The warning signs an experienced search partner catches early, and what hiring organizations can do about them.
This article draws on a Cornerstone International Group roundtable on earning the right to advise, featuring Antonio Cassano (Cornerstone International Italia), Samuel Dergel (Cornerstone Montreal), Dan Heiman (Global President, Cornerstone International Group), and Göran Jansson (Cornerstone Nordics), moderated by Larry Shoemaker (Vice Chairman, Cornerstone International Group). Client examples are shared with details withheld to protect confidentiality.
Not every executive search succeeds, and the good firms will tell you so. When senior Cornerstone consultants from four countries compared notes on searches that went sideways, a pattern emerged: failures are rarely about the candidate pool. They are almost always about the setup. That is good news for hiring organizations, because the setup is something you control.
Warning sign one: the stakeholder map is incomplete
Samuel Dergel, Managing Partner of Cornerstone Montreal, describes a finance director search where the role reported to an operations leader with a dotted line to the CFO. Because it was a finance role, finance ran the search. The chosen finalist then met the operations leader late in the process, and the fit was not there.
The stakeholder who mattered most had barely been involved.
You can ask a client who the stakeholders are, Dergel notes, and you will get an answer. Then, at the end of the process, other stakeholders come out of the woodwork. Dan Heiman, Global President of Cornerstone International Group, has a name for them: not “key stakeholders”, key derailers.
An experienced partner invests time up front mapping how decisions actually get made in your organization, not just how the org chart says they do.
“Every company has some sort of dysfunction. It can range from mild to wild.”
– Samuel Dergel
Warning sign two: the process is slower than the market
Antonio Cassano, Managing Partner of Cornerstone International Italia, recalls a search for a senior international profile that his team completed quickly and well. The client’s internal process, however, stretched on, and strong candidates lost interest and moved on. The lesson his firm took away was twofold: insist on access to the chief executive rather than working through a single intermediary, and treat the candidate’s experience with the same care as the client’s. In a market where the best people have options, a slow decision is a decision.
Warning sign three: unspoken doubts
Göran Jansson, Managing Partner of Cornerstone Nordics, shared a search from some years ago in which a candidate looked excellent on every dimension. References, assessments, track record, all strong. But something felt off, a doubt he could not substantiate, so he did not raise it. The client hired the candidate, and serious problems surfaced after the start that no reference had revealed.
Jansson’s practice changed permanently. If there is a concern, he raises it, even without proof, and lets the client weigh it with full information.
For buyers, the implication runs both ways: choose a partner willing to voice uncomfortable judgments, and create the kind of relationship where they can. A consultant who fears losing the search by speaking up is worth less to you than one who does not.
Warning sign four: the situation changed and the search didn’t
Dergel’s team once completed a CFO search and was preparing the offer when the client mentioned, almost in passing, a plan to go public within six months. The finalist was the right CFO for the company they had been hired to serve, and the wrong one for the company it was about to become. They stopped the offer and restarted the search for a different profile. Walking away with the fee would have been easier. It also would have failed the client.
“Trust isn’t earned in a single moment. It’s built over time, through consistency.”
– Dan Heiman
What hiring organizations can control
Almost every story is the same: risk in executive hiring concentrates in the parts of the process that happen before and around the search, not in the sourcing itself.
Align your stakeholders before the search starts and identify who can veto at the end.
Give your search partner access to the top of the organization, not just to a coordinator.
Move at the speed of the market.
Share material information early, even when it is confidential, because your partner cannot protect you from what they do not know.
And finally, choose a firm that has demonstrably put a client’s interest ahead of its own fee, because at some point in the process, you will need them to!
Cornerstone International Group is a global alliance of retained executive search and leadership consulting firms with 60+ offices in 40+ countries. To talk with a Cornerstone consultant about your next leadership decision, visit cornerstone-group.com.
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