The Firm
Four to six weeks. Three candidates. Every one we would hire ourselves.
Engaged executive search across EMEA and APAC — three operators per mandate, every one we would back personally.
Confidential · 30 minutes · Partner-led · No obligation
8 in 10
12-MONTH RETENTION RATE
Industry average: 60%
4–6wk
AVERAGE TIME TO PLACEMENT
Industry median: 12–20 weeks
8 in 10
12-MONTH RETENTION RATE
Industry average: 60%
4–6wk
AVERAGE TIME TO PLACEMENT
Industry median: 12–20 weeks
PHILOSOPHY
A structured search creates momentum before the hire starts.
Every leadership vacancy is a decision with compounding consequences. Fill it with speed and you optimise for today; fill it with conviction and you optimise for the next three years. Three principles run through every mandate we accept.
Most searches fail at the brief, not the shortlist. Before we go to market, we agree the real organisational problem the hire needs to unlock - not the job description.
Stakeholder alignment up front means fewer reopens, fewer reset interviews, and a shortlist the committee can actually decide on.
Stakeholder alignment · Role architecture · Success definition
When the buying group agrees what 'good' looks like before candidates appear, every later decision compounds. When it doesn't, every interview re-opens the brief.
We force the difficult conversations early, so the offer conversation later is short, structured, and rarely contested.
Aligned committee · Calibrated signals · Decision-grade scorecard
Cross-border data across Singapore, Amsterdam and Dubai. Proprietary Displacement Index signals. Relationship-gated access to leaders who are not in formal processes.
We approach the right twenty operators, not the available two hundred. The shortlist is a conviction list, not a coverage list.
Mapped market · Passive engagement · Confidential approach
The diagnosis
Most firms accept the brief without validating role definition, stakeholder alignment or decision criteria. The result is a defensible shortlist against the wrong specification.
A senior partner sells the mandate; researchers run it. The person who controls quality is rarely the person you meet.
Contingency and multi-agency overlap create race-to-the-bottom dynamics. Volume wins the week and loses the year.
Once the candidate signs, the relationship closes. Retention becomes the client's problem and never appears in the firm's numbers.
The remedy
Not every mandate is ready for market. Role definition, stakeholder consensus and decision conditions are validated before activation.
A partner works the search personally. One mandate owner, one point of accountability, no handoff.
Machine-assisted long-lists, human-approved. No candidate is contacted without the mandate partner's review.
A 90-day check-in, then retention tracking at six and twelve months. Success is sustained performance, not a signature.
Corridor Architecture
The leadership required to orchestrate AI integration, scale sovereign cloud infrastructure, and execute FinTech transformation is exceptionally rare — globally distributed, highly mobile, and rarely visible in a formal search process. Sercxi operates a strict dual-corridor model across EMEA and APAC, anchored in Amsterdam, Dubai, and Singapore.
We do not limit our searches to where we sit; we use where we sit to see the entire board.
Three corridors, one practice
EMEA
Anchored in Amsterdam
Frankfurt satellite (DACH) · on-request
EU AI Act · DORA · European tech sovereignty
MEA & GCC
Anchored in Dubai
Riyadh satellite (KSA & Vision 2030) · on-request
GCC sovereign capital · DIFC · MEA infrastructure buildout
APAC
Anchored in Singapore
Tokyo satellite (Japan & North Asia) · on-request
MAS FEAT · SIJORI data-centre corridor · cross-border FinTech
One Mandate, One Owner
Every mandate is directly anchored by a resident corridor partner, combining localised market precision with international infrastructure velocity. We operate exclusively under engaged frameworks to guarantee absolute market discretion.
The Process
Three stages. No shortcuts between them. The mandate advances only when the previous stage has produced a written, defensible answer.
We define what this role actually needs to unlock — not the job title, the organisational problem.
Before we go to market, we align on the failure mode this hire is expected to prevent, the sequence of outcomes it must deliver, and the operating conditions it will land in. The mandate is designed around those answers, in that order.
The search is designed around the answer, not the job description.
We identify the three or four signals that will answer our specific context.
Every candidate is then measured against those signals through the IMPACT Assessment. Not a generic scorecard — a diagnostic calibrated to your sector, your stage, and the specific decisions this leader will own in the first twelve months.
Precision beats coverage. Coverage is what a long list is for.
Every introduction is a mandate, not a submission.
We present only the candidates we would hire ourselves. Three operators, each with a written assessment against the calibrated signals, each with the reasoning behind our conviction. The shortlist is the argument.
Conviction, unlike hope, compounds.
We define what this role actually needs to unlock — not the job title, the organisational problem.
Before we go to market, we align on the failure mode this hire is expected to prevent, the sequence of outcomes it must deliver, and the operating conditions it will land in. The mandate is designed around those answers, in that order.
The search is designed around the answer, not the job description.
We identify the three or four signals that will answer our specific context.
Every candidate is then measured against those signals through the IMPACT Assessment. Not a generic scorecard — a diagnostic calibrated to your sector, your stage, and the specific decisions this leader will own in the first twelve months.
Precision beats coverage. Coverage is what a long list is for.
Every introduction is a mandate, not a submission.
We present only the candidates we would hire ourselves. Three operators, each with a written assessment against the calibrated signals, each with the reasoning behind our conviction. The shortlist is the argument.
Conviction, unlike hope, compounds.
The result is conviction — not hope — that this person will deliver.
The Interval
You have seen how a mandate runs. The next step is a partner-led briefing about whether yours is one we should carry.
Secure calendar allocation — active or impending cross-border mandates only.
THE THREE-MARKET CORRIDOR
The arbitrage between governance rigour, execution velocity, and infrastructure capital is where we operate. Three markets, triangulated - because the leaders who navigate all three are the ones worth placing.
Where APAC technical leadership is hired.
MAS-regulated finance, hyperscaler operations, and the regional data centre build pipeline converge here. The leaders who can navigate all three are found in this market first.
Where EU-grade governance leadership is hired.
GDPR fluency, AI Act readiness, and a dense SaaS and FinTech ecosystem make this the governance anchor of the corridor - and a talent market that rewards precision over pedigree.
Where sovereign-backed transformation leadership is hired.
Sovereign capital, accelerated execution timelines, and complex GCC governance structures. The leaders who can hold authority across both regional and global stakeholders are rare, consequential, and not on job boards.
Empirical Evidence
250+
Placements delivered
8 in 10
Twelve-month retention
7%
Counter-offer rate
35 days
Median shortlist
6
Concurrent mandates, maximum
Sercxi figures: rolling 24-month average across engaged mandates in the firm's three corridors. Partner-led since 2000. Industry benchmarks drawn from AESC and Heidrick & Struggles published averages on executive search retention and time-to-placement — category norm on twelve-month retention: ~60% at 18 months; category norm on shortlist window: 12–20 weeks. Methodology notes available on request.
Partner Notes
Gerard Elkhuizen · Partner, Business Technology
Boards don't call us to fill a role. They call us when a technology decision has become a business decision — when the next hire has to shape the transformation, not staff it.
Forty years of shaping, selling and delivering large programmes teaches you what a CV can't show: whether the person in front of you can hold a €100M decision open long enough to make the right call. Whether they can sit with a board that has already committed publicly and tell them the plan needs to change.
What I underwrite, at this stage of a career, is that judgment — the decision behind the résumé, not the résumé itself.
How partner-led interviewing changes the information the board actually receives. Pattern recognition, tactical empathy, and the four questions we never ask directly.
The four-phase Integration Protocol behind our 8-in-10 twelve-month retention record: pre-arrival calibration, landing debriefs, the first two board meetings, and the twelve-month anchor.
We adjudicate both models plainly — where each one works, where each one fails, and why Sercxi will not run a contingency search. A one-page reference for boards weighing the decision.
The seven diagnostic questions, the psychological and technical signals we test for, and the scenarios that separate a rehearsed answer from a load-bearing one — all live on the Methodology page.
The Boundary
We do not.
Six concurrent mandates · Partner-led only · By arrangement
A 30-minute conversation with the founder. Confidential, partner-led, for active or planned executive mandates.
Secure calendar allocation — active or impending cross-border mandates only.
Confidential · 30 minutes · Partner-led