EXECUTIVE SEARCH · CEO & BOARD
The board's real product is one decision. This one.
A CEO search run on chemistry hands the company to the best interview in the room. Yours should be run on evidence.
THE RECOGNITION
By month nine the board was managing around the person the process produced. Nobody wanted to say it first. That silence is what this practice exists to prevent.
Research heritage since 1999 · 60%+ of the Fortune 500 have used Qualigence · 85% retention on placed candidates over 24 months
THE KIND OF QUESTION OUR INTERVIEW ASKS
“Walk me through the decision you made against your board’s instinct - and how you carried the room without breaking it.”
WHAT WE TEST
Operating behavior under public pressure
How they use a board versus how they manage one
Succession thinking from day one
The standard they will not trade for momentum
THE SCIENCE
Why selection - the science under every service.
Most firms compete on access - who they know. We compete on evidence - what a candidate has actually done under pressure, tested against a definition of winning your team wrote down before the search opened. That is the 6-Step Performance Engine™: define winning, test identity and behavior against it, protect the standard through feedback and the decision.
It’s why 85% of our placed candidates are still performing at 24 months, and why 60%+ of the Fortune 500 have used Qualigence since 1999.
THE PLAN
Tell us the role, the market, and what a successful hire looks like in the seat.
We run it through the engine - intake, screen, evidence file, standard that holds.
You get a hire that holds - still producing at 24 months, because the decision was built, not guessed.
A CEO search and a succession readiness assessment answer different questions. One fills the seat. The other tells you whether you will need to fill it - and who is already inside your walls.
See how succession readiness works →QUESTIONS
What makes CEO search different from every other executive search?
The CEO seat is the only one where the board is making a decision about the person who will run the thing they are responsible for. Every other search has a hiring manager who understands the role from the inside. A CEO search has a board - which means the evaluation runs on impression unless you install a different instrument. We install that instrument before the search opens.
How do you evaluate a CEO candidate's behavior under board pressure?
We ask for situations where they operated against their board's instinct and had to carry the decision without losing the room. How they ran that conversation - who they told what and when, what they conceded and what they held - is the evidence. Chemistry does not survive questions like that. Results-Based Interviewing™ is built to surface it.
Do you handle confidential CEO succession?
Yes. Confidential searches - CEO succession before any announcement, board replacement in a live leadership crisis, and in-market situations where the candidate pool and the client cannot see each other - are a standard part of this practice. Confidentiality protocols are set at intake, before any search activity.
One decision carries the company. Put evidence under it.
