3 or custom) and hice.ai schedules the billable milestones and tracks DSO automatically.

Confidential mandate mode

Lock a search to specific partners — chat queries from other users won't surface the client name or candidates.

AI-powered shortlist builder

Generate a branded shortlist PDF from chat in 60 seconds — candidate summary, motivation, salary expectation, all pulled from your notes.

Off-limits and NDA engine

AI checks every candidate against client off-limits, mutual NDAs and prior placements before suggesting them.

Placement-to-fee tracking

From signed offer to billable fee to clawback risk — one chain, visible to partners in chat.

Off-limits rules that hold under pressure

Every search firm has off-limits commitments, and almost every firm relies on people remembering them. That works until the week a researcher is under deadline on a hard mandate, and the breach that follows costs a client relationship rather than an apology.

The rule has to live in the system and fire at the moment of approach rather than in a policy document. That means client-level and company-level restrictions with start and end dates, applied automatically when a profile is added to a longlist, and an override that requires a named person and a recorded reason. The point is not to prevent judgement but to make the exception deliberate.

Off-limits by client and company, with start and end dates
Automatic check at longlist, not at submission
Overrides that require a named approver and a reason
NDA constraints recorded against the mandate itself

A market map that keeps earning after the mandate closes

The market map is the most expensive artefact a search firm produces and the one most reliably wasted. It is built for one assignment, delivered, and filed, so eighteen months later the same ground is covered again because nobody can retrieve it.

Keeping it alive costs little, because the companies and the people remain relevant. What needs refreshing is who has moved, who has been promoted, and who expressed interest and on what terms. With that maintained, a new mandate in the same sector starts from a short list rather than from nothing, and the second search in a sector is dramatically cheaper than the first.

Target companies, functions and people kept structured
Moves and promotions recorded with dates
Motivation and timing captured in every conversation
Rejection reasons aggregated and reusable across mandates

Portfolio discipline: which searches to stop

A search firm rarely fails on sourcing. It fails on portfolio composition — too many mandates open at once, several with a client who is not genuinely committed, and one or two that have run five months without anybody deciding to close them.

Making that visible is worth more than an additional sourcing channel. A weekly view of open mandates with their age, the stage they are stuck at and the fee at risk turns an intuition into a decision, and the decision is usually to drop two searches in order to finish three. Client responsiveness recorded as an attribute of the mandate is what makes that argument possible.

Open mandates by age and current stage
Fee at risk on searches past the agreed deadline
Client responsiveness recorded as a mandate attribute
An explicit decision to pause or return a stalled search

Real case: 18-consultant boutique in Mayfair

Eleanor, managing partner of a financial-services search firm, was spending Friday afternoons reconciling retainer billing data across 40 active mandates. With hice.ai she dropped that to 20 minutes, recovered £180k of unbilled tranche-two milestones in the first quarter, and her two senior researchers redirected 8 hours a week from CRM hygiene back to candidate calls.

hice.ai vs Invenias / Bullhorn + Excel

Feature	hice.ai	Invenias / Bullhorn + Excel
Finding the right candidate	Ask in chat, AI ranks from your own notes	Boolean search on tags that nobody maintained
Retainer milestone billing	Scheduled, amounts computed automatically	Manual Excel + accountant chase
Off-limits enforcement	Built-in check before any suggestion	Memory of senior partners
Building a shortlist deck	Generated from chat in 1 minute	Word doc, hand-formatted, 2 hours
Data confidentiality for senior mandates	EU-hosted, encrypted, partner-locked	Cloud CRM, full firm-wide access
Tracking placement clawbacks	Automated reminders 30/60/90 days	Easy to miss, written off

FAQ

Can hice.ai import 15 years of candidate data from Invenias or Clockwork?+

Yes. We migrate candidate records, notes, mandates and engagement history. Free-text notes become searchable through AI — no re-tagging required.

How are confidential mandates protected?+

Mandates can be partner-locked. Even firm-wide queries won't return the client name, the role or the candidates. Audit logs track every access.

Does it handle international placement fees and multi-currency retainers?+

Yes. Multi-currency by default, with FX rates locked at engagement-signing date for billing.

Can researchers and consultants use it differently?+

Yes. Researchers get a longlist-and-mapping workflow, consultants get pipeline and client comms, partners get P&L per mandate — same chat, role-aware answers.

What about LinkedIn / Recruiter integration?+

LinkedIn profiles can be added to candidate records by URL or browser extension; hice.ai enriches them with your firm's prior interaction history.

How does this compare with Invenias?+

Invenias is a database with a UI. hice.ai is a chat that sits on top of your data — consultants stop opening the CRM, the CRM stays clean by itself.

Can it model contingency, retained and exclusive engagements differently?+

Yes. Engagement types are configurable, with their own fee structures, milestone rules and revenue-recognition logic.