Hire an executive your board can stand behind.
Retained search for your next CEO, President, or C-suite leader. We find and vet the candidates, with the evidence behind every recommendation in writing.
Best fit for a CEO, President, C-suite, or succession-critical search where the decision requires board-level evidence. The first call covers the seat, timeline, decision risks, and whether our retained model fits. No search opens on the call.
You've bought the process before. You're still living with the outcome.
The market mapping was thorough. The slate was credible. The finalist interviewed brilliantly. And by month nine the board was managing around the person the process produced.
That is not a search failure. It is a decision failure - and the retained model, as the big firms run it, was never built to fix it. It was built to produce a defensible slate. The decision is left to the same instincts that produced the last mis-hire.
At the executive level, the cost compounds. A mis-hire in the C-suite is not one bad quarter - it is a stalled strategy, a leadership team recalibrating around a gap, and a board spending its credibility defending the choice. The decision is the whole game. So the decision is what we build.
The searches where the decision is the whole game.
- CEO / President
- Chief Operating Officer
- Chief Financial Officer
- Chief Human Resources Officer
- Chief Revenue / Commercial Officer
- Chief Legal Officer / General Counsel
- Chief Technology / Information Officer
- Chief Marketing Officer
- SVP Sales
- SVP / VP Operations
- Division and Market Presidents
- Board and advisory appointments
- Succession-critical VP roles
Across all nine industry practices - each led by a Practice Leader who knows that vertical.
The 6-Step Performance Engine™, run at C-suite altitude.
Every Qualigence engagement runs on the same engine - the one Steve Lowisz built inside live searches. Every Practice Leader is inspected against it. Executive search is where the engine matters most, because the seat leaves no room for a decision made on impressions.
Step 1 · Winning
The definition is written before the search opens.
Step 2 · Identity
The behavioral standard the seat demands.
Step 3 · Behavior
Every finalist is evaluated with evidence.
Step 4 · Tolerance
The halo of a big title stops deciding.
Step 5 · Standards
“I liked them” stops counting as data.
Step 6 · Performance
Measured at 30, 60, and 90 days.
The engine does not stop at the offer. Integration is measured at 30, 60, and 90 days against the definition of winning your board signed at intake - so performance is confirmed in the seat, not assumed at the signature.
The full engine - and the doctrine behind it - lives on our approach page. If you need a one-time board search run on a specific firm's network with no interest in changing how you decide, the traditional firms serve you well. Honest comparison: retained search →
Six practice areas. One engine.
Every practice runs on the same 6-Step Performance Engine. The difference is the question the seat demands - and the evidence prompt we build to surface it.
CFO Executive Search
Behavior when the number misses
CHRO Executive Search
The standard they hold against a louder voice
CEO & Board Executive Search
Operating behavior under public pressure
Sales Leadership - CRO & VP Sales
What they do when the quarter breaks
CTO, CIO & AI Officer
Shipping history under real constraints
Succession Readiness
The bench you can see before the seat opens
of the Fortune 500 have used Qualigence
retention on placed candidates over 24 months
operating selection discipline since 1999
“At the end of the day, within approximately 90 days, we had completed a nationwide search, we had an exceptionally strong candidate pool that we talked to, and we landed our top candidate.”
Discipline isn't the slow path - rework is.
Every retained search carries a replacement guarantee - in writing.
Every engagement produces artifacts your board keeps.
A search that ends with a hire and nothing else has sold you a candidate. These are the working documents an executive engagement leaves behind - each one tied to a step of the engine.
Example: Executive Decision Record
The written evidence write-up and board recommendation.
Illustrative evaluation framework, not a client or candidate record.
The Definition of Winning
A written outcome document - what this executive must produce at 90 days, 6 months, and 12 months - agreed with your board before the search opens. It governs everything that follows.
Structured debrief facilitation
We run the decision meeting against the standard. Feedback cites evidence. The decision confirms the definition of winning - or it does not proceed.
The 30/60/90 integration plan
A measured integration program run against the intake outcomes - so the definition of winning follows the executive into the seat.
The decision system itself
The intake templates, the evidence prompts, the debrief protocol - they stay with your board. The next succession does not start from zero, or from another fee.
Decision Made on Evidence: Chief Digital Officer, First Financial.
The challenge
First Financial needed a Chief Digital Officer from outside banking - someone who had led transformation at a comparable organization, not managed existing systems. Two compounding factors: cross-industry sourcing and no compensation baseline for a role the client had never hired before.
How the engine ran
Rather than mapping organizations by headcount, the search targeted individuals actively leading digital transformations. A blended research approach put the team in vetting conversations within one week of kickoff. Every compensation conversation was documented, building a salary band from live market data gathered during the search.
The outcome
Viable candidates from multiple non-banking industries, vetted within the first week. Salary band established from market data collected during the search. The engagement closed with a candidate whose digital transformation experience matched the specific scope of First Financial's initiative.
Founder & CEO · Practice Leadership
You will talk to the person who runs the search.
Steve Lowisz has led executive search and hiring-system installations since founding Qualigence in 1999. He built the 6-Step Performance Engine inside live searches - not a workshop - and his operating doctrine, Guide, Don't Drive™, governs every C-suite search we run. He takes the first call on any executive engagement.
Bring the role, timing, and where the prior decision process broke. Steve will outline fit and next steps before any engagement is scoped.
Questions we answer straight.
What does retained executive search cost?
Our fees are structured per engagement, scoped to role complexity, timeline, and integration requirements. We are priced below the traditional retained fee structures run by the large firms - and we build the decision system into the engagement rather than charging for it separately. Your Practice Leader puts the number in writing on the first call - before anything opens.
How is this different from Korn Ferry or Heidrick & Struggles?
Both firms run a strong process for producing a defensible slate. That is what the retained model was built to do - and they do it well. The difference is the decision. Their model produces candidates; the decision is left to your instincts. Qualigence is built around fixing the decision that makes the hire - Results-Based Interviewing, outcome-defined intake, and a 30/60/90 integration your board runs after we close. We don’t replace a strong search firm for one-off network hires. We fix the system that makes every hire.
What is Results-Based Interviewing?
Results-Based Interviewing (RBI) is a structured behavioral evaluation system built around the actual outcomes the role requires - not generic competency questions or cultural fit impressions. Every finalist is evaluated against a defined set of performance outcomes at 90 days, 6 months, and 12 months. RBI closes the gap between the interview and the decision, and surfaces behavioral evidence the traditional process typically misses.
How long does an executive search take?
It depends on the definition of winning, the market, and confidentiality requirements - which is why the timeline is set at intake, not promised in a pitch. As one reference point, a nationwide COO search for First Financial Bank completed inside approximately 90 days, from open to accepted offer. What we will not do is compress the evaluation to hit a date - the decision is the deliverable.
Do you run confidential searches?
Yes. Confidential searches - including CEO succession, board replacement, and in-market competitive situations - are a standard part of our executive practice. We discuss confidentiality protocols, candidate sourcing approach, and communication boundaries at intake.
THE PATH
Request a strategy call
With the practice leader who runs this vertical.
We write the definition of winning
With your board - before the search opens.
The search runs on evidence
The decision system stays with you.
COMPARING YOUR OPTIONS?
Read the honest comparisons - including where we're not the right fit.
The next executive hire is the one that matters.
One search run on the wrong instincts sets back a board for years. One run on the engine leaves you a leader who performs - and a decision system you keep. Let's look at the decision together before the search opens.
Expect a working conversation about the seat, stakeholders, timing, and decision risk. For evidence first, read the First Financial executive search case study.
