In this two‑person discussion, Speaker A explains why executive search is fundamentally different from contingent or exclusive recruitment. He stresses that executive search requires a dedicated, transparent reporting cadence (e.g., weekly 4‑5 week search plan, shortlist reports) and that even simple metrics—such as the number of outreach attempts—must be communicated to the client to demonstrate effort. The conversation then moves to the strategic advantage of specialising in a single market (cybersecurity) to build deep relationships, accelerate recruiter onboarding, and create a repeatable “platform” that can out‑compete larger, multi‑market firms. Speaker A outlines a mapped‑out 4‑5 week search process, the importance of retaining ownership of the search, and how a focused niche enables rapid up‑skilling of senior recruiters. Throughout, the speakers argue that recruitment fundamentals—consistent relationship‑building, disciplined reporting, and niche expertise—are more effective than constantly chasing new business‑development tricks. The discussion also touches on perception versus reality in client expectations and the need for clear client‑ideal‑profile definition.
Chapters
So executive search is a different thing entirely, in my opinion. It's a different process, it's a different way of working. Um, people who say they're executive search, it's like a massive, completely different, separate thing. So when you implement some of the stuff that you do from a reporting standpoint on lower-level contingent roles, you start to really knock clients off and like, oh wow, as if I've never seen that before. And you do a report for a search on the East Coast and, and people are like, I've never seen anybody do this before. And it's just taking more time and effort and putting into things. And it doesn't take too long as well. You can genuinely create a report in 20 minutes, but you send that to a client instead of sending a couple of CVs. But it's just little things like that. And it's the little 1%ers that you need to do from a client perspective that really make the difference in the long run. And that goes across everything from exec search to contingent to exclusive roles as well. And even if you're— most of our work now, 95% of our work is either retained or exclusive. Um, and that's just come from that. So we go in there, we might work on a contingent role, but then before that, yeah, you're doing a full retain project for them as well on the, on the low-level stuff.
You don't know what I'm gonna ask now, don't you? What people are going to want me to ask? What, what goes in the report?
What goes in the report? Um, it's nothing, it's just basic stuff. Like, just, just think about it, right? So you do a report on, uh, you've reached out to 120 people on LinkedIn. And you've done your own network stuff, create a report off the back of it.
So yeah, it's what a lot of recruiters learn the hard way or don't do is actually do a good job of effectively communicating what they've actually done.
Yeah. And yeah, so for example, you could speak to 100 people and you can't find a role, but if you've not told the client or showed the client, they're just gonna go— they're gonna go, they've not done anything. But you have. So you just go and show it them. Um, this is what it means to transparency. And this is, this is why it's so good doing one thing, one market. Is because you genuinely can really build relationships with people very quick. You can go into a company and say, I've worked with James over there doing X, Y, and Z, and this is what I've done for them. Or you typically get introduced to them, so you can actually have a better conversation with people. Um, and that comes down to the executive search brand is a completely different business that we was talking about. Um, and that is full report. So the bigger firms in the whole world, we do the exact same as them from a shortlist report perspective, from all this stuff that you need to do. Um, from identifying candidates, all, everything is mapped out for a 4 or 5 week process, week by week, uh, with the clients as well. So it's completely separate and different, but we just took a few things from that and plugged it into the other business, really.
And you've like separated that recently to what perception is reality in that game, you feel like?
No, perception is reality. Yeah, I think, well, I've, I've always done executive search. I've been doing it for, um, all the time in recruitment.
How would you define it though? I'm always curious about this. Okay, so like on seniority I know there's process elements you're talking about, but yeah, VPC suite level, but it's also the process of executive search.
Like if you just send in a couple of candidates through an email, that's not executive search. Um, so for example, if you go into private equity firm and you send a candidate in and you get, they get the role, that's not filling the job in a private equity's eyes. You've just sent them a candidate who's got a job. What, what in a private equity's eyes is you are running the full search. You are retained by them. You're taking control and ownership of every single thing that goes into the process. and you're running that entire search and methodology over the, over the 4 or 5 week period until you present the shortlist report. Um, so that is a completely different way of working than sending in a couple of CVs. So executive search, I genuinely would argue, is completely different into, into the recruitment side from a, just a process standpoint.
Yeah, fair. So you, like, yeah, fed again, like these will be things that people would have heard before, but the reality is, are they doing it consistently on the service side? Right. Yeah, it is wild. Like, and it's often where, yeah, like these, like, I'm honestly so surprised when I speak to recruiters and like for them a lot of people would find it hard to really in detail talk about who they serve, their ideal client, and like in real detail, like what the problems that they care about, what their challenges, and also like haven't got clarity on, okay, like let's take a step back for a second. Who are my best clients and why are they my best clients? Like, how do we start working together? Was it a referral? Was it a spec? Was it whatever? Like, a lot of people don't do that work.
Yeah.
Which is surprising. And it's great to hear you just— hear you talking about how you double down on that. And it is just really back to this world-class basics, doing the things really well and just being really disciplined with those things, right?
I think the, um— I think people overcomplicate recruitment crazy amounts. Um, there's always this new BD trick and stuff like that, but realistically, you do the same thing for a long period of time and do it really well. And there's no other way to do things. You build really good relationships with people. You're doing all the basics on a day-to-day basis. You're continuously doing them. You're building really good relationships. You're meeting people face-to-face if you're doing executive search and all this kind of stuff as well. And you, over a period of 2 to 3 years, you will absolutely kill it. Nobody can wait that long typically. And it's like, if you just do one market, and this is why we're doing, this is why I'm a true believer in what we're doing at Upscale is because if it took somebody, took me say 3 years to get up and running in cyber from building it from absolute scratch, then it would ideally, it would take somebody a year coming in from a brand new market, coming into a market that we've set out and identified everybody for them with a set list of customers that we've already got case studies with so they can be plugged into a market to already go out there and smash it. That's the whole point of doing one, one thing. Um, there's a book called, um, Your Next Five Moves by Patrick Bet-David, and he talks about how do you beat the Goliath? How do you beat the really, really big companies? And I think about this in more of an executive search standpoint, because there's huge, huge search firms out there, but they all do different markets. And there's gaps we won't go into today because that might give a little bit of our secret sauce away. But there's little gaps that we're identifying. But when you're going after a goliath in an industry, do one thing and become the best in the world at it, then advance out. So we will be the best in the world at cybersecurity recruitment from an executive search standpoint and everything bidown, and then we'll start looking at other stuff. And so it all comes back to really focusing on one thing and making sure people coming into the business can be upskilled very quickly. Not even just upskilled, but we've got a guy joining, 7 years experience in recruitment, one of the top billers at his previous companies. He's going to come into a market he's never done before, but everything's mapped out for him. So he walks in day one and he can just go and plug in and play.
