What Executive Recruiters Will Never Say Publicly

Senior executive hiring has fundamentally shifted. It is no longer a linear path of applying, interviewing, and receiving an offer. In this episode, we pull back the curtain on "closed-door" conversations with global executive recruiters and leadership assessors to reveal how C-suite and VP-level talent are actually sourced and evaluated. From the "trust recession" to the "with or without you" energy, we explore the unspoken signals that separate top candidates from the rest.

Key Takeaways

• Hiring is Not a History Test: Senior candidates are not evaluated on their ability to recall facts and data dumps; they are judged on their influence, judgment, and executive thinking,
• The Trust Recession: In an era of misinformation, being "easy to trust" is your greatest asset. High-level roles are often filled through warm networks and trusted referrals long before a job is ever posted online.
• Adjacency Over Domain: When pivoting industries, specialized domain knowledge is less important than "leadership altitude"—the ability to align teams, simplify complexity, and orchestrate results regardless of the sector.
• Diagnose, Don’t Impress: Shift your interview energy from a "pick me" mentality to a consultant’s mindset. Show up to diagnose the business’s "messy middle" and tension points rather than just listing your past achievements.
• Strategic Compensation: Never anchor your salary expectations on your historic pay. Instead, benchmark against the market median and the specific risk and mandate of the new role.

Episode Highlights

• 07:27 – The Compliance Step: Why posting a senior role online is often just a formality. Recruiters typically start with warm networks and trusted referrals before a role is ever published.
• 14:09 – The "Context-Conflict-Cure" Framework: Move beyond standard storytelling to capture the "messy middle". Assessors want to know the "calculus" behind your decisions and what you learned from the friction.
• 20:30 – Leadership Altitude vs. Domain: Why a 95% match on "leadership altitude"—the ability to create alignment and manage ambiguity—will always be prioritized over pure domain familiarity.
• 35:10 – Mastering the Negotiation: A real-world case study on why you should never negotiate over email. Learn how to pivot from a low offer to a strategic conversation about market medians and total value creation.
• 38:15 – The Role of Leadership Assessors: Why these trained psychologists look for "future capacity" and "executive altitude" rather than your technical history or resume chronology.

Mentioned in the Episode

• Compensation Resources: Tools for market benchmarking including Salary.com, PayScale, DataViz, and Glassdoor.

Enjoyed this episode? Here are three ways to go deeper:

Share and review the podcast

If this episode resonated, share it with a colleague who needs to hear it. And if you have 30 seconds, please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps more high-achieving professionals discover the show.

Get my weekly “Charge-Up” newsletter

If you like smart, no-fluff career insights, you will love Charge-Up. Each week I break down lessons from movies, TV, business and real executive career stories that I do not share anywhere else.

Sign up here:

https://www.superchargeyourself.com/newsletter

Connect and share your takeaways

Tell me your biggest insight from this episode and tag me on LinkedIn or

Transcript

0:00 Speaker: 0:01

We're gonna talk about the senior executives and how they are getting hired. This is, some of it will feel a little bit new, but some of it has just been there and it's maybe, you know, it, maybe it bears repeating, maybe you don't know. what you're gonna be learning today is a few four, five things. Okay? So how executive recruiters based in Europe, the US apac, these are the three areas I'm focused on. When I say US, I mean North America. That's a big one here. Uh, and finally, I'm also gonna share with you what happens when they bring in external assessors, you know, leadership assessors. They're not like recruiters, like HR or something like that. These are trained psychologists who do psychometric testing and are trained on certain frameworks like Hogan, et cetera. So it's across the board and it's also across geography. But there are certain things in common, there are certain patterns that have emerged that I'm gonna be sharing with you today. None of this is published online. The people who attend these sessions in my program have all signed NDAs, so that's really, he, really helpful as well. And no, there's no like, public distribution of the recording. And hence today I'm not gonna be sharing anywhere, like any names here. So I'm gonna be synthesizing today with you hundreds of hours of conversation, coaching, and observation, But as a career strategist, what I do is I work primarily with people who are at a mid to senior level and help them to secure better, you know, more clarity, more confidence, but also better roles that truly reflect who they are and their dreams, their aspirations. And we look at really very seriously upping there. So first things first. How does executive search work? First? Hiring is no longer linear. Okay. What I, what do I mean by that? Actually, it's never been, it's not just no longer. It's never been, it's never been, only just job apply. So they rely on that pipeline database. Another thing, hiring is a lot more about market intelligence. From quiet conversations, 10 to 20 people before a search has been officially opened. Okay. And there's a lot more reliance on internal referrals from trusted operators. Okay. So you know what your, you know, your tried and tested a lot more tried and tested product. Client referrals, internal leaders, or Market Watchers. So these are candidates who are already visible and memorable. They're the ones who get contacted first. In fact, a recruiter told me this. By the time we publish a senior role online, we already have a few names in mind. Posting is a compliance step, not a sourcing strategy. These are a few, these are like less than 10. But these targeted networking conversations with very specific vertical introductions, right? In specific verticals and specific introductions, they help unlock opportunities. A good solid pace. Is it fast? Urgency is high, not medium high. Okay. Because these external executive recruiters, maybe some of you know this, they are not cheap. So either the business urgency is high or the role is very sensitive and it's confidential, right? And something is not working. So one leadership assessor, one executive uh, recruiter told me we are brought in when something is fundamentally broken, there's performance issues. That's what, that's a good thing for you. If a, if things are working smoothly inside the company, why do they need to spend hundreds, tens, and tens of thousands of dollars euros to bring you in? External hiring is very expensive. what does great interviewing signals look like? Recruiters, hiring managers and assessors, they basically said the same thing over and over to me. Prepared for a history test. This is what I did. This is what happened. 10 on 10, 10 on 10. It's like, I want full marks on the history test. She's like, I will give them 10 on 10 for the history part, but she's like, that is not who I'm looking for. So what is the wrong way? It's treated like a history test, a data dump a biography. I'll tell you mine. Are you ready? Storytelling. What does that mean? Because in today's day and age, storytelling is so, I don't know, it feels very shallow. I teach storytelling. Okay, I'll tell you here, what is good storytelling? And this person from Google, she told me, I want to know the messy middle. I wanna know how did you what did you weigh? Why did you decide it like that? What did you didn't realize You kept repeating. What was that learning mindset? She's like, I always wanna know what they're learning. So there's, then there's something called organization first framing. She said, I'm looking for that. She, the term she used was, I want the calculus. I don't want the facts. Because anyone can blurt out the facts. So let me share an example. A weak answer. Remember I said history test. So I joined during a redesign program. We upgraded the entire analytic system, rolled out training, coordinated four functions, and fixed reporting accuracy by 18%. My team also delivered dashboards, stakeholder reviews, and quarterly performance cycles. So instead of starting with tools, I began with alignment. My first move was X, Y, and Z. Accuracy improved because the stakeholders trust the data. So if I were to do it again, I had align incentives one quarter sooner to accelerate adoption. It's a very kind of like different thinking. And she even said, obviously this is her point of view, but I really valued it. That is super awkward. It'll not go anywhere, but, you know, five seconds, 10 seconds, write something down. It's good. You can do that. And I had this exact thing with, um, with a client of mine who's based in Belgium actually. And she, what I found was her, her answers were very stiff and information heavy. And within like literally a couple of months, I noticed that the interviews were accelerating and she reached out. To some a, a, not a startup, but a scale up based in Gant. And they were like, we would typically not have hired someone like you, but. We don't always get along with each other. We don't always do what we say. So can you manage ambiguity without escalating panic? Can you influence beyond authority? I'd love to give you the C-Suite title, but we can't. Maybe somebody else has it, but with this, can you still have people follow you even before reporting lines are formally set in place? But a 95% match on leadership altitude, altura, not attitude, altitude. Then we prioritize leadership, not familiarity. We prioritize leadership, not familiarity. So there are some hidden disqualifiers. They will quietly say no. They tend to not give you feedback, so you're wondering what happened. These are the four, five reasons. There's a little too much of I, me, myself, a little too much of that, and not enough on the business tension and stakeholder movement. So it's bigger than you, right? And finally. They noticed that the candidate was not able to articulate what were the trade-offs because there's no such thing as a perfect solution. She wanted to move back to Europe and the whole process was extremely opaque and, uh, overwhelming. So we worked on this brand narrative, right? And the, the leadership sort of strengthening a bit more of her leadership presence because we started focusing away from my responsibilities. To how did I create alignment and solve the business tension because it's always there. I told you my most favorite, uh, least favorite word storytelling. One of my most favorite words, actually, two for very obvious reasons. Number one is adjacency. Adjacency, and number two is transferable. Love those words. You can imagine why I think we, we can all love those words, especially if you're thinking about moving to something different. And they can quickly scale systems, operating rhythm, monetization. They can do a lot of that. People like that, because that means that you are industry agnostic. Okay? So how do you wanna pre uh, how do you wanna frame a pivot for those who are looking at pivoting? You don't wanna say things like, I wanna learn. And this is how I stabilize performance during ambiguity. So essentially, this is something that happened with a client of mine. We were actually struggling, a really smart guy, and. The roles weren't coming. It was really slow. The interviews weren't converting. Something flipped. Okay. And we decided it, it sometimes, you know, you get the message, but you're not ready to receive the message. I'd love to be a part of this, but whether you hire me or not, I'm gonna be fine. I'm not saying you're saying that, but it's kind of the vibe you're giving and that's very attractive. The opposite of this is pick me, you remember my best friend's wedding. Pick me. Choose me. There's a certain desperation in that energy and it doesn't have a good look. If I hire if they hire me, then it's, I'm validated. You are cool regardless. It's a, it really hard it, this is hard work to remember. Back to a adjacency. When adjacency beats specialization, okay, and I've seen this example most often when like, oh, we want somebody from pharmaceuticals because we worked in pharmaceutical, because we are in pharma. Then they become more open to leaders who can align, simplify, and orchestrate, align, simplify and orchestrate even from a different sector. In fact, I will argue they like that you come from a different sector because you bring in a fresh uncorrupted point of view. And that's what happened with a client of mine who actually moved from oil and gas to renewables. This is what I can do. And then it becomes easier, the rest of it becomes easier. Compensation, senior compensation, equity and expectation setting. Let's talk about this. Okay. Senior compensation is highly strategic. Those conversations are rarely like, what was your last salary? What they wanna know is, okay, what is an expected range? Are there gonna be equity, ESOPs, retention, bonus, or variable? Will it be aligned in there? Because those are extremely complex, but high risk, high reward oftentimes, right? The thing not to do is not to anchor on historic salary. My gosh, this really, really bums me out. And someone says, I'm, I'm like, so what are you looking for? There's a lot of mathematics and a lot of like analysis and strategy that's involved here. So most of them have already had conversations with compensation and rewards consulting firms to have a good match in all the countries in the world where their company operates. So they have a good idea of the median of the pay range and the ratio. Weety too. But it's a loss. So, which is why you never wanna use your past compensation as the benchmark. The benchmark is the market medium. How can you know that? Lots of websites out there that share if you're based in the US salary.com. Otherwise overall, there's something called PayScale, P-A-Y-S-C-A-L-E payscale.com. You know, like it's, if you don't have these, if you're not armed with this data, then it feels like you're going into this dark room and you're just shooting on a dark board and you know, you don't know if it's gonna work or not by giving certain numbers or ranges. So instead, here's what I want you to do.'cause a lot of us think it's pretty much the base salary, whereas the whole package is very attractive. So we don't wanna just focus ourselves on just the base salary, but base salary is a big part of it. But it's not the only part. And here's a funny story. A client of mine actually in Amsterdam, um, she ended up getting a role with a competitor in the pharma business. And I said, okay, you're gonna ask them for a phone call. Don't put anything on email. Never ever, ever negotiate on email, okay? Unless you're like Seth Gordon or a master copywriter, you don't wanna do that. She picked up the phone, they already loved her, but the hr, and you can tell the VP for comp, Ben really knew their stuff. Bonus this. This is what I'm gonna be losing. She explained it and this is where the offer is. If it were here, I will sign on the spot. How much leeway is there? How can we best find a way to make this work for the both of us? 'cause I'm very excited to start with you. She hated this. It was uncomfortable. You owe it to yourself. It's worth it. Don't let anybody push you around. Executive comp has long-term consequences, not just on like what you're making today, but hello. Some of us. You know, when. We think we are gonna be young forever. There's pension, there's social security. It's always based on where you are, so you want, you're thinking long term. They're not evaluating your technical history, your resume chronology, your certifications, your years of experience. They're not seeing all of that. Okay? What are they seeing? They're seeing future capacity and executive altitude, future capacity and executive altitude. What do I mean by that? They're looking at four key areas. How are they prioritizing? And one more thing, sorry. Can they translate market tension into direction? I'll give you an example. You know, there's a candidate who's describing a turnaround. Are they emphasizing on dashboards, a headcount? No. Instead, are they emphasizing on what was misaligned? They wanna know that how is the team maintaining cadence and escalation? This is the real staff man. This is like where the rubber meets the road. Some people wanna be hands off on that, right? Uh, but they don't have the luxury to be hands off. You cannot be only strategic with your head in the clouds by not knowing what's going on on the ground, right? So operational excellence is not administration. It is the person who's doing the orchestration without the drama, the orchestration, without the drama. That's operational maturity, right? Third is leadership style and executive presence. Leadership style. If you look, if you just use the word leadership and you put around Google, good luck, like I think you get a billion hits. Raise your hand. It does feel like a lot, right? It feels a bit heavy. No. Okay. Good luck. They wanna know about your curiosity without the ego. Curiosity without the ego. And how did you stay calm? Did you stay calm even when you have incomplete information? Oh, they love that because that's reality, right? Okay. I'm in marketing, but marketing has so many different things. There's brand. There's voice of customer. There's four other divisions. I'm in finance. There's financial controlling, business, controlling, uh, there's three other divisions. Can I work across functions and can I create cohesion early, quickly on the ground? Top derby, right? I'm like, oh, I'm a eight on 10. I'm a great listener, but you ask my team, you're like two on 10. So it matters who you're asking. This is a difficult one. Active listening. And how do you navigate, especially those in bigger roles, right? How do you navigate the nuances of country function, seniority? So they're like, no, but we brought in Hogan and these were the outcomes. They wanna show that, you know, perception of fairness or another time an external assessor is brought in is when they need to stabilize a very dysfunctional environment very quickly. Um, the first one was one of my favorites where she said The most senior candidates prepare for interviews like history tests, but executive hiring is about judgment, not memory. I love that one. Another one was when senior roles are underperforming, companies do not need deeper expertise. They need leadership, altitude, alignment, and risk reduction., Like I'm not scared. I don't know everything, but that's okay. That's okay. And restores confidence. I, I remember one of them said to me, the executive recruiter, he said, I'm looking at this person thinking, how is he gonna, he or she gonna, so the, they know the hiring manager really, really well, right? It helps to work with someone, right? But if you want, and you have enough self-awareness, another one is where do you think you're still interviewing? Like a history, history test. How is that showing up? Which pivot can you frame through adjacency instead of domain? Another one. How will you anchor compensation around mandate and risk instead of history, not what you've earned, but about what is the problem here we're solving here, and where does your executive presence need to shift so we can move from memory? There's an application in there, fill it out. If I don't think it's the right fit, I will see the application. I will tell you I don't think this is the right fit. I don't wanna waste your time. And when we meet, we want, I wanna see where you are today, what are you struggling with? And then I wanna see if I'm the right person to help you.