It’s the step most organisations skip, but it could protect you from a costly hiring mistake.
It started on a Thursday. A board director from an organisation I’d never worked with sent through a request for a proposal to recruit their incoming CEO. We turned it around within the week and then heard nothing.
Then, on a Saturday night two weeks after the initial request, another notification came through.
It contained nine questions. Detailed, specific and unmistakably deliberate.
My first reaction, if I’m honest, was somewhere between surprise and indignation. I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I have a track record. I haven’t written an essay since university. And I don’t do Saturday night homework.
But I slept on it. And by Sunday morning, I was excited. Those nine questions were the most rigorous vetting process any organisation has ever put us through. And they were completely right to do it.
These weren’t the standard questions – tell us about your process, how many candidates will you present, what are your fees. These were specific, probing and difficult to answer without real experience to draw on.
When stakes are high, recruitment mistakes can be costly
I’ve been recruiting for 25 years and I’ve never been asked to do anything like this. But it happened again later in the same week from another organisation.
Twice in a week is not a coincidence. It’s clearly a reflection of the challenges purpose-led organisations face in the current market.
Organisations are operating in an increasingly anxious environment – reform pressures, workforce shortages and the weight of getting a senior appointment wrong have raised the stakes. The idea of selecting a recruitment partner purely on how polished their proposal document looks is no longer enough.
Many organisations have learned this lesson the hard way – they may have experienced recruiters who oversold their capabilities, presented volume over quality or disappeared once the placement fee was banked. They’ve learned the glossy proposal document and the delivered outcome are not always the same thing.
I believe AI also plays a role in this. The questions had a precision and a comprehensiveness to them that suggested someone had used a tool like Copilot to help generate a set of rigorous assessment questions. It’s an interesting example of technology being used – not to replace human judgement, but to sharpen the questions that test it.
Ask the questions that matter
If you’re about to engage an executive recruitment partner – and particularly if you’re doing so in a sector as complex and interconnected as care, here are some questions worth putting on your list.
- Tell us about a placement that didn’t work out, and what you did.
Nobody is successful 100% of the time. What matters is whether they can own it, explain what they learned and whether their process changed as a result. - How do you approach the job brief, and who do you involve?
A brief taken from one person in one conversation is very different to a brief that draws in multiple perspectives from across the organisation. It’s also often the difference between a shortlist that lands and one that misses. - What would you do if your initial shortlist didn’t meet our expectations?
Listen for whether they talk about process – how they’d debrief, what they’d ask, how quickly they’d regroup – or whether they default to blaming the market. - What is your off-limits policy and how do you handle it when a candidate you’ve placed approaches you about a role?
In a small sector, this question matters. The answer will tell you a great deal about how a firm manages trust, conflict and long-term relationships.
Look at where they push back
There were moments completing the questionnaire where I felt energised – and moments where I pushed back.
One question asked us to provide a remuneration benchmarking report for the CEO role as part of the proposal submission. As that is commercial-in-confidence information, we’re not prepared to provide it for free as part of a competitive tender.
Pushing back is not necessarily a red flag. Part of the role of a recruiter is to challenge organisations and not just tell them what they want to hear. If a recruiter can’t push back in a proposal process, they’re unlikely to push back when it counts – the job brief, the shortlist presentation or the offer negotiation.
The reality about proposals
A beautifully produced proposal document is primarily evidence that someone is good at producing beautiful proposal documents. It tells you relatively little about whether they can find your next CEO.
Font choices and infographics won’t tell you about a recruiter’s candidate pipeline, sector networks and the ability to read a room in a job brief. It won’t let you know if they have the judgement to know when to push back on a brief that isn’t going to serve the organisation.
Selecting a recruitment partner is, in itself, a hiring decision. And like any hiring decision, it deserves more rigour than most organisations give it.
So, if you’re in the process of selecting a recruitment partner right now, ask the hard questions. Push for real examples. And pay close attention to the moments where they push back.
At P.J. Recruitment & Executive Search, we welcome the hard questions – because with 40 years recruitment experience within our team, we have the answers. If you’re about to make a senior appointment and want a recruitment partner who can demonstrate their expertise rather than just display it, we’d love to talk.