How Executive Search Actually Works

Executive search is one of those processes that most people have experienced without fully understanding how it works. Companies hire search firms, candidates receive outreach, searches close or don't — but the mechanics of what happens between the commission and the close are often opaque to everyone involved except the search firm.

This opacity creates problems. Companies don't know what to expect, so they can't evaluate whether the process is working. Candidates don't understand why they're being approached, so they can't evaluate whether the opportunity is worth their time. And when things go wrong — when a search stalls, or closes on the wrong person — there's no shared framework for diagnosing what happened.

Here is what executive search actually involves.

Stage 1: The Brief

Every retained executive search starts with a brief. Not a job description — a brief.

A job description is a list of qualifications, responsibilities, and requirements written for candidates to read. A brief is a document written for the search team to use — it describes the business context, the specific problem the incoming leader needs to solve, the team they'll inherit, the decision-making authority they'll have, the compensation structure, and the specific capabilities that distinguish a great candidate from an acceptable one.

The brief is the most consequential document in the search. Everything that follows — candidate identification, outreach positioning, evaluation criteria, offer structuring — depends on the quality of the brief. A brief that takes two hours to produce carefully will save weeks later. A brief that is rushed or vague will produce a search that meanders.

The brief conversation is also where misalignment surfaces. If the hiring manager has one idea of what the role requires and the CEO has another, this becomes visible during the brief process — where it can be resolved before outreach begins, rather than after the shortlist is presented.

Stage 2: Market Mapping

Once the brief is defined, the search team maps the market. This is not a database query. It is a structured process of identifying who exists at the level the company is hiring for, in the sectors and functions that are relevant, with the specific experience that the brief requires.

Market mapping produces a long list — typically 50 to 150 names, depending on the depth of the market — of people who are theoretically right for the role based on publicly available information. This list is then qualified: which of these people are genuinely likely to have the specific capabilities the brief describes, and which are right on paper but wrong on closer examination?

The qualified list is the outreach pool: the candidates who will be approached in the initial wave.

Stage 3: Outreach and Engagement

Outreach in executive search is different from recruitment outreach. A recruiter filling a coordinator role can post a job, run an applicant tracking system, and evaluate people who apply. An executive search targeting VP and C-suite candidates is approaching people who are not applying — who are employed, not actively looking, and receive multiple approaches every week.

The approach that works at this level is not a job posting or a generic InMail. It is a personalised message that gives the candidate a specific and compelling reason to engage — something that makes this opportunity worth their time to explore, based on what is known about their background and what makes this role distinctive.

Response rates vary significantly based on the quality of the outreach. A well-targeted, well-written approach to the right candidates generates responses at a rate that makes the search viable. A generic approach to a broad list generates low response rates that the search team compensates for by sending more volume — which makes the positioning problem worse.

Stage 4: Evaluation and Shortlisting

Candidates who engage go through a structured evaluation process. This is not a series of conversations without criteria — it is a deliberate assessment of the candidate against the specific dimensions that the brief identified as most important.

The search firm conducts initial conversations to assess fit and interest. Candidates who pass go to the hiring team for evaluation, with a structured brief that gives the hiring team the information they need to evaluate each candidate against the same criteria. This consistency in evaluation is important: without it, the shortlist gets evaluated on inconsistent impressions rather than comparable data.

The shortlist is typically three to five candidates. More than five suggests the evaluation criteria were too broad. Fewer than three suggests either a sourcing problem or criteria that are too restrictive.

Stage 5: Deep Evaluation and Reference Checks

The candidates who reach shortlist status go through a deeper evaluation process: more conversations, structured assessments if the company uses them, and reference checks.

Reference checks in executive search are more important than most companies treat them. The standard approach — calling two or three references provided by the candidate — produces the information the candidate wants you to have. A well-run reference process calls people who have worked with the candidate but were not on the reference list, asks structured questions about specific situations rather than general impressions, and triangulates across multiple sources to build a picture that is more reliable than any single reference call.

Stage 6: Offer and Close

The offer stage in executive search is where many searches lose candidates who were otherwise committed. The reasons are usually preventable: compensation structures that are different from what was discussed, process delays that allowed competing offers to advance, or offer conversations that were transactional rather than closing.

A well-run offer process is built throughout the search — understanding what the candidate needs to say yes, surfacing competing offer situations before they become crises, and treating the offer conversation as the beginning of the relationship rather than the end of the process.

Majhi Group runs retained executive searches across the full process described here. The engagement starts with the brief and ends with a close — not with a shortlist.

If a search is stalled at any stage, request an assessment.