WHEN THE CALLS STOP · HEADHUNTERS INTERNATIONAL

Why Have Headhunters Stopped Calling Since You Left Your Last Role?

Search researchers find candidates by current title at a named list of target companies, so an executive who leaves a role, steps off a board or moves outside the target list drops out of the search, whatever their ability. Consultants are also paid to find people who are hard to move, and someone who is available is easy to find, which makes them less likely to be headhunted. Waiting for the phone means waiting on a channel built to find someone else. The answer is to reach the person who owns the problem before a search is commissioned, using the events that start one. Mark Ross spent thirty years on the inside of that channel, and Headhunters International now works for the executive, paid by the executive alone.

For fifteen years the calls came without you asking. Two or three a month, usually on a Tuesday afternoon, a consultant with a confidential brief and a polite question about whether you might be open to a conversation. You turned most of them down. Some you took to lunch out of courtesy. Then you left the role, or the business was sold, or you stepped off a board at fifty-five, and the calls stopped. Within a quarter the phone had gone from busy to silent, though nothing about your ability had changed in those three months.

It is easy to read that silence as a judgement. Executives in this position start to wonder whether their age has caught up with them, or whether they were only ever called because of the company name on the card. The explanation is more mechanical than any of those, and once you see how the work is organised, you can plan a search that does not depend on the phone.

Email Mark Ross How search finds people

The stakes: what waiting costs

An illustrative operations director with a total package of £168,000, who left her role when the business was sold. She had been approached by search firms regularly for a decade and assumed the calls would resume once people knew she was free. The person and every figure are fictional.

Illustrative figures	£
Previous total package	168,000
Package per month	14,000
Months spent waiting for search firms to call	7
Package forgone over those seven months	(98,000)
Months spent on a direct search afterwards, before accepting a role	4
Package forgone over those four months	(56,000)
Cost of the eleven months out of work	(154,000)

The waiting months produced two calls, both for roles a level below the one she had left. Her direct search that followed reached the role she took, at a business with a new owner, through a letter to its chair.

How a search finds people

When a client commissions a senior search, the first piece of work is a target list: the companies where someone doing this job well is likely to be sitting now. A researcher then works through that list, title by title, building a longlist of names. The source material is current: who holds the role today, and at which named business.

Several things follow from that method, and none of them is about you.

Current title drives the search. A researcher looks for the operations director at a named company. If you are no longer the operations director anywhere, your name does not come up.
The target list decides who is visible. If your former employer is not on it, because it has been sold, merged or was never in the client's frame, you are outside the search before it starts.
Databases are filtered by current employer. Most research tools sort people by where they work now. An executive between roles, or listed under an advisory practice of their own, falls through those filters.
Hard to move is what clients pay for. A consultant earns the fee by finding someone who is doing the job well somewhere else and persuading them to talk. A candidate who is available can be found by the client without help, so the search firm has less reason to put them forward.
Board roles follow the same logic. Stepping off a board removes a current title that researchers searched on, and non-executive searches often start from the boards of comparable businesses.

None of this is a grievance. Mark Ross ran searches built this way for three decades, and they work well for the clients who pay for them. The point is narrower: the channel that used to bring you calls was designed to find people in post, and you have left the population it searches.

Who has told you the calls will come back, and what do they gain from it?

Most executives hear reassurance in the first months. It tends to come from people whose own position shapes it.

The search consultant you knew well

will usually say to keep in touch and that something will come up. He means it, and he is also paid by his clients to find the strongest people in post, and the brief he is working on this month probably asks for exactly that.

Former colleagues

say the market is slow and that someone of your calibre will be fine. They are kind, and they have seen you succeed. Most of them are still in post, still receiving calls, and may not see how much the channel depended on the title.

Online job platforms and reverse recruiting services

can send applications at volume on your behalf. At senior level that is the slowest channel available, because it starts after the advert, and by the time a senior role is advertised the decision has usually started.

None of them is acting in bad faith. Each is answering from inside a system that pays for something other than your next role.

What to do instead of waiting

Senior vacancies do not start with a search. They start with a private event: a deal completes, a founder decides to step back, an investor loses patience with a plan, a succession falls due. For a few weeks or months after that event, the chair or chief executive knows there is a problem and has not yet decided how to fill it. That is the window in which a direct approach is welcome rather than intrusive.

Watch for trigger events. A change of owner, a new chief executive, a fundraise, an acquisition. Each one creates problems someone at board level now owns.
Write to the person who owns the problem. A printed letter to the most senior person, with a short LinkedIn note to a second contact. A letter to a named chair is read in a way an application is not.
Arrive with the case made. The Career Memorandum, an executive CV and a one-page biography, each written so the reader can see the problem you solve in their terms.
Use your network for introductions, with a precise request. In Mark Granovetter's study of professional and managerial workers, published in 1974, 56 per cent found their role through personal contacts. Introductions work best when you can say which company, which person and why now.
Settle the account of the exit. One or two factual sentences, so that a chair who asks why you left hears a calm answer and moves on.

Two returns to the market, illustrated

These examples were written for this page to show the kind of finding the work produces. They are not records of real clients. Headhunters International never publishes client names or details.

Chief executive, specialist engineering, after a sale

Starting point. Eight years leading a business that was sold to a trade buyer, with an earn-out completed. Before the sale he took two or three search calls a month. Six months after it he had taken one.

What the work found. Every search he would once have been called for started from a target list of peer businesses, and his name no longer sat at any of them. His strongest asset, the sale process he had led, appeared on his CV as a single line.

What changed. The sale and the preparation for it were rebuilt as the lead achievement, with the growth that preceded them. A target list went to private equity owned businesses two to three years from an exit, with letters to the chair at each.

Outcome. Approaches went to twelve businesses. Two chairs asked to meet, and one discussion turned into a chief executive appointment ahead of a planned sale.

Non-executive director, financial services, after stepping off a board

Starting point. Two non-executive roles ended within a year, one on a sale and one at the end of a term. She was fifty-seven and assumed the market had decided she was too old.

What the work found. Nominations committees and the consultants advising them searched from the boards of comparable firms. With neither seat current, she had dropped off their lists. Her audit committee record, which was the scarce part, sat in a paragraph near the end of her biography.

What changed. The biography led with the audit chair experience and the two regulatory reviews she had steered. Letters went to chairs of firms with a new owner or a regulatory remediation programme under way.

Outcome. Four replies in the first ten weeks, and one invitation to meet a nominations committee chair before any role was advertised.

How the work runs

Every engagement goes through four stages before anyone outside is approached. Most of the value sits in the first two.

Value. Your achievements, excavated and quantified with a base, a period and a source, until the record stands without the title that used to carry it.
Direction. A five-year position and the level you are aiming at, settled before the first conversation.
Criteria. A scoring framework built from your own priorities, so every option is measured the same way.
Positioning. The Career Memorandum, an executive CV and a one-page biography, written for the people you will approach.

The Foundation Programme covers those four stages. When the documents are ready, The Private Office can take the search to market through Reverse Headhunting: a target list of companies with something changing right now, and direct approaches to the person who owns the problem, before a search firm has been asked to find anyone.

Who does the work

Mark Ross Roberts, founder of Headhunters International, does the work himself. He has spent thirty years in senior executive search, putting together shortlists and writing the candidate reports a board reads, and in M&A, where he sees the change of owner or strategy months before a role appears. His qualifications include the FMVA and CBCA from the Corporate Finance Institute and Wharton Executive Education programmes in executive presence and in neuroscience in leadership, and he is the author of four books including STAR Success.

How to start

Email Mark Ross at ross@headhunters-international.com with a line on the role you left and when the calls stopped. He replies himself, and the first conversation establishes which stage the work starts at and what it would cost. Nothing is payable until you decide to go ahead.

Email Mark Ross

Questions executives ask when the calls stop

Why don't recruiters contact me anymore?

Search researchers build longlists from current titles at a named list of target companies. Once you are out of role, or your employer is no longer on the lists being used, your name stops coming up. That says very little about your ability.

Do headhunters avoid candidates who are out of work?

They are paid to find people the client could not find alone, usually people doing the job well somewhere else. Someone who is available is easier to find, so a search firm has less reason to put them forward. Some will still present an available candidate when the fit is strong.

Is age the reason headhunters have stopped calling?

Executives in their fifties often assume so. Usually the timing points to something more mechanical, such as the end of a board term or the sale of the business, which takes them out of the population researchers search.

Should I contact search firms myself?

It does little harm, and a consultant who knows you may keep you in mind. Do not make it your main channel. A search firm works on the briefs it already holds, and those started after the decision to hire had begun.

How do executives find roles without a headhunter?

By reaching the person who owns the problem before a search is commissioned, using events such as a new owner, a new chief executive, a fundraise or an acquisition. In Granovetter's study, 56 per cent of professional and managerial workers found their role through personal contacts.

How long should I wait for search firms to call before changing approach?

There is no reliable figure, and no adviser can promise when a call will come. If a quarter has passed with little or nothing, the channel has probably stopped seeing you, and waiting longer adds months without adding information.

Sources: Granovetter, M., Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers, Harvard University Press, 1974.

Related guides from Headhunters International

Reverse Headhunting and The Private Office: approaches to the person who owns the problem, before a role is advertised.
Reverse recruiting: why paying someone to apply at volume stalls at director level.
Executive redundancy: the first ninety days: what to do, and what to leave alone, after the exit.

One email, principal to principal

Write to Mark Ross at ross@headhunters-international.com. He replies himself.