Methodology · Candidate Assessment
What a candidate tells an associate is not what a candidate tells a principal.
A wrong hire at director-and-above does not fail on capability. It fails on judgment the associate never heard — and by the time the board notices, the twelve-month window to correct it has closed.
In the larger firms, the partner sells the mandate and an associate conducts the research, the outreach, and the first several interviews. The economics of that model require it. The candidate learns to expect it and calibrates accordingly. What the associate hears is polished, competency-framed, and — in the sense that matters most to a board — not load-bearing.
We run interviews ourselves. Every one of them. Not because it is romantic. Because the information that determines whether a hire holds at twelve months surfaces in a different register — and only in front of an operator who has been in the same room, on the other side of the table, for a quarter of a century.
What Changes at the Principal Level
Three inputs the associate model cannot reproduce.
01
Pattern Recognition
Partner-led since 2000. What a first-time associate treats as anecdote, the principal recognises as pattern. Recurring failure modes across corridors, sponsor archetypes, and stage transitions are read at speed — not researched from scratch.
02
Tactical Empathy
The interview is not a competency inventory. It is a structured conversation designed to lower defensiveness far enough that the candidate stops rehearsing and starts describing. What the candidate is actually optimising for surfaces here, not on the résumé.
03
Leverage Discovery
Every senior candidate has three motivators, and the stated one is rarely the binding one. Forensic assessment isolates counter-offer exposure, second-order allegiances, and the specific conditions under which the executive will privately consider walking away.
Competency Interview vs. Forensic Assessment
The question asked. The question actually being answered.
Same candidate. Same afternoon. Different interviewer. Different information.
| What most firms ask | What we listen for |
|---|---|
| "Tell me about a time you led a transformation." | Whose air cover carried it — and what happened when that sponsor left the room? |
| "What are your greatest strengths?" | Which of those strengths has cost you a job, and did you learn from it or repeat it? |
| "Why are you exploring this opportunity?" | What has to remain true at your current firm for you to decline this one in six weeks? |
| "Walk me through your P&L / technical scope." | Which numbers were yours to move, which were inherited, and which were built by the team you replaced? |
| "How do you handle conflict with peers?" | Name the peer you could not carry with you. What did that cost the mandate — and what would you do differently? |
| "Where do you see yourself in five years?" | What would have to be true about this role for you to still be in it in twenty-four months? |
Asked
"Tell me about a time you led a transformation."
Heard
Whose air cover carried it — and what happened when that sponsor left the room?
Asked
"What are your greatest strengths?"
Heard
Which of those strengths has cost you a job, and did you learn from it or repeat it?
Asked
"Why are you exploring this opportunity?"
Heard
What has to remain true at your current firm for you to decline this one in six weeks?
Asked
"Walk me through your P&L / technical scope."
Heard
Which numbers were yours to move, which were inherited, and which were built by the team you replaced?
Asked
"How do you handle conflict with peers?"
Heard
Name the peer you could not carry with you. What did that cost the mandate — and what would you do differently?
Asked
"Where do you see yourself in five years?"
Heard
What would have to be true about this role for you to still be in it in twenty-four months?
The Four Questions We Never Ask Directly
Direct questions produce rehearsed answers. The four inputs that determine whether a mandate will hold at twelve months are surfaced obliquely, across the arc of a two-hour conversation, and cross-checked against reference data before they are trusted.
- Motive. The stated reason for exploring the move is almost never the binding reason. We isolate the second, and where possible the third.
- Risk tolerance. How the candidate has behaved under the last two genuine downside events — not how they describe their leadership style.
- Counter-offer exposure. The precise conditions under which the current employer can retain them, and whether those conditions are already in motion.
- Second-order allegiances. The mentor, spouse, ex-boss, or board member whose view the candidate will privately weight above ours during a difficult first ninety days.
Our 7% counter-offer defection rate is a downstream consequence of this posture, not its purpose. We do not run diagnostics to reduce a metric. We run them because the alternative is placing an executive whose second-order allegiance quietly outranks the mandate.
A note on scale
This posture does not scale. It is why the firm carries six active mandates at a time, not sixty. The trade is deliberate: fewer mandates, deeper assessment, retention that outperforms the industry aggregate by roughly a third. If a mandate needs to be run by an associate, we are the wrong firm.
If a specific mandate is in view, initiate a confidential briefing. The first thirty minutes are with the principal who will run the interviews. There is no associate layer to route through.