Executives spend careers dealing with search firms and are almost never told how the economics run. It is not a secret, and it explains the parts that feel personal but are not.
A search firm is engaged by an employer to fill a specific seat, and is paid by that employer. You are not the customer. You are the raw material of the product being delivered — which sounds harsh and is simply the structure. Good consultants treat candidates extremely well within it, but no amount of goodwill changes who is paying.
Two arrangements are common. In one, the firm is paid in stages regardless of who is eventually hired, which buys the company a thorough process. In the other, the firm is paid only if its candidate is hired, which makes speed and volume rational. Neither is dishonest; they simply produce different behaviour toward you.
Updating candidates is unpaid work on a mandate that is already running late. Silence is the default unless a consultant chooses otherwise.
They are filling a brief, not representing you. If you do not match the brief, there is nothing to be done, however good you are.
A consultant works the seats they are given. Your fit with next year's mandate is unknowable today.
Mandates are cancelled, filled internally, or restructured. The candidate is usually the last to be told because there is no fee attached to telling them.
A search firm is not indifferent to you. It is accountable to somebody else, and accountability is what drives behaviour.
A relationship with a search firm is worth having and cannot be the plan. Their mandates arrive when they arrive, in sectors you do not choose, at a level set by their client. Any search that depends entirely on somebody else's brief matching your ambition is a search you do not control.
You cannot apply to a search firm in any meaningful sense. What you can do is be findable, be specific, and be useful before you need anything.
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Read →A short call, your target list, and an honest answer about whether this fits how you are running your search.