Hire the leader your next two years depend on.
Tell us the mandate. Whether you need to hire a Head of Engineering, VP Engineering, or CTO, we bring you leaders who have already done the job at your stage. You pay nothing beyond the Search Activation Fee until we do.
1,200 senior hires closed for US, UK, European and APAC companies since 2016. 93% of them are still in seat a year later. If your leadership role has been open for months, the pool is not the problem, the search is.
A senior team member responds within one business day · 97 NPS across 270 clients · No lock in
The quality of a search is determined early. Start with the role, the context, and what a strong hire looks like at 12 months.
Your details are held in strict confidence and are not shared with third parties.
Received.
A senior team member will review your enquiry and respond directly.
Why leadership searches fail, in four places.
An open leadership role is a stalled roadmap, a stretched team and a competitor shipping first. Walk the four points below to see what each one is costing you, and what we do about it.
The brief describes the company you wish you were.
A mandate built from an org chart rather than the market produces a search that stalls in month three. The role as written cannot be filled at the compensation on offer, and nobody finds out until four candidates have declined.
We pressure test the brief in week one.
Mandate architecture tests the role, the success outcomes, the compensation reality and the decision process against live market evidence. You get a written Role Manifesto, and if the brief cannot be filled as written you hear it in week two, not month four.
Fix this on my mandate →The right leaders are not looking for jobs.
Title-based sourcing reaches the 14% of the market that is active. The other 86% are inside companies and not responding to inbound. Most searches never get to them.
Who the right leaders are, why they would move, and where they actually work.
We map 140 or more target firms per mandate before contacting anyone. Outreach is built around the candidate's career logic, not your job description.
Fix this on my mandate →CVs compress evidence into a format designed to impress, not inform.
A hiring decision made on a CV and an instinct has no more predictive value than chance. The track record gaps, the motivation misalignment and the cultural friction that cause a hire to fail at month eight are not visible in a CV.
Track record, motivation, cultural fit and early reference signal. All in writing.
Every shortlisted candidate arrives with a written intelligence brief. Twelve assessment dimensions, structured across evidence, inference and risk signal.
Fix this on my mandate →Counter-offers and competing processes surface at the finish line.
The offer stage is where most executive searches die quietly. Motivations never tested, compensation never benchmarked in local terms.
Offer managed from the motivation interview, not from the term sheet.
We run a structured motivation interview before any candidate is presented. Counter-offer scenarios, competing processes and equity expectations are mapped and managed.
Fix this on my mandate →Miss all four and the search restarts. Six to twelve weeks per cycle, and a wrong senior hire costs multiples of the salary once ramp, exit and lost roadmap are counted.
We run leadership searches for US, UK, European and APAC companies.
Global since 2021, with native coverage across EST, CET, GMT and IST.
US and Canadian companies
EST and PST scheduling. India GCC leadership, distributed engineering leads and VP-level searches.
UK, DACH and Nordics
GMT and CET overlap. Engineering and product leadership for SaaS, fintech and deep tech companies.
India-headquartered companies
Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, NCR and Mumbai. Leadership search for consumer, B2B SaaS and fintech.
Singapore, Australia and beyond
IST and SGT overlap. Regional leadership and India team build mandates.
Four stages. Three invoices. You only pay for milestones you can see.
Every stage is gated by your sign off before the next begins, and the payment sits on the stage that earns it.
Calibrate
It reserves the delivery team and funds the architecture. You keep the written mandate and the market map even if you stop here.
Map and engage
The heaviest part of the search costs you nothing extra.
Assess and present
Billed when you accept the shortlist for interview.
Close and integrate
The balance, paid when your candidate starts. The 90-day guarantee runs from this date.
Total fee is a percentage of the placed candidate’s first year base, agreed in writing before the mandate opens. Every placement carries a 90-day replacement guarantee.
Get the fee in writing →Comparable mandates, and what they cost in weeks.
Numbers from dedicated mandates, not aggregated agency averages.
VP Engineering, Series B Fintech. Six weeks.
Four offer-stage declines. Brief redesigned. Closed in 6 weeks with zero drop-offs.
Read the case study →Six senior closes in eleven weeks, all six still there at month eighteen.
NBA needed senior engineering talent in India for a strategic digital products build after earlier efforts failed on calibration.
What our clients say about Talhive executive search.
“Talhive has been an outstanding partner for NBA in helping us find top engineering talent in India.”
Numbers on this mandate were verified by NBA HR. The full dossier is available on request under NDA.
Across 270 clients. The B2B services benchmark is 31.
We will put you on a call with a client who hired the same profile you are hiring.
Ask for a reference →The other mandates we run alongside this one.
Executive search is one answer, not the only one.
India team build
Building a technology team in India from zero. City selection, leadership first sequence, employer brand.
Explore →Embedded RPO
An embedded recruiter inside your team, owning pipeline and hiring operations end to end.
Explore →Engineering and AI hiring
The full engineering practice, assessment dimensions and gate criteria.
Explore →Product and design hiring
Product and design leadership for teams where the roadmap drives the engineering plan.
Explore →The five questions every buyer asks us.
Answered plainly, including the commercial ones.
When exactly do you invoice?
COMMERCIALS+Three times. A 20% Search Activation Fee when we agree the mandate, which funds the architecture and reserves the delivery team. 10% on offer acceptance. 70% after the candidate joins and completes 30 days. The balance on your candidate’s first day. If a milestone is not met, it is not billed.
What happens if we stop the search halfway?
RISK+You keep every deliverable produced to that stage. The Search Activation Fee is not refunded, but the balance invoices are not raised. There is no lock-in beyond the Search Activation Fee.
Will you work contingency instead?
SEARCH MODEL+No. Contingency changes every incentive in the search. It produces speculative CVs rather than assessed candidates, and it removes accountability for the outcome.
How long does a leadership search take?
TIMELINE+Thirty days on average from brief to accepted offer. The range is 21 to 60 days depending on role complexity and notice period.
Can you run the search confidentially?
STRUCTURE+Yes. We have managed co-founder replacements and board-level restructures without the incumbent or the market becoming aware.