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The Good Search Blog

Executive Search Guides and Resources

The Good Search CEO Krista Bradford is here to help make executive recruiting smarter, easier, and less stressful for you. Ms. Bradford digs deep to share leadership talent acquisition secrets and best practices. The Executive Search Blog features three special collections: Careers, Diversity Recruiting, and Executive Search.

Best of Blog Posts

Recruiting Rock Stars Steven Tyler and Joe Perry
To Recruit Rock Stars, It Helps to Know Them

To Recruit Rock Stars, It Helps to Know Them Headhunters regularly say they recruit rock stars, but few know what that really means. The vast majority of executive recruiters have never known a single rock star. They haven’t a clue what it takes to perform at that level — at the very top…

What Adoption Did to Steve Jobs
What Adoption Did to Steve Jobs

What Adoption Did to Steve Jobs. You may wonder what a blog post entitled, “What Adoption Did to Steve Jobs” is doing in a blog about executive recruiting. Adoption is the reason I became a recruiter and the reason I became an investigative journalist — a story about The Good Searc…

CRO Headhunters CSO Headhunters Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 Local Hires
Why Local Hiring Is More Important Than Ever with COVID-19

For Essential Leaders, Go Local Since COVID-19 arrived, it has created significant challenges for companies seeking leadership talent. Those challenges are making local hiring more important than ever before. The reason? The more the Novel Coronavirus mutates and then spreads (again) and the more th…

Floating Brain
AI Executive Search: Recruiting AI Talent

Recruiting AI Talent May Be Getting Easier Executive search is hard. Recruiting AI talent has been even harder. And while it remains difficult, the challenge appears to be lessening somewhat. The reason? Multiple rounds of technology company layoffs appear to be reducing the talent shortage. Fewer c…

Top Executive Search Firm Question Marks
Top Executive Search Firms List | How to Build Your Own

Executive Search Firms Lists How to Build Your Own A trusted list of the best executive recruiting firms comes in handy whenever you have an important senior-executive opening but lack the right search firm to fill it. The are plenty of lists out there, but it is hard to determine which one off…

Why Executive Searches Fail People in Blindfolds
Why Executive Searches Fail

Why Headhunters Fail (Don’t Search With Your Eyes Closed) The reasons why executive searches fail are many. Some of the causes are out of your control, but there is something you can do to ensure important senior executive positions are filled. While social networks and software applications c…

Neurons Neurodiversity Recruit Genius Candidates
Neurodiverse Candidates for Genius Hires

How to Recruit the Next Genius Imagine if you could recruit the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom are suspected of being neurodiverse on the autism spectrum. Recruiting the next genius isn’t as hard as one might think. But to hire candidates who think differently, you must recru…

AI Recruiting Tools
AI Recruiting Tools No So Smart

Are AI Recruit Tools Worth the Hype? Algorithms, schmalgorithms — AI recruiting tools may be hurting a company’s ability to hire senior executives. The latest technology elixirs and outsourcing approaches are not designed to fix what is broken with hiring top leadership talent. In fact, …

Search Firm Type question marks covering face
When Do You Need an Executive Search Firm?

When to Use an Executive Search Firm You have a C-level executive opening. Your gut tells you a VP-level search will be incredibly hard to fill. Your startup has hit the hockey-stick inflection point in its growth and needs more experienced leadership to scale. Those are all good reasons to turn to …

Recruit the Right Executive Rows of Standing Businesspeople Isolated
How to Recruit the Right Executive

How to Recruit the Right Executive Chief Executive Officers regularly grapple with how to recruit the right executive. I have recruited top executives and technologists for the past decade and a half. Over that same period of time, I have also made hires to my own team. I can tell you with absolute …

Photo of man holding hand in front of his face with text Client Blockage
Client Blockage Cripples Executive Search

How Client Blockage Cripples Executive Search (And What to Do About It) Client Blockage Explained The world’s leading retained executive search firms have a client blockage problem. A big one. And that problem makes executive search buyers and the leading retained search firms a bit wary of on…

AI in Executive Search
AI in Executive Search

AI in Executive Search is the Baseline Artificial Intelligence in executive search, by now, is a given. Siri. Alexa. Facebook. LinkedIn. Tesla. If you can name it, talk to it, search it, or drive it — AI is your co-pilot. Yes, it is omnipresent in business. The software we use and the social n…

The New Normal COVID
Covid Weirdness in the Not-So-New Normal

Executive Recruiting in the Ongoing New Normal Covid Weirdness in the Not-So-New Normal COVID-19 has forever changed business, and in turn, recruiting as we know it — and it is not done with us. How we find and recruit senior executives keeps mutating along with virus variants. Executive recru…

Exclamation Point on Brick wall image for 7 Warning Signs You Need a Retained Search Firm
7 Warning Signs You Need a Retained Search Firm

Signs You Need a Retained Search Firm 7 Signs You Need Retained Search Retained executive search represents a significant investment. Executive search retainers start at $100 thousand per search engagement for the largest global retained executive search firms known as the Big Five (Korn Ferry, Russ…

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