A board signs off a plan that depends on technology: a platform modernised, a data layer that can carry AI into production, a delivery function that moves at the pace the investors were promised. Then it appoints the leader who will carry that plan using a process built for the last appointment.
The failure usually starts in the brief. It describes the seat as it was, with a bigger title, rather than what the plan needs from it in eighteen months. The comp is set to what the last person was paid, three or four years ago, into a smaller remit, in a different market. And the process assumes availability: a long form, a portal, a panel that schedules around its own diary. The people who have done the hard version of your program are in jobs they are good at. They are screened out before anyone has spoken to them, and the shortlist that does arrive is made up of the people who were already looking.
Nobody did anything wrong. The process was simply not designed for the person you need. We have written about how to brief this seat so it lands first time.
What retained executive search means at Altura
Founder-led, and we mean it literally. Every search is run personally by the founder, from the first briefing call to the accepted offer, after close to 20 years in search and more than 400 searches. There is no handover to a research team once the engagement is signed.
The brief is written as the story a candidate will hear, and tested on the first calls. From it we build a market map: every organisation where the right person could be sitting, the names in those seats, cross-referenced against a network built over close to 20 years. The network goes first; direct introductions and referrals surface the people who would never answer an advert. Structured outreach runs in parallel so nothing is missed.
Everyone who progresses has a structured conversation with the search partner about what they actually built, decided and carried: the platform decision they made and defended, the team they rebuilt and how they handled the people who did not come with them, the board paper that changed a decision, what they got wrong and what it cost. Referees are taken from above and beside the candidate, not only below. The shortlist is assessed and ranked against the brief with the reasoning shown, so the panel scores the same thing. More on the retained model here.
Technology recruitment, run like a search. This page is the lane where the search is the whole point.
The seats we search
The leadership tier of the six disciplines we work in.
- Technology leadership. CIO, CTO, CDO, CISO, heads of technology and engineering.
- Strategy and transformation. Chief transformation officers, transformation directors, heads of strategy, private equity value creation leads.
- Program, project and change. Program directors and PMO leads for the programs a plan depends on.
- SAP, ERP, CRM and enterprise platforms. Program directors and lead architects for S/4HANA, Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Workday and ServiceNow.
- Data, AI and analytics. Heads of data, data platform leads, ML engineering leads.
- Specialist technology and engineering. Heads of cloud and platform, cyber, trading and market data technology.
How the engagement runs
Three to six weeks from brief to accepted offer. In week one you get a verdict on comp: whether the package will reach the people you have described, with the evidence behind it. If it will not, you decide early whether to move the number or move the brief, rather than finding out in week five after the panel has invested in the process.
Steering is weekly, with the market map on the table: who has been approached, who has said what, and what the market is telling us about the role. The assessed shortlist arrives in weeks three to four. We stay in the process through offer, negotiation and notice period, and we check in with the appointee and with you at 30, 60 and 90 days after the start. How we like to be briefed is here.
The engagement is exclusive. The fee is fixed at the brief and staged in thirds, and every appointment carries a twelve-week replacement guarantee.
Where Altura sits
Altura is an executive search firm and technology recruitment agency headquartered in Sydney and working nationally. The search lane on this page is the senior end of what we do; the same assessment discipline runs through our contract, interim and specialist recruitment, which is why clients who first came for a CIO tend to come back for the team beneath.
Proof
More than 400 searches across the founder’s career. More than 90 per cent of Altura’s clients return. Clients across enterprise, mid-market, private equity-backed and high-growth businesses, in financial services, superannuation, wealth, capital markets, professional services, technology and the public sector. The number we watch most closely is the return rate, because a board does not come back to a search firm whose last appointment did not hold. What we are seeing in the market for these seats is in Insights.
Questions boards and investors ask
A fixed fee agreed at the brief and staged in thirds across the engagement, on an exclusive basis, with a twelve-week replacement guarantee. It is in writing before work begins. The fee buys a complete search of the market with the founder running it personally, not a success fee on whoever happened to be available that month.
Recruitment generally advertises a role and screens the people who respond, often with several agencies competing on a contingent fee. Executive search maps the whole market for one seat, approaches the people who are not looking, assesses them against the brief and presents a ranked shortlist, on an exclusive, retained basis. The candidates are different because the method is different: most of the people on an Altura shortlist were not on the market when we called them.
Three to six weeks from brief to accepted offer, with the comp verdict in week one and the assessed shortlist in weeks three to four. The variable is the brief. A clear remit, an honest number and a panel that can meet at short notice move fastest.
Yes. Chief transformation officers, CIOs and CTOs, heads of data and the value creation leads who sit alongside them, for portfolio companies and for the funds that own them. A PE timeline is not an enterprise timeline, and the brief usually carries a 100-day plan behind it. We run the search to that clock.
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