The Weight of the Decision
A move at the VP or Director level is a big decision, and relocation makes it bigger. It touches a spouse’s career, the kids’ schools, the house, the next ten years. There is real excitement in it too: a bigger seat, harder problems, a chance to build something. But the candidate is weighing all of this while running a department, fitting interviews between meetings, and sizing up a city they may have visited once.
A decision like that goes better with clarity than with pressure.
The Gut Check
Before a candidate meets your team, we work through the harder question with them: why consider this at all? Sometimes the answer is clear. They’ve hit a ceiling, the company has changed around them, or the direction no longer fits what they want to build. Sometimes it’s murkier. They’re frustrated but unsure whether leaving fixes it, or the bigger title is doing most of the pulling.
We push on this early. A candidate who hasn’t been honest with themselves about why they’re looking will hesitate at the offer, or accept and regret it. Neither is good for you.
Asking the Right Questions
Senior candidates interview well. What they often skip is asking what they need to know to protect themselves. We coach them to ask, because a leader who says yes with open eyes stays:
How does the executive team see this function? Is it a cost center, or something they invest in?
What does the appetite for change look like? Is there budget behind it, or is it language in a job posting?
What happened with the last person in this role?
What are the real challenges? Aging systems, organizational debt, a team that needs rebuilding?
None of this is adversarial. These are the questions that let a candidate say yes and mean it.
Presenting a Career That’s Too Wide to Summarize
A leader with 20 years behind them has run dozens of initiatives and led hundreds of people. They can’t tell that whole story in a 60 minute executive interview. They have to choose.
This is where knowing your hiring team pays off. We know what the CEO fixates on. We know whether the board cares more about speed or about risk. We know if the VP of Operations wants a partner or a service provider. That context decides what a candidate leads with, so your team hears the parts that connect to the problems you’re trying to solve.
Sometimes that means a hard conversation and a serious rewrite. We ask for it only when we’re confident the role is worth the effort, and we say why.
Placement Examples
Two completed searches where this played out:
VP of Technology, Manufacturing
A wood products manufacturer needed a leader for a digital transformation in a specialized industry where generic manufacturing experience doesn’t transfer. The successful candidate came from an adjacent vertical and had to decide fast: a niche industry, a new mandate, and a leadership team they’d met twice. The 147-prospect search closed in 56 days.
View full case study →VP of Operations, Medical Devices
A Class III medical device manufacturer facing FDA compliance issues needed an operations leader who could rebuild quality systems under regulatory scrutiny. The candidate had to understand the stakes before saying yes: life-critical devices, ISO 13485 implementation, and a Midwest relocation away from the established medtech hubs. Six fully qualified candidates from a field of 31, one hire.
View full case study →Hiring a Leader?
Tell us the role and the situation. We’ll tell you what we see.
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