Blog
How searches are won and filled.
Sizing a market, benchmarking the money, reading a filing, building the longlist — written for the people doing it, with every figure traceable to the record it came from.
Archive
Everything else we have worked out.
Long enough to be useful and cited throughout, because a post that cannot be checked argues against the thing we sell.
Winning mandates
Engaged Search vs Retained Search: What the Deposit Buys
Engaged search sits between contingency and retained: a deposit up front, the balance at hire. The fee math, and how to prove the deposit buys work.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 6 min
Winning mandates
When the Search Committee Can't Agree on the Role
Board advice treats a split committee as a personality problem. Two companies' SEC filings show it's usually a scope question, and scope is checkable.
Bret van Putten · 6 min
Winning mandates
How to Pitch Retained Search Over Contingency
The pages ranking here are corporate-buyer explainers or recruiter sales scripts with no data behind them. Here's the pitch built on SHRM's own fee numbers instead.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 7 min
Comp & market intelligence
Private-Company Executive Compensation: What an S-1 Filing Actually Discloses
Named private-company pay is almost never public. One real exception: an S-1 filing discloses it for the years a company was still fully private.
Bret van Putten · 7 min
AI in executive search
Can You Trust an AI's Answer About Who Runs a Company?
UPS announced a six-person executive reshuffle on August 31, 2026. No AI model was trained on it. Here's how to verify who holds a role today.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 5 min
AI in executive search
How to Check an AI-Generated Market Map for Hallucinated Data
Three professional-services reports collapsed in a year because nobody checked the AI's citations. The checklist that would have caught each one.
Bret van Putten · 5 min
Platform & the work
What Continuous Filing Monitoring Actually Catches: A Real CFO Transition, Filing by Filing
A real company's SEC filings, read continuously, show what a CFO transition actually looks like: notice, interim CFO, then an outside hire months later.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 6 min
Platform & the work
Is This Search Winnable? What a Feasibility Check Actually Answers
AESC's standard says a firm won't take work it's unqualified for, but never says how to check. What a feasibility check actually evaluates before you sign.
Bret van Putten · 8 min
Comp & market intelligence
Make-Whole Packages: What It Actually Costs to Buy Out a Candidate's Forfeited Equity
What comparable SEC filings show companies actually pay to buy out a candidate's forfeited equity when they hire them away, real numbers, not a rule of thumb.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 5 min
Comp & market intelligence
Golden Handcuffs: Reading a Candidate's Unvested Equity From a Proxy Filing
How to read a passive candidate's unvested equity, their real golden handcuffs, from their employer's own proxy filing before you build the pitch to move them.
Bret van Putten · 5 min
Winning mandates
How to Win the Second Executive Search Mandate
A first mandate is won on evidence. A second one is won on staying visibly close to a client's market in between. What that actually takes.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 5 min
Platform & the work
The Public Signals That Predict an Executive Search Mandate
The public filings that predict an executive search mandate before a client calls: SEC 8-K exec changes, Form D raises, WARN notices, and how to watch for them free.
Bret van Putten · 7 min
Platform & the work
What's Actually in a Market Map (and What the Alternatives Cost)
What a Market Map actually includes, module by module, and what the real alternatives cost: an analyst hire, a data subscription, a staffed research firm.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 5 min
Market mapping
Talent Mapping for Executive Search: How to Build the Candidate Map
The pages ranking for "talent mapping" are HR-tech and contingency-recruiting content. Here's how retained search actually tracks moves and names candidates.
Bret van Putten · 7 min
Market mapping
A Market Map Example: A Real CFO Search, Sourced End to End
A worked market map for a hypothetical CFO search, scoped in rings, sized against BLS wage data, benchmarked against two real public companies' SEC-filed CFO pay.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 7 min
Winning mandates
The Executive Search Process, What It Actually Costs
The guides ranking for this query list ten generic steps. None says what research actually produces, what a search costs, or what sets the timeline.
Bret van Putten · 6 min
Market mapping
Talent Mapping vs Market Mapping: What's the Difference?
Executive search's own glossaries disagree, and HR means something else again. The distinction that actually matters when you are running a search.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 6 min
Comp & market intelligence
Executive Compensation Benchmarking, the Free-Data Method
The public sources (SEC filings, BLS wage data, one real industry survey) that build a defensible comp band before you pay for a subscription.
Bret van Putten · 9 min
Winning mandates
How to Win an Executive Search Mandate
Qualifying, a custom deck, a clear process, table stakes every rival firm already runs. What wins a mandate is evidence they cannot get elsewhere.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 7 min
Market mapping
How to Build a Market Map for an Executive Search
A practical, source-first method for mapping a market before a search, the companies, the comp, and the pool, so you walk into the pitch as the expert.
Mathijs Bronsdijk · 7 min
AI in executive search
How Executive Search Firms Are Actually Using AI in 2026
Real survey data on how retained search firms use AI, where it breaks down, and what a properly sourced market map looks like instead.
Bret van Putten · 6 min
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