A fund doesn't have a hiring problem. It has a portfolio of them.
Different companies, different levels, one clock. We fill the executive suite and the layer underneath it across a portfolio, for firms that would rather not manage a different recruiter for every seat.
You shouldn't need three recruiters to staff one company.
A company hires an executive every few years. A fund hires constantly. A CFO in one portfolio company, a controller and a plant manager in another, a CEO when a founder finally steps back. Different levels, different company sizes, and a clock that doesn't pause while a search runs.
Most firms are built for one seat, at one company, at one level. The retained firms handling the top of the house price every engagement like a C-suite search, with minimums that make no sense for a plant manager. The shops that do fill that layer are rarely the ones you'd hand a CEO seat. So a fund ends up managing several vendors, re-explaining the same investment thesis to each of them, and competing for attention against much larger mandates.
That isn't really a recruiting problem. It's a coverage problem.
Both tiers, one relationship
Executive Search
Retained, for the top of the house: the CEO seat itself and the seats reporting into it.
Learn moreProfessional Search
Engaged, for the layer that runs the business day to day. Operations, finance, systems, commercial.
Learn moreSame firm, same standard, same partners on both. One intake conversation about the thesis instead of five, and no gap between the level someone will staff and the level you need staffed.
Why operator-led matters across a portfolio
Our partners have run these businesses. They've held roles from VP through CEO and they've owned companies, which matters more to a fund than to a single hiring manager, for two reasons.
They can read a value creation plan and tell you what it actually requires of a seat, rather than recruiting against a job description written before you bought the company.
And they can sit with a portfolio company CEO as a peer rather than as a vendor. The person you're buying for is rarely the person you're buying from, and a search stalls quickly when the CEO doesn't rate the recruiter.
It's also why the searches below the C-suite don't come back as resume matches. Someone who has run a plant knows what a plant manager does on a Tuesday, and can tell the difference between a candidate who has done the work and one who has been near it.
Our fee doesn't move when the compensation does.
On most retained searches the fee is a percentage of first-year compensation. Which means the firm advising you on the offer is paid more when the offer goes up.
We fix our fee to the target compensation agreed at the start of the search. If the final package lands higher than that, our fee doesn't follow it. Across a single search that's a detail. Across a portfolio it isn't, and either way it removes an argument you shouldn't have to have with your own recruiter.
When funds bring us in
Right After a Close
You've inherited a leadership team and an org chart, with seats the plan can't run without. We fill them before the first year of the hold gets spent finding out the hard way.
Building Out a Platform
When you're acquiring in the same category repeatedly, leadership is what makes the pieces run as one company instead of several. We hire for the seats that hold a platform together.
Heading Toward an Exit
A buyer will look hard at who's running the business. We fill the gaps in leadership while there's still time to fill them.
Have a seat to fill in a portfolio company?
Tell us which company, which seat, and what the plan needs that seat to do.
