What it is
Executive search, sometimes still called headhunting, is the branch of retained search focused specifically on senior and C-suite mandates: CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, VPs, board directors and other leadership roles where the client cannot risk a public posting or a slow contingency process. Rather than advertising a vacancy and screening whoever applies, an executive search consultant maps the relevant market, identifies the handful of people who could genuinely do the job, and approaches them directly, often while they hold no intention of leaving their current role.
Three things separate it from a standard desk. The engagement is retained: the client pays a fee in staged instalments to secure one firm's exclusive commitment, not a result. The sourcing is passive-first, because the strongest candidates are rarely applying anywhere. And the process is discreet, since both a senior departure at the client and a senior move by the candidate usually need to stay quiet until terms are agreed.
Executive search is not a bigger contingency desk with better clients. It is a different discipline, built on discretion rather than volume.
Why it matters
A mis-hire at C-suite level costs far more than a junior one, not just in salary but in strategy, culture and the time a business loses while the wrong person is in the seat. Clients paying for executive search are buying certainty and confidentiality, not speed or volume, and they are choosing the firm, not just the search, because the consultant's judgement and relationships carry as much weight as the shortlist.
That changes what BD means at this level. A volume cadence of cold outreach reads as exactly what a senior executive ignores. What works is knowing which company is about to need a leader before the vacancy is public, and having enough credibility and relationship history with the right passive candidates that the approach feels earned rather than cold.
How boilr handles it
boilr narrows the ICP to the seniority band, functions and sectors a desk retains against, then watches for the signals that precede a senior mandate: an executive departure, a leadership hire elsewhere that leaves a gap behind it, a funding round that forces a board to professionalise, an acquisition that triggers a reshuffle. Because these signals fire before a role is ever advertised, the desk can open a conversation while the client is still deciding how to handle the search at all.
The agent also identifies the economic buyer, the person with the actual authority to sign a retainer, and enriches the account so the outreach starts with the right conversation rather than a generic pitch. Relationship history with passive candidates and past client contacts lives in the Company Brain, so the institutional network a senior search depends on survives between mandates and consultant changes, rather than living in one person's contacts app.
