How to Choose an Executive Search Firm: Eight Questions for Boards
Most boards choose a search firm on brand and chemistry. Eight questions, asked identically of every firm, predict the outcome far better than either.
How do you choose an executive search firm?
Ask every firm the same eight questions, in writing, before you sign: who personally runs the search, which companies are off-limits, the completion rate, twelve-month retention, the offer-to-joining ratio, how the shortlist is assessed, what the guarantee actually covers, and how candidate data is handled. Score the answers side by side. Brand and chemistry predict very little.
What follows is the version with the answers attached, because a list of questions is only useful if you know what a good response sounds like and what an evasive one sounds like.
Do you actually need a retained search firm?
Five conditions justify one: the credible candidates are not looking; the search must stay confidential; the skill set is genuinely rare; the role is the first of its kind in your organisation; or the last person in the seat failed and you cannot afford a repeat. If none applies, your internal talent team or a contingency agency is the honest answer, and a good firm will tell you so. We set out the full test in retained vs contingency search.
It is worth knowing the market you are buying into. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 920 announced chief executive exits in the first half of 2026, 26 per cent below the same period in 2025, with 181 of those at public companies (Challenger, Gray & Christmas, July 2026). Boards are holding on to incumbents. Fewer, more consequential mandates means firm selection matters more, not less.
How should you define the mandate before choosing a firm?
Before any pitch, write down three to five outcomes this person owns in their first twelve months, specific enough that two directors reading them independently would agree on what success looks like. Then fix the constraints: level, compensation band, location, confidentiality, and the single named person who decides.
Firms that receive a vague brief produce a vague slate, then get blamed for it. Most searches that fail were mis-scoped in week one, not mis-executed in week ten.
What are the eight questions to ask an executive search firm?
1. Who personally runs this search, and how many other mandates are they carrying?
Good answer: a named individual, a number of concurrent mandates, weekly hours committed, and an offer to write all three into the engagement letter. Evasive answer: "you'll have the full resources of the firm behind you". That sentence means an associate.
2. Which companies are you contractually barred from approaching for this mandate?
Every retained firm agrees not to recruit from its own clients, conventionally for one to two years after an assignment closes. In a narrow Indian market, three blocked employers can remove a third of your shortlist before the first call. This is also where boutique and large firms diverge most sharply. Good answer: a written list. Evasive answer: an explanation of why the question is complicated.
3. What is your completion rate over the last twenty-four months?
Mandates started against mandates placed. Ask how they define a completion, because "we placed the role" and "the client eventually hired someone" are different claims. Ignore the industry-wide figures circulating on this; we could not trace them to any independent study. Only firm-specific numbers mean anything.
4. What proportion of your placements are still in seat at twelve and twenty-four months?
This is the only question that measures whether the firm was right, rather than fast. For context, McKinsey found that two years after executive transitions27 to 46 per cent are regarded as failures or disappointments, a range drawn from studies by the Institute of Executive Development and Alexcel in 2013 and the Corporate Executive Board in 2012 (McKinsey & Company, 2018). A firm that has never measured its own retention has not been asked this before.
5. What is your offer-to-joining ratio?
The India-specific question, and the one most boards never ask. With ninety-day notice periods, a full quarter separates an accepted offer from a person at a desk, and that quarter is when counter-offers land. Ask for the number, how they define "joined", and what they do in weeks four through twelve to protect the acceptance.
6. How will you assess candidates against our brief?
You are looking for a method, not a temperament. Ask what the written assessment looks like, whether it maps to the outcomes you defined, who conducts the first interview, and how references are taken, on-list references tell you little, so ask how they get to off-list ones. Then ask what due diligence on the individual sits behind the recommendation.
7. What exactly does the guarantee cover, and what voids it?
Ninety days is the common Indian standard, sometimes 180 at CXO level. The length is the least important part. Establish the remedy, free replacement, fee credit or cash refund, what voids it, such as a role change, restructuring or redundancy within the period, and whether it survives a change of control at your end.
8. How will you handle candidate data under the DPDP Act?
A search generates a file on every senior person in your sector, most of whom never applied for anything. Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, someone is the data fiduciary and someone is the processor. Ask which the firm considers itself, what notice and consent candidates receive, how long records are retained, and what happens to the market map when the mandate closes. Almost no board asks this. It will not stay that way.
What standards can you check independently?
The Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants, the international industry body, publishes a Client Bill of Rights that is useful whether or not the firm you are considering is a member. It sets out nine commitments, including that a firm will not take an assignment it is unqualified for, that terms be in writing covering scope, timing, fees, guarantees, off-limits and data management, and that the firm's responsibility does not end when the candidate accepts.
Read it before your pitch meetings and use it as a checklist. Any firm should be able to meet those commitments in writing, and membership of the association is one verifiable signal that a firm has committed to them. Athena has been a member firm of the Association of Executive Search Consultants for more than eight years, which makes those standards the floor we work to rather than an aspiration. Ask any firm you are considering to show you the same.
What are the red flags that should end the conversation?
- CVs within forty-eight hours of the brief. Nobody mapped a market in two days; you are being shown a database.
- A pitch that never challenges your brief, your compensation band or your timeline.
- Leading with price, or discounting before scope is agreed.
- The size of the database offered as evidence of capability.
- An engagement that visibly ends on the start date, with no integration or check-in commitment.
How should you run the bake-off?
Shortlist three firms, no more. Give each the identical written brief, the same panel and the same eight questions, in the same order. Score each answer one to five on a single page and total it. The exercise takes an afternoon and it removes the two variables that most often decide these appointments by accident: who presented most confidently, and who someone on the board already knew.
Then ask each firm for two completed mandates at the same seniority, in the same market, within the last twenty-four months, and speak to those clients directly. Completed work at your level is the only credential that survives contact with a difficult search.
What does the search firm need from you?
The obligations run both ways, and the clients who get the best outcomes accept four of them: one named decision-maker, alignment across the committee before the search launches rather than at shortlist stage, feedback on every candidate within forty-eight hours, and interview slots held in advance. A search stalls on client latency far more often than on candidate supply. That is the working arrangement we ask for at kickoff, in writing, alongside our own commitments.
Related reading
- Boutique vs large executive search firm: what actually differs, partner attention, off-limits exposure and research depth, with the numbers.
- Retained vs contingency search: when each one is right, choose the model before you choose the firm.
- Executive search fees in India: what a CXO search costs in 2026, fee bands, milestone billing, GST, TDS and a worked invoice.
- India market entry: who to hire first, and when, scoping the first leadership hire before you appoint a search partner.