Executive recruiters find candidates by mapping the companies where the right person is likely to be working now, then searching those companies by title, function and keyword, in their own database, on LinkedIn and by telephone. To get found, you have to be legible to that process: a title and scope a researcher can match to a brief, a record in the right firm's database under the right practice, and people who will say your name when a recruiter calls to ask who is good.
Most advice on how to get noticed by executive recruiters treats it as a visibility problem: post more, connect more, send the résumé to more firms. It is a retrieval problem. A search is a structured query against a market, and when I ran searches, the candidates who were missed were rarely weak. They were filed wrongly, titled oddly, or described so modestly that nothing in the brief matched them.
How executive search firms find candidates
A retained search starts with a brief. The consultant sits with the client and agrees what the role is, what the person must already have done, and which kinds of company that person is likely to be found in. The brief is not only a job description. It is a set of instructions about where to look.
From the brief the firm builds its long list. The sequence is much the same everywhere.
- The target-company map. A list of organisations where someone with the right experience should be sitting today: direct competitors, adjacent sectors, and companies of similar size, ownership or stage.
- The firm's own database. Every executive the firm has interviewed, placed, sourced or received a résumé from, searched by function, sector, level and location, with the consultants' notes attached.
- The researcher's desk work. A researcher goes through each target company and identifies who holds the relevant roles, using LinkedIn searches by current title, current company and keyword.
- Sourcing calls. The consultant and the researcher call people who know the sector, describe the role, and ask who they rate.
- The first screen. Each name gets a quick read of the profile and of any record on file. The ones that plausibly match the brief are approached. The rest are not.
Notice what is absent. Nobody opens the general inbox and reads the unsolicited résumés that arrived that month. The process begins with the client's specification and works outward to named people in named companies.
Why strong executives are invisible to that process
Each step of the sequence has its own way of missing a good candidate.
The map misses you if your company is not on it. Leaders in private companies, in divisions of large groups, or in sectors the client did not think to name are outside the area being searched, however good their results.
The database misses you if you were never in it, or if the record still shows a role you left some time ago.
The researcher misses you if your title does not say what you do. Internal titles are the usual problem. A "Head of Strategic Programmes" who in practice runs operations for a region will not come up in a search for chief operating officers, because nothing on the profile contains those words.
The sourcing calls miss you if nobody outside your own company knows what you have done. And the first screen misses you if the profile is thin. A researcher with a long list to work through will not telephone someone to find out whether the job behind a two-line profile is big enough. They move to the next name.
None of this is a judgement on ability. Inside the building your results speak for themselves. Outside it, they have to be written down where a stranger will look.
What makes a profile findable and credible in the first 30 seconds
Findable and credible are separate tests, and a profile has to pass both in about half a minute.
Findable means the words in the brief appear on your profile. Use the market's title for your job in the headline and in the description of the role, even if your employer calls it something else. Name the function, the sector, the geography and the type of company in plain language. If you run a P&L, say so. The researcher's search is literal.
Credible means the scope is visible without a telephone call. For each recent role a recruiter looks for the same few things: the size of what you ran, in revenue, budget, headcount or assets; who you reported to; what changed while you were there; and the dates. A profile that lists responsibilities and no scale forces the reader to guess, and a reader in a hurry guesses low.
The most recent role should be the most detailed entry, not the thinnest. And the profile and the résumé must tell the same story with the same dates, because the consultant will put them side by side.
The profile does not need to say you are looking. A findable profile and a confidential search are compatible, and the National Reverse Recruiter Association handbook sets out how that works for a leader who is still employed.
Retained and contingent recruiters, and why the difference changes your approach
The two kinds of firm are paid differently, and that decides what an approach from you can achieve.
A retained firm is engaged exclusively by the client and paid for conducting the search. Its consultants are organised into practices by sector and function. A retained consultant cannot do anything for you unless you match a search on the desk, or are likely to match one soon. What they can do is record you accurately, so that you surface when the right brief arrives. The aim of an approach is correct filing and a consultant who remembers you.
A contingent recruiter is paid only when a candidate they introduced is hired, and often competes with other agencies on the same vacancy. They can be useful at Director and VP level. The discipline is control: agree that your résumé goes to no company without your consent for that specific company, because two agencies presenting the same executive to the same employer does the executive no favours.
Neither works for you. Both are paid by the hiring company, which is the distinction the NRRA handbook draws between a recruiter and a reverse recruiter.
How to get in touch with executive recruiters so the note is filed correctly
Write to a person, not to a firm. Find the consultant, or the researcher, in the practice that covers your function and sector. A note to the right practice is read by someone who can place you on a map. A note to the general address is logged, if it is logged at all, by someone who cannot. A warm introduction from an executive the consultant has placed is better than either.
Keep the note short enough to be read on a telephone. Who you are in one line: function, level, sector and scale. What you would move for: the kind of role, the kind of company, the geography. Whether the approach is confidential. Attach the résumé. Do not ask for a meeting, and do not ask whether they have anything for you. Ask to be recorded under the right practice, and say you are glad to be a source on searches in your field.
That last offer is the one that builds a relationship. Recruiters spend their days asking people who is good. An executive who takes the call and suggests two credible names is remembered, and is called again. That is how a leader gets on a headhunter's radar and stays there, and it works best when it starts long before a move is needed.
What not to do
Do not send a generic résumé to five hundred recruiters. The problem is not the number. It is that the message is addressed to nobody, says nothing a practice can file, and arrives in the one place a search does not start from.
Do not chase. One note, and an update when something material changes. Silence from a retained consultant almost always means there is no matching search, not that you were assessed and dismissed.
And do not treat a recruiter's screening call as a chat. It is the first interview of the process, and the notes from it go into the database whether or not that search goes anywhere.
Recruiters are one channel among several
Even done well, all of this makes you available to searches that exist, at firms that know you, for clients who drew their map where you happen to stand. That is a real channel and a narrow one. Many senior roles are filled by referral, by a direct approach or by an internal move and never reach a search firm, which I set out in the four channels senior roles move through.
A serious search works the recruiter channel alongside warm introductions and direct approaches to the people who own the hire. The balance shifts again once you are out of a role, because researchers search by current title, a point I cover in the essay on an executive job search after a layoff. Running those channels in parallel, in the client's name, is the work a managed search does.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do executive search firms find candidates?
They start from the client's brief, build a map of companies where the right person is likely to be working, and then identify the people in those companies by searching their own database and LinkedIn by current title, company and keyword. They add names from sourcing calls to trusted contacts in the sector. Unsolicited résumés play a small part, and only when they have been filed under the right practice.
How do I get on a headhunter's radar if I am not looking?
Make the profile match the market's words for your job and show the scale of what you run. Introduce yourself once to the consultant who covers your function and sector, and ask to be recorded accurately. Then be useful: take sourcing calls and suggest good people. Recruiters remember helpful sources, and that memory is what puts your name on a long list later.
Should I send my résumé to executive recruiters?
Yes, selectively. Send it to a named consultant in the practice that covers your field, with a short note stating function, level, sector, scale and what you would move for. A targeted approach to the firms that work at your level creates accurate records. A generic mailing to every recruiter on a purchased list creates noise, and it is recognised as one by everyone who receives it.
Why do executive recruiters not reply to my message?
Usually because nothing on their desk matches you at that moment. Retained consultants work for the client and only on live searches, so a good profile with no matching mandate is filed and not answered. It is rarely a verdict. Check that you wrote to the right practice, that your profile shows scope, and that recruiters are not the only channel your search depends on.
