When Executive Search Projects Fail: The stakeholder we didn’t consult

Executive search is, by its nature, an uneven business. One minute a process is moving quickly and smoothly, and a role can feel straightforward. Then, without much warning, things can unravel.

This is a true story.

We were leading a CFO search for a high growth e-commerce business. The process had gone well. Our lead candidate had impressed the founder CEO and his leadership team, and we had agreed a verbal offer. At that point, all that remained was a meeting with the Chair, which we viewed largely as a formality.

It wasn’t.

The CEO had been looking for a highly operational CFO. Someone who could partner closely with him, get into the detail of the business, and help drive performance. That profile was clear, and our candidate fit it well.

What we hadn’t done was properly consult the Chair.

As it turned out, the Chair had a very different view of the role. He was looking for a CFO with deep investor credibility and exit experience. Our candidate didn’t have that background.

The meeting went badly. The Chair rejected the candidate outright.

At that point, the search collapsed.

To make matters worse, the candidate had already resigned from his existing role. He had accepted the verbal offer and, perhaps understandably, assumed the final meeting was a formality. We would never advise a candidate to resign without a signed contract, but the combination of momentum and confidence in the process led him to do so.

He was left without a role, having already burned his bridges.

There is an element of bad luck in situations like this. But in this case, the underlying issue was straightforward.

We hadn’t aligned the key stakeholders.

If you are hiring a board-level CFO and you haven’t properly engaged the Chair, then it should not be a surprise if views diverge late in the process. By that point, the cost of misalignment is high, for the client, the candidate, and the search firm.

The lesson is simple.

Before starting any executive search, you need to be clear on three things. Who is defining the role, who needs to be aligned, and who has the ability to veto a hire. If any of those are unclear, you are carrying risk into the process.

In most searches, things do not go wrong in the final stages by accident. The seeds of failure are usually there from the beginning.