Executive Recruitment Research is also known as candidate sourcing and unbundled executive search. It is research that focuses on the part of the executive recruiting process where in-house executive searchers need help the most. The research identifies, profiles, contacts, and qualifies ideal candidates for specific executive searches.
The research supports executive recruiting for senior executive leadership at the VP level and above. Executive recruiting focuses on filling openings with titles that include Vice President, Senior Vice President, Executive Vice President, and all C-Level roles. C-suite roles include Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), Chief People Officer (CPO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Chief Information Officer(CIO).
Candidate sourcing research is conducted by executive search research firms. Services include executive talent mapping, org charts, passive candidate sourcing, candidate identification, executive profiling, candidate development, full-cycle recruiting, talent ecosystem studies, human capital intelligence, and other forms of custom recruitment research.
Finding the right executive candidate starts before the sourcing begins. It starts with understanding what success actually looks like in the role — which is rarely what the job description says. Here is the methodology…
The environment has shifted. AI is screening candidates before human eyes ever see them. Precision hiring has replaced the hiring sprees of 2021. And 45% of employers report struggling to find qualified candidates even in…
When a global strategy and technology consulting firm decided to stand up new practices worldwide, the CEO wanted first-mover advantage. That meant having the right senior leadership in place before the competitive window closed —…
You have a compelling opening. The scope is real, the mandate is serious, and the right leader could change the trajectory of the business. But the location is costing you candidates, and every conversation ends…
Retained search fails to complete 40% of the time. Contingency search abandons searches that take too long. Job postings flood you with unqualified applicants. A recruiting research firm solves all three problems — and delivers…
Satya Nadella opened Hit Refresh with a cartoon org chart that showed Microsoft’s divisions pointing guns at each other. Then he reorganized the entire company around what it revealed. Org charts show you how a…
Offer acceptance rates have collapsed from 74% to 51% in two years. Sixty-six percent of CEOs are freezing hiring while betting billions on AI. TA teams are being cut while the searches that remain get…
The Good Search, LLC has been named to DiversityBusiness.com’s Top 100 Diversity Owned Businesses in Connecticut 2012 and Top 50 Women Owned Businesses in Connecticut 2012. Recognized as one of Connecticut’s “Top Entrepreneurs”, the DiversityBusiness.com…
A Fortune 100 technology company needed a world-renowned technologist hired in 53 days, near the Arctic Circle, for a product so confidential we could not tell candidates what the role was, what the product was,…
The internal executive search function was built to do retained search’s job better, faster, and at a fraction of the cost. For the most part, it succeeds. The ceiling appears at the VP+ level, on…
LinkedIn has 1.3 billion members and the most powerful professional search interface ever built. It is also not a recruiter, cannot qualify a candidate, and has no way of telling you whether the profile you…
A Fortune 100 technology company needed to find the technologists building the next generation of products around its breakthrough technology — and move on them before competitors did. The targets were partly invisible: pseudonymous online…
You can crush candidate sourcing and do it faster with AI. But no matter what candidate sourcing tools you use, they have blind spots. AI indiscriminately discriminates. So to excel at sourcing, talent acquisition must…
Closing Executive Searches Faster Executive searches are moving at an unprecedented pace. In 2026, the “winning” candidate—the executive who is ultimately hired—is typically presented within the first 14 to 21 days of the search. In…
AI recruiting tools have made candidate identification faster, cheaper, and more scalable than at any point in the history of executive search. For in-house teams managing VP+ searches in 2026, that is genuinely useful —…
LinkedIn’s 1.3 billion member profiles look like an inexhaustible talent pool. For executive recruiters, they are something more complicated — a digital mirage that grows more convincing, and more treacherous, with every passing year. Incomplete…
A Lesson in Investigative Research and the Power of Data An investigative reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution proved something that no interview, no anecdote, and no amount of firsthand testimony had been able to establish:…
Target company org charts make executive recruiting ridiculously easy. You stop wasting time and missing candidates on LinkedIn.
