How Australian boards choose an executive search partner: a chair’s guide

The right executive search partner shapes your organisation’s next decade, yet most boards hire one only every few years. Therefore, we created a practical guide for boards to evaluate expertise, process and sector depth before you commit to a partner. We also created a complete information pack for Chairs and Boards to set your new executive up for success. Contact our Managing Director directly to gain access to our full guide.

Getting the search right

Appointing a CEO is one of the most consequential decisions a board will ever make. The evidence of how much rides on it is everywhere: strategies that stall for eighteen months, senior leaders who follow an exiting chief executive out the door, stakeholder relationships that take years to rebuild.

Yet, there is a step before all of that. And it is the one most boards take least seriously: choosing the firm that will run the search.

Most Australian boards engage an executive search partner once every three to five years. Some do it once in a director’s entire tenure. It is a high-stakes decision made with very little practice, usually under time pressure, and often on the strength of a recommendation from someone whose circumstances were nothing like yours.

This article shows Chairs and directors how to evaluate executive search partners with the same rigour that their partner will bring to selecting a chief executive.

A decision boards make badly, through no fault of their own

The problem is structural. Between searches, nobody on your board is shopping for executive search firms Australia-wide, comparing processes or benchmarking engagement terms. The expertise you need exists only at the moment you need it, and by then the vacancy clock is already running.

So boards default to shortcuts. You engage the firm the Chair used at a previous organisation. You take the recommendation of a trusted adviser. You choose the name you have heard most often.

None of these is irrational. All of them import someone else’s answer to what should be your board’s own question: which firm has the sector knowledge, the process discipline and the candidate access to find the leader this organisation needs next, not the leader a different organisation needed five years ago.

And the choice is genuinely hard to make well. Australia has no shortage of executive search firms, and no shortage of C-suite recruitment consultants who will happily quote on the same assignment. The shortage is of boards who know how to tell the difference, because the difference is real.

Start with the appointment, not the firm

Before you evaluate firms, be clear about what you are actually hiring them to do. A board that has not settled its own thinking will judge search partners on polish rather than substance.

Here are three questions to settle first:

1. What is the appointment for? Are you hiring a leader to steady a well-run organisation, or to lead significant change? A steward and a transformer look nothing alike, and different firms are stronger at finding each.
2. What does success look like in three years? If the board cannot describe the outcomes the new executive will be accountable for, no search firm, however good, can find the person to deliver them.
3. What constraints are non-negotiable? Sector experience, stakeholder standing, funding relationships, values alignment, location. Decide which are genuinely fixed and which are preferences, because over-constrained briefs are the most common cause of thin shortlists.

A capable firm will push you on all three before quoting a fee. An incapable one will simply ask for the position description.

Sector depth is the first test

Executive search is not a generic trade. The market for a hospital chief executive has almost no overlap with the market for a listed-company CFO, and neither resembles a university vice-chancellor search. Generic processes produce generic shortlists, and generic shortlists in health, life sciences, not-for-profit, associations, and higher education sectors are where good appointments go to die.

Probe what sector depth actually means. Ask the blunt question: 

“Of the CEO and C-suite appointments your firm has completed in our sector in the past two years, how many appointees are still in place?” 

A firm with genuine sector depth will answer without hesitation. A firm that has to think about it has just told you something important.

Interrogate the executive search process

Most firms describe their process as rigorous. Rigour shows up in specifics, so ask for them. A disciplined executive search process has recognisable stages, and you should expect to hear all of them described in detail. At Brooker Consulting, we tailor our approach to each search. But generally speaking, we go through the following stages:

1. Client understanding. Immersion in your organisation’s values, culture, environment, and strategic goals to identify leadership profiles that drive advancement and resonate with your ethos.

2. Search campaign. An orchestrated effort combining extensive market insights with local and international candidate identification, building an attractive narrative to engage select talent.

3. Shortlist presented. Delivery of a shortlist of outstanding candidates who bring a blend of experience, skill, and innovative thinking, each validated against your unique challenges and opportunities.

4. Client interviews. Facilitated discussions providing a critical touchpoint for assessing candidate fit and evaluating potential to fulfil your leadership vision.

5. Verification and offers. Multidimensional evaluations incorporating rubrics and in-depth reference checks to provide a complete picture of capabilities and leadership style.

6. Appointment, onboarding, and integration. Continued support through the offer and beyond to ensure a smooth transition, setting the stage for sustained organisational impact.

Ask what happens after the shortlist

The moment most search firms quietly exit is the moment most appointments are actually won or lost. The shortlist is not the finish line; it is the start of the most fragile phase of the process.

When you evaluate firms, give as much attention to the end of their process as the beginning:

• How do they support the board through final interviews, negotiation and offer, so a preferred candidate is not lost to a clumsy close?
• What role do they play in onboarding and integration after the appointment is announced? The first hundred days decide most executive tenures, and boards that treat day one as the end of the search are leaving the outcome to chance.
• Do they stand behind appointments, and how? A firm that guarantees its work is a firm with skin in the game.

The firms that treat appointment, onboarding and integration as part of the search, rather than an optional extra after it, are the ones worth shortlisting.

Meet the people who will actually run your search

The team that pitches you is not always the team that runs your search. This is one of the oldest frustrations in the industry, and it is entirely avoidable.

Ask directly: “Who will lead this engagement, who else will work on it, and what is their experience with appointments like ours?” 

Insist that the lead consultant is in the room when candidates are assessed. The judgment that shapes your shortlist should belong to the person whose judgment you evaluated, not to a junior team you never met.

Ten questions to ask before you appoint an executive search partner

Take these into your meeting with any prospective firm, and listen for answers with substance rather than reassurance:

1. Tell us about three appointments you have completed in our sector in the past two years. Where are those leaders now?
2. What do you see as the hardest part of a search like ours, and how will you manage it?
3. Who, by name, will run our search, and what is their experience?
4. Walk us through your process, week by week. What will we receive at each stage?
5. How do you reach leaders who are not actively looking for a role?
6. What assessments and verifications sit behind your interviews?
7. How do you handle internal candidates fairly and respectfully?
8. What happens if the shortlist disappoints us?
9. What do you do after the appointment to support integration and success?
10. What would make you decline this engagement?

The last question is the most revealing of all. A firm with genuine expertise knows which assignments it should not take, and will say so. At Brooker Consulting, we share our answers to all these questions in our search proposal. 

Three red flags

1. Speed without substance. A firm that promises a shortlist in two weeks is not doing a search; it is searching a database. The best candidates in your sector will need to be found, approached and persuaded, and that takes time.
2. No questions about your board. A firm that does not ask how your board operates, how decisions really get made and where the last appointment went wrong is not equipped to find a leader who will thrive under your governance.
3. Fee first, brief later. Cost matters, but a firm that moves to commercial terms before understanding the appointment is telling you where its priorities sit. Compare value across the full engagement: process, assessment, aftercare and guarantee, not headline fee alone.
   

In short

Choosing an executive search partner well is not complicated, but it is deliberate. Settle your own thinking first. Test sector depth with evidence, not assertions. Interrogate the process end to end, especially what happens after the shortlist. Meet the people who will actually run the engagement. And ask the questions that separate firms that place executives from partners who build leadership.

Boards that do this rarely need to repeat the exercise soon. 

Your next step

If your board is reviewing its search arrangements, or a CEO or C-suite vacancy is closer than it once seemed, talk to Brooker Consulting before the clock starts. 

With more than 400 CEO appointments and 70 board placements across associations & advocacy, not-for-profit, life sciences & biotech, health, and higher education sectors over 27 years, we know the questions your board should be asking, because we have answered all of them.

Book a confidential conversation with Rebecca Perrone, Managing Director, to discuss your next appointment.

Brooker Consulting works with Boards on CEO appointments, including interim and interim-to-permanent transitions.

If this piece was useful, I would welcome a conversation.

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Previous news articles:

• A board can meet all governance standards but still be ineffective
• Most Boards can name a successor. Far fewer have tested one.
• How Australian boards choose an executive search partner: a chair’s guide
• An interim appointment is not a pause button
• Why benchmarking seldom determines the figure a Board settles upon