Today's candidate is next year's client.
Retained search runs on relationships that change over time. The finalist who missed out in March is a hiring executive by the following spring, and a referral source after that. Run a CRM and an ATS side by side and you're keeping that person in two places that never quite agree. High-volume recruiting software is built for a different kind of business.
Sound familiar?
The same person lives in two systems
A CRM for relationships, an ATS for candidates, and one person entered into both. The two records start to differ right away, and nobody notices until somebody is embarrassed in front of a client.
Relationships go cold without anyone noticing
Nobody decides to stop talking to a good candidate. It just happens, and nothing anywhere tells you it's been fourteen months.
Placement is treated as the finish line
Most firms sell the months after the start date, then run that part from memory and a calendar reminder somebody set once.
The client sees too much, or nothing at all
Sharing a slate means a PDF, an email thread, or giving a committee a login to a system full of your internal notes and your fee.
Admin is a tax on the person who does the work
In a boutique firm the principal is in meetings all day. Every minute of data entry comes straight out of the work clients are paying for.
What we build for executive search
One record per person, whatever their role
Candidate, client contact, referral, placed. One record carries whichever of those apply, on a single timeline, so your network keeps growing instead of splitting across systems.
Business development through to search
A deals board for business development, and a won deal that becomes a live search in one click, turning the prospect into a client as it goes.
Shortlists with scorecards against the spec
The position spec, the candidates for each search, and assessments scored against the criteria you agreed with the client.
A client portal you control candidate by candidate
A link per search, no login needed, showing only the people you've chosen to share, with assessments, a comparison table and a feedback box. Internal notes, votes and fees never leave the building.
Post-placement check-ins, set up automatically
The 30, 60 and 90 day, six month and one year check-ins are created as soon as a placement is made, so the follow-up you sell happens on schedule instead of relying on memory.
Log it without leaving what you're doing
Log a call or move a candidate forward from any screen. Meeting transcripts and forwarded emails come in as draft notes with the people involved already matched.
Proof from your world
Two promises the software industry hates making
One monthly fee, starting at launch
Design, building, hosting and support in one monthly number you can budget like rent. No hourly billing, no change-order invoices, and no per-seat fees that grow with your team. Billing doesn't start until the first version is live and your team is using it.
See the plans →You own the custom code. All of it.
The account holding the code, the documentation and the hosting are in your name from day one. If you ever leave us, you take everything with you, and any developer can pick it up. You won't have to pay to get it back, rebuild it, or stay stuck on someone else's platform.
How we work →Questions we hear from executive search
How is this different from your staffing and recruiting page?
Staffing and retained search are different businesses with opposite needs. High-volume staffing needs throughput: bulk sourcing, requisition dashboards, time-to-hire metrics. Retained search needs a small number of relationships handled carefully over years. We build for both, and we don't pretend one system can serve both, because the design choices pull in opposite directions.
Will it send candidate emails automatically?
No. In the system we built for a retained firm, that's part of how it's built, not a setting you could switch on. The system drafts, a person approves, a person sends. That decision came from the horror stories every search principal has about a rejection arriving next to an offer. If you want automated email sequences triggered by stage changes, we're the wrong firm and you'd be fighting this every day.
Our clients are search committees. Can they see the slate?
Yes, and this is where a purpose-built portal pays off. A link per search with no login, showing only the candidates you've made visible, with assessments and a side-by-side comparison, plus a place for committee members to leave feedback that comes straight back to you. This matches almost exactly how nonprofit, academic and board searches run.
We looked at the big ATS platforms. Why custom?
They're priced per seat and built for volume, and you run dozens of engagements a year where every record deserves attention. The useful test is what you'd use day to day. If that's a relationship map, a candidate list per search, a slate the client can see and post-placement follow-up, it makes more sense to build that than to move everything into a big platform.
Who owns the data?
You do. It's kept in a database in an account your company owns, with export always available and no shared or AI-training environment. For a firm whose most valuable asset is a private network, that's often what decides it.
Tell us what's slowing your business down.
In a free one-hour call we work out what the system needs to do and which plan it fits. Within two business days you have a written plan and a monthly number. No drawn-out proposals, no pressure.
One monthly fee · Built, hosted & improving · You own the custom code