Define the real job before you search.
A title and job description are starting points. The search gets stronger when the leadership team agrees on the outcome, authority, constraints and changes the new executive is actually expected to deliver.
Staying Power + Executive Search Insights
What thirty years of search taught me about hiring people who last.
The resume tells you where someone has been. The harder question is what happens after they arrive—when the title, the team, the business and the expectations begin to change.
STAYING
POWER
What Thirty Years of Search Taught Me About Hiring People Who Last
A forthcoming work by Ken Edwards, President of Precision Placements.
The Thirty-Year Question
Why do some hires keep adding value for years while others stall or fail?
Staying Power grew out of more than three decades spent on both sides of the hiring decision—as an operating executive responsible for results, as a business owner living with the consequences of hires, and as an executive recruiter following placements long after the offer was accepted.
The answer is not one trait or one assessment. Long-term success is usually a relationship between the person's capability, the job, the leader, the team, the organization and the individual's willingness to keep learning as all of those things change.
“The resume is only evidence of where a person has been. Staying power is about what happens after they arrive.”
Ideas that shape the search
Six principles behind the way Precision Placements evaluates senior hires.
These are not abstract leadership ideas. They change what we ask before a search begins, how we interview, what we listen for and how we judge whether a placement was actually successful.
The resume tells what happened. The conversation tells why.
Career chronology matters, but the logic behind the moves often tells more. Why did the person join? What changed? What did they accomplish? What did they learn that altered the way they led next time?
Experience is evidence—not a verdict.
A strong track record deserves attention. It does not guarantee that the next environment will reward the same assumptions, leadership style or operating approach.
Fit should not mean familiar.
The goal is not to hire a clone of the people already succeeding. Shared values can coexist with different perspectives, communication styles and ways of seeing the business.
The same job is never the same job forever.
Markets move. Ownership changes. Technology advances. Teams evolve. The strongest hire is often the person who can keep becoming useful as the role becomes different from the one originally accepted.
Judge the placement after reality has tested it.
Acceptance of the offer is an event, not the final measure. A better question is whether the organization is stronger because of who is sitting in the role after the first-year glow wears off.
Featured Insights
Practical observations from search, hiring and leadership.
This page will become the home for selected essays and observations from Staying Power, Precision Placements and more than thirty years of conversations with companies and executives.
Search Strategy
The original search specification is a hypothesis.
A search usually begins with a job description and a list of requirements. Both matter. Neither should automatically be treated as finished.
The first few interviews often teach the client something about the position itself. A company may discover that process knowledge matters more than exact product experience, or that customer access matters more than a perfect title match. Good market evidence should sharpen the definition of success—not simply confirm what everyone assumed before the search started.
Technology + Judgment
Technology can find candidates. Judgment chooses them.
Databases, automation and AI can identify people faster and search a market more thoroughly than the tools available when Precision Placements began. That is a significant advantage.
But efficiency is not the same thing as judgment. A system can find the title “VP Sales.” It cannot automatically know whether that executive owns the relationships a particular company needs, whether the scope behind the title is what it appears to be, or whether adjacent experience may transfer better than an exact keyword match. Technology should expand the field of view. Experienced conversation still has to interpret it.
Executive Character
The interview starts before the interview.
Early in Ken's career, the president of a fast-growing technology-services company would sometimes ask his receptionist how a visiting vendor had treated her before the meeting. What many visitors did not know was that she was his niece.
The family connection makes the story memorable, but it is not the point. People reveal character in the way they treat someone they believe cannot help them. At the executive level, how a candidate treats the assistant, the receptionist, the plant employee, the server at dinner or the person coordinating the interview can tell you something the polished answer in the conference room may not.
Career Evaluation
Longevity is not the same thing as staying power.
Fifteen or twenty years with one company may be evidence of stability. The more revealing question is what happened during those years.
Did responsibilities grow? Did the executive survive new ownership, restructuring, new technology, new markets or a major leadership change? Did the person continue producing as the job became different from the one they originally accepted? Longevity tells you how long someone stayed. Staying power tells you whether they kept growing while they stayed.
Two sides of the same decision
Useful to the person making the hire—and the person considering the move.
Make the search about the business problem, not only the job description.
What must this person accomplish? What authority will they really have? What is changing around the role? Which requirements are truly essential, and which are habits left over from the last search?
Explore Precision Placements for companiesUnderstand the opportunity behind the title.
A strong career move is not simply a larger title or compensation package. It is an informed decision about the leader, mandate, culture, expectations, risk and room to keep creating value.
Explore our candidate approachFrom ideas to execution
Staying Power is not separate from the search process.
The ideas on this page show up in the way Precision Placements defines a search, evaluates a career story, tests assumptions, develops a shortlist, calibrates with the client and supports the decision through the close.
For priority assignments, our engaged and retained search models give us the time and market access to develop those judgments more fully.
The question behind every important search
Will this person still look like the right hire after reality has tested the decision?
If you are making a consequential senior hire in textiles or apparel, tell us what the business needs the next executive to accomplish.
All client and candidate conversations are confidential.