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Agency spend and dependency
Where you pay for value and where you pay for convenience, and which parts of your senior hiring you could own.
Executive Hiring Advisory
Start with an Executive Hiring Process Audit: a fixed-fee diagnostic of how you hire at Director level and above, what your agency spend is actually buying, and what you could own instead. Independent advice from the search insider who is free to tell you not to use search.
Where Most Clients Start
A senior hire through an agency typically costs 25-35% of first-year salary, and most organisations can't say which part of that buys real value and which buys convenience. The audit answers that question with a defined scope and a fixed fee.
Scope an Audit →What I Look At
Where you pay for value and where you pay for convenience, and which parts of your senior hiring you could own.
From brief to offer: where strong candidates drop out, where decisions go wrong, and what candidates experience along the way.
Whether your success profiles, interviews and debriefs actually separate good from exceptional, and whether your hiring committee agrees on what it is looking for.
Whether a senior departure tomorrow would become a crisis hire, and what it would take to see the next vacancy coming.
Many audits lead naturally into building the function or ongoing advisory. Some don't, and that's fine: you leave with a roadmap you can run yourselves.
Strategic Talent Advisory
Most organisations can't hire the right leaders effectively, and it's rarely down to one cause. Sometimes it's agency dependency: a 25-35% fee on every appointment and a process you don't control. Sometimes it's no succession plan, so every departure becomes a crisis hire. Sometimes it's a leadership team that got you to your last funding round but isn't the team for your next one. All of it comes back to the same gap: no internal capability to identify, assess and attract senior leaders on your own terms.
Start the Conversation →Three Ways to Engage
The fixed-fee diagnostic described at the top of this page: a written report, a clear business case and a prioritised roadmap, presented to your leadership team. Typically four to six weeks.
Where most clients start · Defined scope · Fixed feeFor businesses building leadership hiring at VP, C-suite and Board level. I design the operating model, build the search process, interview frameworks and executive assessment approach and coach your recruiters to run business-critical, confidential senior searches with genuine rigour.
Project-based · Defined outcomesA retained arrangement. A trusted advisor on your senior hiring approach, executive succession planning and leadership team fit as you scale through funding rounds, including direct advisory to founders on their own leadership teams. I keep you sharp on market and talent intelligence across the markets you operate in, advise at both Management and Supervisory Board level on senior governance decisions and guide you on where agencies genuinely add value.
Retained · Flexible scopeThe Compounding Case for Internal Capability
A business making 8-10 senior hires per year at €180k+ is spending €400-500k annually on agency fees. Building internal capability systematically reduces that cost, and the saving compounds every year.
Diversity & Inclusion
Diversity is not a bolt-on. It is built into how I approach every search, from how briefs are written and where candidates are sourced, to how success profiles are defined and interviews structured. 56% of executive hires made at Zalando were diverse, with a deliberate focus on building leadership teams that reflect the breadth of the businesses they serve.
Building internal capability is also an opportunity to hardwire inclusive practice into your process from the ground up, not retrofit it later.
"Through my work with Kate I was able to bring an experienced senior hire into our team. She has deep expertise in salary negotiation, employee motivation and conducting conversations with potential hires."
A 30-minute call about your senior hiring, and whether an audit or ongoing advisory is the right place to start.
All enquiries treated in confidence · Typical response within 24 hours · Connect on LinkedIn