If you are paying a monthly fee for executive search you should know, each quarter, whether it is working. Four numbers tell you.
Time to shortlist
From brief agreed to shortlist presented. Our standard on a standalone search is six weeks. On a partnership it should be shorter, because the market map is already built and the briefing pack already exists. If a partnership search takes as long as a cold one, the partnership is not adding what it should.
Completion rate
Searches started against searches that ended in an appointment. Ours is 98% across all retained work. On a partnership, anything under that deserves a conversation at the quarterly review about what changed.
Retention at twelve months
The number most search firms do not report. Of the people appointed through the partnership, how many are still in post a year later, and of those who left, why. It is the only measure of whether the assessment was right. We report it for every partnership client.
Cost against the alternative
The annual fee against what the same searches would have cost one at a time, plus a fair value for the advisory work delivered. If the partnership is not cheaper at the volume delivered, the scope was wrong and should be reset at the next review.
What not to measure
Number of candidates presented, number of approaches made, number of reports produced. These are activity, and activity is easy to generate. A partner who reports activity rather than outcomes is telling you something.
The review
All four numbers on one page, each quarter, with the trend. Ten minutes of the review meeting. The rest of the hour is for what has changed and what is coming.