EXECUTIVE SEARCH

The ability to make good "people" decisions is today's most enduring source of competitive advantage. Decisions at the time of recruiting senior talent cast the longest shadow of all.

Futura’s largest service practice - Executive Search - concentrates on helping clients achieve this advantage through the identification, assessment and recruitment of the industry’s most talented technologists.

Futura provides high-touch retained executive search services for our clients. Our commitment to quality drives every aspect of our business, and has enabled our Executive Search Consultants to achieve industry-leading results in areas our clients deem extremely important, including cycle time, diversity placements, and candidate feedback.

Futura specializes in recruiting talent for mid to senior management roles within technology and across a diverse group of industries such as banking & finance, insurance, manufacturing, semiconductor and system integrators.

Our team comprises of experienced senior consultants and research associates.

Our Methodology:

On the surface, our executive search process resembles others. However, new clients usually discover the experience of working with Futura to be different. A flavor of that experience is described below.

• Pinpointing Your Needs:

  Our briefing meeting is the start of an emotional commitment to complete the work with professional excellence. It begins with a rich discussion of the critical business issues that the recruitment will address and the essential requirements of the position. Next, our consultants qualify the behavioral characteristics that the best candidates will require to succeed in the future role. The consultants will also review critical incidents as well as the competencies required to successfully navigate through the situations the candidate will most likely encounter on the job. Beyond the emotional and professional commitment, buttressed by a proven methodology, our consultants themselves make the critical difference, bringing genuine insight in discerning clients' needs. Their former careers give them real-life sensitivity to many aspects of the performance requirements of the role. Importantly, the same consultants that receive the brief handle every aspect of the search through completion.

• Finding The Best:

  Consultants identify candidates from three sources: their own professional networks and relationships and systematic research. The consultants' own ideas will stem from their knowledge of your sector or function and their experience in executive search. This pool of known talent is augmented by ideas flowing from other consultants within, due to our collaborative culture and remuneration structure that encourages cooperation. Consequently, clients engage more than individual consultants; they engage the entire firm with all of its relevant sources and experts. They continuously update our database of more than a 100,000 profiles.

• Approaching Candidates:

  Approaching the candidates is one of two points of maximum leverage in a search, so we never delegate this critical activity to researchers. The consultants working on the engagement are best prepared to present the opportunity in a compelling way, articulating the nuances of the position and commenting meaningfully on the cultural aspects of the client organization. The consultants will also be able to credibly address concerns candidates may have about the opportunity relative to their own careers and their prospects within the client organization. Given the background and seniority of our consultants, most candidates feel the people approaching them are peers in the business world and usually value their insight and advice; the high quality of the dialogue between our consultants and candidates greatly increases the prospect of attracting the best talent to our client organizations. Indeed, our commitment to managing long-term candidate relationships further strengthens this bond and enhances our access to top talent for our clients.

• Assessing The "How":

  There is growing recognition that how a person does something predicts success better than what his or her qualifications theoretically enable him or her to do. When interviewing candidates, our consultants steer away from narrative interviews that simply retrace a person's achievements. Instead, consultants focus on the "how" questions, following our competency-based interviewing model. Answers to these questions can be windows into the individual's behavioral characteristics, enabling sensitive judgement of the candidate's ability to perform in the job and adapt to the client organization and culture. Examples from a candidate's professional record allow consultants to better predict whether he or she will thrive when challenged with specific performance requirements. Further validation through extensive referencing is the final and crucial complement to the judgement made by our consultants.

• Ensuring Closure:

  The second major point of leverage in a search is converting a mutual "fit" into an actual hiring. In the war for talent, a skilled and insightful approach to closing a search can make the difference between success and failure. Since our consultants invest in the relationship with candidates through every step of the search process, they are better able to monitor and address concerns about the job or the practical and personal aspects of transitioning as they arise, minimizing barriers to closure at the final stage of a search. Our fixed fee approach assures objectivity on quantitative aspects of the hiring, allowing consultants to advise both sides in the negotiations without conflict of interest.

• Our Enduring Responsibility:

  Our consultants are passionate about assuring that hired candidates make a positive impact that exceeds our clients' expectations. We follow up with candidate and client at regular intervals to check on performance and fit. The consultants' diligence in this regard stems not only from professional pride but also from their long-term outlook toward clients and candidates. This continuing bond with candidates and clients is one of the reasons that more than two-thirds of our assignments are repeat engagements for existing clients. The knowledge that our consultants are motivated by repeat business for the firm's single global ownership structure, rather than individual rewards, is the best assurance of superior professional execution.