If you’re a retained executive search firm trying to win more clients, your website should primarily speak to prospective clients. Of course candidates need somewhere to find roles and understand what you do. But if you’re already very well connected to your candidate market and what you actually need is more retained search work, it makes little sense for candidates to get most of your marketing attention.
And this is something I hear from search founders all the time.
“I do not need more candidates”
I was talking to a search founder recently who summed it up rather brilliantly: “I do not need more candidates. I have them coming out of my ears.”
I’ve heard versions of this from plenty of other search founders too. They have strong networks. Candidates know them. Senior people respond to them and make introductions. Finding and engaging the right people is obviously still a huge part of delivering a successful search, but a shortage of candidates isn’t necessarily the problem they need their marketing to solve. They need clients.
And that’s where I think executive search marketing can get a little muddled. Clients and candidates both interact with your firm, but they have very different relationships with it. A candidate might want to know which opportunities you’re handling or whether you work in their particular market. A prospective client is deciding whether to trust you with a senior appointment and a significant fee.
That distinction is particularly important in retained executive search. A contingent recruitment firm working across a high volume of live vacancies may have a strong commercial reason to keep attracting candidates to those roles.
Executive search works differently. The client commissions your firm for an exclusive search and advisory service. You’ll then identify, approach and assess relevant senior people as part of delivering that work. Candidates are integral to what you do, but the client is buying it.
So if winning more retained work is the commercial priority, I think the client needs to be the primary audience for your marketing too.
Look at who gets most of your website
Your homepage is probably the easiest place to see whether that is actually happening. Have a look at yours and see what gets the prime space.
Maybe the biggest button says “Search jobs”. Perhaps candidates are invited to register their CV straight away. The main message may be about helping senior professionals make their next move. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that.
But now look for the client. How quickly can someone considering your firm understand exactly what you specialise in? Can they see the kind of senior appointments you handle? And what can they actually find that gives them confidence you know what you’re doing?
If your biggest commercial challenge is winning new retained-search clients, but your most prominent marketing is designed to attract candidates you already have plenty of, there is a disconnect worth examining.
I’m not suggesting there is some magic percentage of client versus candidate content you should aim for. There isn’t. I am suggesting that the balance should make sense for the business you actually have and the business you want more of.
Talking to clients means giving them something useful
Making a website more client-focused doesn’t mean swapping “Register your CV” for “Book a call” and declaring the job done. The content itself needs to help the prospective client.
Search firm websites can sound remarkably similar. Everyone is experienced. Everyone has a fantastic network. Everyone understands their market and provides a personal service. Those things may all be completely true, but the prospective client still needs some way of judging them.
This is one of the reasons I bang on about client-facing content so much. A good article lets you demonstrate what you know about the market you specialise in. You can talk intelligently about the hiring problems your clients are dealing with or explain something you’re seeing in your particular corner of executive search.
Case studies give them something different. You’ve already done the work. You’ve solved difficult search problems and made successful senior appointments. But if none of that experience becomes visible afterwards, the next prospective client has no way of knowing about it.
And confidentiality doesn’t have to stop you. I wrote about this in more detail last month in How to Write Executive Search Case Studies When Confidentiality Is an Issue.
Client-facing content gives prospective clients something to assess before they’ve ever spoken to you. For executive search firms, I think that is particularly important. You’re selling a high-value service that somebody can’t inspect before they buy it. They are making judgements about your expertise and whether they trust you to represent them in the market. Your marketing has a role in helping them make those judgements.
Your candidate content still needs somewhere to live
None of this means hiding your vacancies or pretending candidates don’t exist. They are a huge part of your business. Current opportunities need somewhere sensible to live. Candidates may want to understand the markets you cover or find out how to get in touch. And there will be times when candidate-facing content is exactly what you need to publish.
The point is to know why you’re publishing it and how prominent it needs to be. If you’re entering a new specialist market and need to build relationships with senior candidates there, your priorities may look different.
But if you already have candidates coming out of your ears and what you really need is more clients, your marketing should reflect that. It sounds obvious when you put it like that, yet it is surprisingly easy for a firm to be doing loads of marketing without stopping to ask who most of it is actually for.
Try this on your homepage
You can get a decent first impression in a couple of minutes. Open your homepage and look at what somebody sees before they start digging around the site. Work out which elements mainly serve prospective clients and which mainly serve candidates.
Then ask yourself:
- Who gets the clearest call to action?
- Can a prospective client immediately understand what we specialise in and the kind of search work we do?
- What can they see that helps them judge our experience?
- Does the overall balance reflect the audience we actually need more of?
There is no score to hit. You’re looking for a mismatch between what the business needs and what the marketing is doing.
If client acquisition is the priority and very little on that first screen helps a prospective client understand or assess the firm, that’s worth looking at more closely. The answer may be a change in hierarchy. Strong evidence may already exist elsewhere on the site and be difficult to find. Or the firm may have very little client-facing content to draw on yet.
Perhaps you’ve completed dozens of brilliant searches but never turned them into case studies. Or you have years of specialist knowledge in the founder’s head and almost none of it has made its way into your content.
Check the rest of your marketing too
Your homepage is an easy place to spot the problem because you can see the audience balance quite quickly. Then it’s worth doing the same exercise with the rest of your marketing.
Look at your LinkedIn content. If someone followed your firm for the last few months, what would they learn? Would they see what you know about their market and the leadership issues they’re dealing with? Would they get any sense of the searches you’ve successfully delivered? Or would they mostly learn which vacancies you currently have open?
Then look at your articles. Are you answering the questions prospective clients have when they’re thinking about a senior appointment? Are you sharing some of the specialist knowledge that sits inside the business?
And what happens when you finish a search? Does all that useful experience disappear into the next assignment, or does some of it become evidence that can help a future client understand what you’re good at?
This is what I mean when I talk about client-facing content. Client-facing content gives the people who might buy from you something genuinely useful. It helps them understand what you know and see evidence of what you’ve done. If clients are the audience you need more of, they need to be able to find that.
FAQs
Should an executive search website be aimed at clients or candidates?
For a retained executive search firm trying to win more search work, prospective clients should usually be the primary audience. Candidates still need clear routes to roles and relevant information, but clients are purchasing the search service. Your website should give them enough information and evidence to understand and assess your firm.
Should an executive search firm have a job board?
There is no reason an executive search firm cannot have a job board. The more useful question is how prominent it needs to be. If candidate attraction is already strong and client acquisition is the commercial priority, make sure open roles aren’t dominating the information and evidence prospective clients need.
What should prospective clients find on an executive search homepage?
They should quickly understand your specialist market and the kind of senior search work you handle. They should also find evidence that helps them assess your experience and expertise, plus a clear route to learn more or start a conversation with the firm.
How can I tell whether my search firm’s marketing is too candidate-focused?
Look across your website and recent LinkedIn activity, then include your articles and evidence from completed searches. Ask who gets the most useful information from what you’re publishing. If you need more clients but most of your visible marketing primarily serves candidates, there may be a commercial mismatch worth addressing.
What can a prospective client learn about you before they get in touch?
Your prospective clients are unlikely to judge your firm from one homepage section or LinkedIn post. They can read what you’ve written, see how you talk about your market and look for evidence that you’ve handled work like theirs before.
My Pre-Contact Trust Scorecard is designed to help you look at your firm from that perspective and see what a prospective client can currently find before they ever contact you.
About BRCS
I’m Beth Ritchie, founder of Beth Ritchie Creative Services Ltd. I work with founder-led specialist executive search firms that have plenty of expertise inside the business but don’t always have the time or marketing resource to turn it into consistent client-facing content.
Through my Content Partnerships for Search Firms, I help firms turn that expertise and experience into LinkedIn content, SEO articles and case studies that give prospective clients more to work with when they’re assessing the firm.