Client Feedback Recovery
Every presented candidate carries a deadline, a named client owner and a required written disposition, and overdue feedback escalates to the partner while research pauses.
- Tier
- Growth
- Build order
- 3rd of 7 for executive search
- Shape of it
- 8 steps, 1 escalation rule
- At launch
- Runs supervised, with you approving what goes out
The problem this solves
The slate goes out. Then nothing.
The firm keeps working because the search says active. The candidates, who are employed executives who took a risk to engage, hear nothing and begin to disengage. The client is not being obstructive; usually nobody on their side owns the decision, the interview panel cannot align diaries, and it is nobody's job to reply.
Meanwhile the firm is carrying payroll on a search that cannot progress, and the partner finds out when a candidate withdraws.
The compounding failure: "the client has seen the profile" and "the client has evaluated the candidate" look identical in every system. So a search can show five candidates presented and appear healthy while none has actually been assessed.
How it works, step by step
Every wait, threshold and branch below is a value we set with you during the build, against your stages and your language. None of it is a default we impose.
- What starts it
- It escalates to a person
Step 1Trigger
Every candidate presented is registered against the client decision owner agreed at kickoff, with the feedback deadline attached.
Step 2
A written disposition is required for every candidate: progress, hold with a date, reject with a reason, or recalibrate the spec. "No response" is not a disposition and does not close the item.
Step 3
Approaching the deadline, a reminder goes to the client owner in the agreed channel, referencing the kickoff agreement rather than asking a favour.
Step 4
Past the deadline, the mandate moves to "client action required". Research outreach pauses. This is the mechanism that stops the firm spending money on a paused search.
Step 5Escalation
Escalation goes to the partner, not the coordinator, because a client governance problem needs a peer conversation.
Step 6
Candidates are updated even when there is no news. A candidate told "nothing yet, here is where we are" stays engaged; a candidate told nothing withdraws.
Step 7
Candidate risk is tracked while the client is slow: competing processes, counteroffer exposure, compensation drift, availability changes.
Step 8
When feedback finally arrives, the disposition reason is recorded and analysed monthly. Patterns in rejection reasons are the fastest route to a better spec next time.
How it gets built
Built inside what you already run
- Clockwork
- Invenias
- Thrive
- Loxo
- Bullhorn
- Crelate
- PCRecruiter
- or whatever your office already runs on
Nothing to log into and nothing to license. If a system needs a record your platform does not hold, we add the field to your platform rather than starting a second one beside it.
This is the actual build order, in the phases its own steps fall into. It runs in supervised mode first, with you approving what goes out, until you are happy with the tone.
- 1
Build
Build the presented-candidate record with owner and deadline from the kickoff data.
Built inside the software you already run, against your stages and your language.
- 2
Build
Make the written disposition a required field to close the item.
- 3
Agree
Write the client reminder content with the partners. Tone is everything here: it references an agreement, it does not plead.
The thresholds, the wording and the names are yours. We write them down with you and get the consequential ones signed off.
- 4
Build
Build "client action required" and the research pause it triggers.
- 5
Build
Build partner escalation, and agree the threshold.
- 6
Build
Build the candidate holding sequence for the no-news case.
- 7
Build
Build candidate risk flags.
- 8
Agree
Agree disposition reason codes and diarise the monthly review.
- 9
Prove
Run two live searches supervised, with the partner reviewing every client message before it sends.
It runs with a person approving what goes out until you are happy with the tone. Nothing sends unreviewed on day one.
What changes after it goes live
How it runs today
The slate goes out. Then nothing.
After this one is live
Feedback arrives faster, because a deadline referenced against an agreement is answered more often than a polite chase. Research stops running on paused searches. Candidates stay engaged through client delay, which is where most slates are lost. And the firm can show a client, factually, where the time went.
How to measure whether it worked
Your arithmeticRun with your numbers, not ours
Pull the last twelve months of searches and measure days from slate to first substantive client response, and hours logged during those periods. Value the hours at loaded cost. Then count candidates who withdrew during a client delay and value them at the searches that had to be re-run.
We agree the baseline before anything is built, and we do not take credit for things that were going to happen anyway. There is no figure on this page claiming what we have produced for somebody else, because there is no verified figure to publish.
What we will not do
This is from the same delivery document as everything above it. It is on the page because a supplier who has not thought about it will not tell you, and you would find out later.
This trade carries no clinical or insurance regulation, but it handles personal data about senior individuals who have not applied for anything, which is its own serious exposure.
Candidate data.
- Candidates in a search are almost always passive and confidential. Their current employer must not learn they are in a process. Any automation that could reveal a candidacy, including a misdirected message, an over-broad notification or a shared calendar entry, is a career-level harm to a real person.
- No candidate name, current employer or compensation detail in any demonstration, template or marketing asset. Synthetic data only.
- Reference checks are conducted with the candidate's explicit permission and at the point in the process they agreed to, never automatically.
- Records must support deletion and correction requests. Several US states and most other jurisdictions the firm may work in grant those rights, and a search database is exactly the kind of record they apply to.
Client confidentiality.
- Mandate details, compensation ranges, org structures and the fact of a search existing at all are frequently confidential, sometimes contractually.
- Off-limits agreements are contractual obligations, and a breach is a commercial and reputational event. System 5's automated off-limits check is a compliance control, not a convenience.
Messaging.
- Automated outreach to candidates and clients sits inside the TCPA for calls and texts, and inside CAN-SPAM for email. Classify service and marketing separately, honour opt-outs immediately, and keep suppression synchronised across every system.
- Candidate outreach in particular should default to a human sender, because a senior executive who realises they received an automated approach will not engage, and may tell others.
Nothing here is legal advice. Employment law, data protection law and contract terms with clients can each add requirements, and firms working across borders carry more.
Nothing here is legal advice. Rules in this area have moved more than once recently, and every template that states a commercial term or a guarantee goes to your own counsel before it goes live.
Seven systems forexecutive search.
We build one at a time and prove it moved before starting the next. The tiers are the dependency order, not a price list.
Tier 1Foundational
Nothing arrives late or unowned. These come first because everything above them assumes they are true.
Tier 2Growth
The recoverable money. These work the pools the foundational systems have made visible for the first time.
- 3Client Feedback Recoveryyou are hereThe largest recoverable pool in the firm.
- 4Business Development Pipeline & Mandate ConversionBusiness development visibility, which is the most resisted and should come after trust is established.
Tier 3Flagship
One connected system end to end, plus what the owner reads on a Monday. Only once the pieces are proven individually.
The tiers are the dependency order for executive search, not a price list. Most firms do not start at the first one, because the order is a default and the call is where it gets changed.
A note on sequencing this trade
Sequencing note. Systems 1 and 2 together are the entire pitch for this vertical. A firm that can see which searches are waiting on the client, and that agrees a feedback window at kickoff, has already recovered most of the value in this playbook. Do not lead with the flagship.
Back to the executive search overview for the stage map and where these fit.
Is this the oneyou need first?
Often it is not. On the call we look at what is actually costing you most right now, which is frequently a different system from the one that brought you to this page. If there is nothing worth building yet, we will say so.