You don't need more resumes. You need the right person.
Let's be honest about how this usually goes. You hop on a call with a search firm, talk for twenty minutes, and by Thursday your inbox is filling up with resumes from people who clearly don't get the role. Now you're the one doing the sorting. The exact thing you hired somebody else to do.
I do it the other way around. I start by listening. How does your team actually work? Where's the friction? What did the last person in this seat struggle with? What does winning look like twelve months from now? Only once I really get it do I go out to the market.
And when I do, it lands differently. I'm not blasting a job post. I'm picking up the phone, calling somebody I know, and telling them this one's worth a look. They take the call because I don't make those calls casually.
"Accountability requires a face."
You'll never get handed off to a researcher you've never met. You'll never wake up to find a different team running your search. Every approach, every assessment and every reference call is done by the same guy who took your brief. Me. A hire this big deserves one person clearly on the hook for it.
How a search unfolds.
The first conversation
We sit down and talk about the real stuff. The role, the people around it, what's actually broken, and what better looks like. If the spec needs pushing on, I'll push. A lot of senior job descriptions are really two different jobs stitched together, and it's way better to catch that now than three months in.
The map
I go map the market. Who's doing this work really well, where they sit, what would actually get them to move, and what you're up against on comp and scope. You come away with the whole picture, not just a list of names.
The shortlist
Three or four people who are genuinely worth your time. I've approached every one of them personally, looked at their real work, done the references, and written down the honest strengths and the honest risks. Short on purpose, because a long list is just homework handed back to you.
The landing
Offer, counter-offer, resignation. This is where good hires fall apart if nobody's paying attention, so I pay attention. Then I stay close through onboarding and those first months, because signing the offer isn't the finish line. The person still being the right hire a year later is.
