Blog about Executive Search
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.
Best of Blog Posts
How to Hire a Chief AI Officer
How to Hire a CAIO When It’s Hard to Do Hiring a Chief AI Officer has never been more challenging, That’s because AI is having a moment. Since the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot, interest in the rapidly involving technology has taken off. 202…
How COVID-19 Changed Executive Search Forever
COVID-19 Changed Executive Search How COVID-19 Changed Executive Recruiting Forever COVID-19 has changed executive search. COVID-19 has forever transformed executive recruiting as we know it. COVID forced companies to innovate new ways of working. Employers adopted new technologies to collaborate ov…
Meet AI: Your Next CEO
Meet AI: Your Next CEO Might Not Be Human Artificial Intelligence could become your next CEO. And if you follow the logic of what that really means, you might very well end up in the dystopian rabbit hole where I am today. As the Founder of The Good Search, I have recruited senior executives in&hell…
To Recruit Rock Stars, It Helps to Know The Real Thing
To Recruit Rock Stars, It Helps to Know The Real Thing Headhunters regularly claim they recruit rock stars, but most executive recruiters have never known a rock star in the literal sense. Consequently, 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 You may wonder what a blog post entitled “What Adoption Did to Steve Jobs” is doing in a blog about executive recruiting. However, adoption is the reason I became an investigative journalist and then an executive recruiter. In fact, my adoption experience …
Local Hiring Less Important for Executives
Local Hiring Is Less Important Now At the height of COVID-19, companies seeking leadership talent were in a pickle. It was hard to recruit, much less relocate, candidates. Consequently, focusing on local talent made sense for a lot of organizations. When you can’t hop on a plane, recruiting ta…
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
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…
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 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, …
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 …
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 …
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 is the Standard 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. If you’re not harnessing AI in…
7 Signs You Need a Retained Search Firm
7 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, Ru…
Our Collections
The Executive Search Blog features three special collections: Careers, Diversity Recruiting, and Executive Search.
- The Careers Collection is dedicated to career advice from executive recruiters themselves.
- The Diversity Recruiting Collection highlights the importance of diversity in executive search and shares diversity recruiting best practices.
- The Executive Search Collection features blog posts to help executive search firm selection and to share our executive recruiting best practices.
Popular Pages
We also offer dedicated pages for some of the most commonly asked questions about executive search.
- What Top Executive Search Firms Lists Can You Trust? shares our analysis of 7 popular top search firms lists. We also tell you how to build your own top executive search firm list.
- Top Executive Search Firms in NYC reveals our list of retained executive search firms in the greater New York City area.
- What does executive search cost? addresses questions you may have about the pricing of executive recruiting services.
- What is the difference between contingency and retained search firms? details the differences between the two business models, and discloses the advantages of a third.
Got Questions? Let’s talk.
No search firm is right for every search every time. Yet we make it a practice to listen to what you’re trying to accomplish and we try to help, regardless.