CONFIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE SEARCH · HEADHUNTERS INTERNATIONAL
How Do You Look for a New Senior Role While Employed, Without Anyone Finding Out?
A senior job search usually leaks through the channels executives use to start one, such as a CV sent to a search firm or a profile edited late on a Sunday night. Nobody in those channels is paid to protect you, and the people who might hear are a small group who sit on each other's boards. A confidential search works when nothing is made public, the documents are finished before anyone outside is contacted, and approaches go by letter to one named person at a time, in an order you have agreed. Mark Ross spent thirty years running searches for employers, and Headhunters International now runs them for the executive, paid by the executive alone.
The job you accepted has changed under you. Perhaps the business was sold in the spring and the new owner has its own operating partner in your office two days a week. Or a new chief executive arrived with a plan you do not believe in, and you are the one presenting it to the team. You still do the work well, and you are still in the Monday meeting, but you know you will not be there in two years. Nobody at work can be told, and you are not sure who outside it to trust, because the fear executives describe most often is telling one recruiter and hearing it back from across the sector within a week.
That fear is reasonable. Senior markets are small, the same chairs and investors turn up in deal after deal, and information about who might move has a value to people whose business is moving people. Staying put and saying nothing feels safe. It also means another year in a role you have outgrown, and the cost of that rarely shows up until you add it up.
The stakes: what another year costs
An illustrative divisional managing director with a total package of £210,000, whose business was bought by a trade rival. She decided against looking because she feared it would get back to the new owner. The person and every figure are fictional.
| Illustrative figures | £ |
|---|---|
| Current total package | 210,000 |
| Package at the level she was ready for: group role, larger business | 250,000 |
| Difference, per year | 40,000 |
| Years she stayed before moving | 2 |
| Difference over those two years | (80,000) |
| Bonus forgone when the new owner reset targets in year two (20% of £210,000) | (42,000) |
| Pension contributions forgone on the difference at 8% | (6,400) |
| Cost of staying, over two years | (128,400) |
The table leaves out what happened to the role itself. In year two the new owner merged her division with another, and the role she had outgrown became a role she was competing for. She was then looking under pressure, from a weaker position, which was the situation she had stayed silent to avoid.
Why confidentiality breaks
Most leaks come from people who do not think of what they are doing as a leak. Each one follows from how the senior market is organised.
A search firm is paid by its client employers. When you send it your CV, you become part of its database and, potentially, of any search it runs. A consultant who thinks you suit a brief may present you to a client, sometimes with your agreement given loosely on the phone, sometimes to a client who knows your chair. The consultant is doing the job his clients pay him for, and the terms of that job are set by them.
LinkedIn tells people things whether you mean it to or not. A new headline or a sudden run of connection requests to private equity partners gets noticed by colleagues, and so does the HR director who watches the senior team's profiles more closely than you might expect.
The sector itself is small. At director level the same few dozen chairs and investors turn up again and again, often advised by the same search firms. A conversation over dinner can reach your chief executive through two people who both mean well.
When a senior role is advertised, the longlist has usually been built already. Advertised processes involve selection committees and assessors, and every additional reader of your application is one more person who knows you are looking.
What leaks and what does not
- A CV sent to a search firm. It can be shared with clients and kept on file, and you will not always know where it has gone.
- Profile changes on LinkedIn. Headlines, photographs, skills and new connections are all visible, and settings that hide updates do not hide the profile itself.
- Applications to advertised roles. A panel, an assessor, an HR team and sometimes a board each see your name.
- A conversation with someone in the same sector. Usually well meant. It is still the most common route by which news reaches an employer.
- Documents prepared privately. The Career Memorandum, the CV and the biography sit with you and Headhunters International until you decide to use them.
- A printed letter to one named chief executive. It reaches one reader, at a business outside your current employer's circle, in an order you have approved.
- Work done by email to Mark Ross. It goes to him alone, and nothing about your search is passed to an employer or a search firm.
Who has told you how to look discreetly, and what do they gain from it?
Advice on keeping a search quiet usually comes from people with a stake in how you run it.
The search consultant
who says "leave it with me, I'll be discreet" probably means it. He is also paid by his clients, and the clients' interest is in seeing the strongest people available. Discretion and presenting you to the right client can pull in different directions, and when they do, the client pays the fee.
Former colleagues and friends in the sector
will keep a secret better than most. They also talk to each other, sit on the same panels and occasionally assume that someone else already knows.
The career coach or outplacement adviser
can help you decide whether to move, and some do it well. Few have run a senior search, so few can tell you which approach to make first, or which company is two introductions away from your chair.
None of them is acting in bad faith. Each is serving the person who pays them, or trying to help without knowing how the senior market routes information.
How a confidential search runs
Nothing in the work is public until you decide it should be.
- No form and no public profile changes. You start by email, to Mark Ross. LinkedIn stays as it is until the search is under way and you have decided what it should say.
- Documents first. Your achievements are excavated and quantified, direction and criteria are settled, and the Career Memorandum, an executive CV and a one-page biography are written before anyone outside is contacted.
- A target list you approve. Companies with something changing right now, a new owner, a new chief executive, a fundraise or an acquisition, screened for connections to your current employer, its owner and its board.
- One named person at a time. A printed letter goes to the most senior person who owns the problem, in an order agreed with you, starting with the companies least connected to your own.
- Your agreement before every approach. Nobody is contacted, and nothing is sent, without your yes to that name.
This is Reverse Headhunting, run inside The Private Office. Most of the work happens in the first two steps, which no one outside ever sees.
Two confidential searches, 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.
Finance director, private equity backed services group
Starting point. Four years in post. A secondary buyout had brought in a new investor whose operating partner was taking over half of her remit. She had spoken to one search firm and heard a week later, from an auditor, that she was "on the market".
What the work found. Of the twenty companies on her first list, seven were owned by investors who sat on panels with her own. Her strongest record, a refinancing and a carve-out, had been written up only in board papers she could not share.
What changed. The seven were taken off the list. Her results were rewritten with figures she could publish, and letters went to finance-led chairs at businesses preparing for a sale, two at a time, with a fortnight between each pair.
Outcome. Three chairs replied over eight weeks. One introduced her to the investor behind a business preparing to list, and her employer heard nothing about it until she resigned.
Managing director, family owned manufacturer
Starting point. A new chief executive, brought in from outside the family, had set a strategy he did not believe in. His board knew most of the chairs in the region.
What the work found. He had assumed his market was regional. Scored against his own criteria, his strongest options were national businesses in adjacent sectors, where nobody on his board had a seat.
What changed. The target list moved to those businesses, chosen for trigger events, and the first letters went to companies with no shared advisers or investors. His LinkedIn profile was left alone throughout.
Outcome. Two conversations in the first quarter, and one led to a managing director role at a business that had been acquired the previous year. He told his chair the week he signed.
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. Headhunters International is paid by the executive. It has no employer clients to present you to.
How to start
Email Mark Ross at ross@headhunters-international.com from a personal address, with a line on your current position and what has changed. The email goes to Mark Ross only. He replies himself, and the first conversation establishes whether a confidential search makes sense now and how it would be sequenced. Nothing is payable until you decide to go ahead.
Questions executives ask about a confidential search
Will my employer find out I am looking?
Nobody is contacted without your agreement, and nothing about your search is passed to an employer or a search firm. No adviser can control what other people say once an approach has been made, and Headhunters International does not claim to. That is why the order of approaches matters: the first letters go to the companies furthest from your employer, its owner and its board, and you approve every name.
Is it safe to send my CV to a headhunter while I am employed?
It depends on what you agree to. A search firm is paid by its clients, and your CV may be presented to them or kept on file. If you do send it, ask in writing who it will go to and say that it goes nowhere without your permission each time.
Should I update my LinkedIn profile before I start looking?
Not until you have decided what the search is for and the documents are written. A sudden change to a senior profile is one of the easiest signals for colleagues to read. When you do update it, change it once, to match the CV.
How do executives look for a new job without telling anyone?
They prepare privately, then approach a short list of companies one named person at a time, by letter, in an agreed order. Advertised roles are the most visible channel available, because every application passes through several readers.
What do I say if a company I approach knows my chair?
That is the reason the target list is screened before any letter goes. Where a connection only appears later, a short factual explanation of why you are open to a conversation, and a request that it stays between the two of you, is usually respected at senior level.
When should I tell my current employer?
After you have an offer you intend to accept, and in most cases after you have signed. Check your notice period and any restrictive covenants with your solicitor first.
Sources: none cited; the page argues from how senior search is organised.
Read next
Related guides from Headhunters International
- Reverse Headhunting and The Private Office: approaches to the person who owns the problem, before a role is advertised.
- Executive career pivot: how a move into a new sector or function gets read at the first screen.
- Why have headhunters stopped calling?: how search finds people, and why leaving a role takes you off the list.
One email, principal to principal
Write to Mark Ross at ross@headhunters-international.com. He replies himself.
Email Mark Ross