Executive headhunting — software, articles, and glossary
Resources for executive search boutiques: vertical ATS with placement fees, vesting and clawback, articles comparing ATS/CRM/PSA, recruiting glossary. For firms running retained and contingency searches.
Confidentiality as a product requirement
In executive search a leak is not a technical incident: it can cost the mandate and the client relationship. That is why confidentiality has to be designed into the system rather than depending on each consultant's individual care.
In practice that means mandates visible only to the assigned team, client names that can be kept hidden even inside the firm itself, explicit control over what information leaves when a shortlist is shared, and a record of who has accessed each file. A candidate currently in post has far more to lose than the firm does.
- Access restricted per mandate inside the organisation
- Profiles that can be anonymised until interest is confirmed
- A log of accesses and document downloads
- Data hosted in the European Union with a defined retention period
The market map as a reusable asset
The market map is the most expensive thing to produce and the most wasted. It is built for one assignment, delivered and filed away, so eighteen months later the firm repeats work it had already done because nobody can consult it.
Keeping it alive changes the economics of the practice, and it costs little: the companies and the people remain relevant, and what needs updating is who has changed role, who has been promoted, and who expressed interest and on what terms. With that, every new mandate starts from a short list rather than from a blank page.
- Target companies, functions and people kept structured
- Moves and promotions recorded with dates
- Motivation and availability captured in every conversation
- Rejection reasons aggregated and reusable
