Most disappointment with search firms comes from expecting a service they were never engaged to provide. Here is the boundary, stated plainly, so you can build the rest of your search around it rather than into it.
An agent works for you and is paid by you. A search consultant works for the employer and is paid by the employer. Nobody at a search firm is accountable for the progress of your career, and asking them to be puts a decent consultant in an impossible position.
A firm can only introduce you to the mandates it holds. If nobody has engaged them to fill the role you want, there is nothing to introduce you to, however well suited you are. This is the single largest gap between what candidates expect and what the model can deliver.
A search firm connects you to seats that are already open and already briefed. Everything earlier than that is yours.
Communication is the first casualty of a busy mandate. It is not personal and it is not a signal about your candidacy. Assume you will hear less than you would like, ask once when it matters, and do not read meaning into silence.
Feedback is filtered, because the consultant has to preserve a relationship with the client and cannot repeat everything said in the room. What you get is usually true and rarely complete. Take it, do not interrogate it, and get your candid feedback from people who owe you honesty rather than diplomacy.
Work with them, be useful to them, and expect exactly what the arrangement pays for. The part they cannot reach — the companies not yet hiring, the conversation before the brief — is the part you have to run, and it is where most senior moves actually begin.
Almost everything a search firm does toward you is explained by who pays them and when. Once you know that, their behaviour stops being mysterious.
Read → The reverse job searchInstead of starting with adverts and working towards companies, you start with companies and work towards a conversation. The method, and who it suits.
Read → The reverse job searchThere is no job to apply for, which is exactly the advantage. What to say, what to ask for, and the four mistakes that get senior approaches ignored.
Read →A short call, your target list, and an honest answer about whether this fits how you are running your search.