Author: Sue Howard

  • Ghosted? How to reach top passive talent

    Ghosted? How to reach top passive talent

    Silence: the most expensive sound in executive search. Few things sting more, especially after all the time you spent carefully drafting that InMail.

    And yet why does it happen so often? Because silence isn’t just an occasional miss but often a regular outcome when targeting elite talent. 

    The way I see it, it’s built right into the math. 

    Think about it: the best passive candidates aren’t even job hunting at all, but you wouldn’t know it by their inboxes. All are flooded daily with low-leverage pitches asking them to jump ship.

    But you and I both know, these executives aren’t ghosting you because they lack ambition or they love their current seat so much. The simple truth is that it’s a perfectly rational filter against commodity communication. 

    I see it all the time. The vast majority of recruiter outreach reads like an administrative announcement. Nothing says “pass” like a flat “we have X vacancy.” If you want to get past that knee-jerk filter, your outreach to senior leaders has to read less like an alert and more like an insider flagging a move before the market catches on.

    The anatomy of a message that gets deleted

    Nearly every executive sourcing message I see these days follows the same beat structure, and just like most of us do with AI slop, executives have learned to spot it fast. So let me break it down for you.

    1. The flattery open: “I came across your impressive background at [Company] and noticed your deep experience in cloud architecture…”

    2. The generic ask: “We’re representing a high-growth, venture-backed SaaS company looking for a dynamic VP of Engineering…”

    3. The high-friction close: “Do you have 30 minutes this week for a discovery call?”

    I give this template an immediate fail. Like, what value is even being offered here? Because realistically, no serious candidate would consider, let alone commit, without clear justifiable evidence.

    A senior executive protects their time like some engineers lock down private repositories against AI-scraping. Red flag jargon like “dynamic leader,” “fast-growing startup,” “vetted opportunity,” immediately signals to them that the sender hasn’t done a lick of the work to understand their actual role. So to someone managing a live roadmap or steering a corporate turnaround, that vocabulary isn’t a hook, it’s a straight up tell.

    Job description vs lifecycle stage

    Strong executive copy talks peer to peer. It speaks to the specific business lifecycle stage the candidate suits most.. Talent at the elite level tends to fall into 4 distinct operational modes:

    1. Builders (take infrastructure from zero to one, fast)
    2. Operators (run a mature, steady-state operation at scale)
    3. Transformation architects (rebuild something broken over a year or two)
    4. Stabilizers (stop the bleeding before it sinks the company)

    What I’m saying here is that someone who takes infrastructure from zero to one thinks nothing like an operator running a thousand-person global team, and your message needs to convey that difference.

    So that means, and I can’t stress this enough, your opening move can’t be a job description. Instead, it has to be a specific operational bottleneck your client is facing, anchored directly to the exact kind of problem this candidate has already solved. Get that right, and the message stops reading like a pitch. It starts reading like a case study written specifically for them.

    Drafting InMail that won’t get ignored

    1. Lead with market intelligence

    In this context, flattery will get you nowhere, so cut the compliments entirely. Instead, open with an observation about a shift, a bottleneck, or a milestone specific to their world. The first sentence should prove you understand their world, not that you read their profile.

    2. Frame the role as a puzzle, not a listing

    You need to skip any mention of funding rounds or perks, which I know sounds counter-intuitive, but it works. Surprisingly, it’s actually way better to lead with the friction. Maybe it’s a legacy migration under regulatory pressure, or a fractured engineering culture that needs rebuilding, or whatever matches their exact track record. The match is the key here. You’re not offering a job change. You’re naming a problem only someone with only their specific history can solve by implying “hey, you know the solution to this problem has your name on it.”

    3. Ask for permission, not effort

    “Quick call” and “30-minute block” are two of the biggest drivers of ghosting, because demanding time before any trust exists always fails. But you can easily bypass resistance with a low-friction, text-first ask instead. Specifically, ask permission to provide a one-page brief or market report they can read on their own schedule. 

    Before and after

    Here’s a hypothetical scenario for the same candidate, but with two very different emails.

    The status quo (high ghost rate)

    Subject: Career Opportunity: VP of Engineering Position

    Hi David, I hope this message finds you well. I’ve been following your career at CloudScale and am incredibly impressed by your leadership background. I’m currently partnering with an elite, Series B fintech client that is expanding rapidly. They’re looking for a world-class VP of Engineering to manage their growing tech team and drive product innovation. Given your background in engineering architecture, I think you’d be a fantastic culture fit. Do you have some time for a brief introductory call this Tuesday or Thursday afternoon?

    The Executive Writers Room approach (high engagement)

    Subject: CloudScale’s multi-region migration / Legacy architecture friction

    David, I read through your team’s engineering notes on the framework you built to resolve CloudScale’s multi-region latency issues last quarter. That kind of structural discipline is rare at scale-up speed.

    I’m currently advising the board of a cross-border fintech platform at a similar inflection point, scaling from 40 to 120 engineers, with throughput degrading under strict regulatory constraints. They don’t need a manager. They need an architect who can scale a high-throughput transaction ledger without the platform buckling.

    I’ve put together a two-page diagnostic on the platform’s current bottlenecks and the board’s 18-month roadmap. If you’re open to seeing how this maps to your CloudScale work, reply “send” and I’ll drop it in this thread.

    Why the second message works

    The Executive Writers Room version works because it respects the candidate’s time and status instead of asking for both upfront. Drop the live-call requirement, replace it with a text-based asset, and the barrier to engagement shrinks down to a single word: “send.” That word is the whole ask. And once they’ve said it, they’ve already engaged on their own terms, not yours.

    I’ve watched enough of these campaigns to know the pattern by now. The firms that get replies treat executive outreach as corporate narrative like this and you can expect consistent engagement. Treat it as a vacancy notice and you can expect to be ghosted, every time. Because when it comes to passive candidates, the fix is never more volume, but messages that are actually worth reading.

    Executive Writers Room builds high-performance executive recruitment copy for firms that place top leaders. DM me with samples of your current outreach assets, and I’ll provide you with a 1-page audit review of what you’ve got right now. 

  • WRITING A STERLING RECRUITMENT CASE STUDY

    WRITING A STERLING RECRUITMENT CASE STUDY

    Turn Past Placements Into Enterprise Mandates

    Every executive search firm has its list of proudest moments: a critical C-suite placement that saved a failing product roadmap, a discrete recruitment of a competitor’s top VP, or the smooth execution of a highly sensitive founder succession.

    But too many tech search firms reduce those transformative business milestones into a generic wall of company logos, or worse, a dry bulleted list under the heading: “Recent Successes.”

    In the enterprise tech ecosystem, reducing that high-stakes executive placement to a logo is a tragic waste of revenue-generating asset potential.

    If a single retained placement is worth $40,000 to $100,000+ to your firm, your marketing can’t read like a sterile inventory of firms.  Instead, structure your past wins as high-performance narrative assets, and you’ll position your firm to consistently win those exclusive enterprise mandates from the most sought after venture capitalists, private equity boards, and Chief People Officers.

    To illustrate, let’s break down the strategic anatomy of a high-ticket B2B case study designed to convert cold tech boards into retained clients.

    1. Reject the “Resume Format” (Focus on Corporate Life-Cycles)

    Have you ever noticed how traditional recruitment case studies often tend to read like extended resumes? Here’s a typical example: “We found a candidate with 15 years of experience who went to an Ivy League school and put them at a SaaS company.”

    How many of these do you think enterprise tech buyers see in a day?

    The reality is that those buyers don’t care about a candidate’s linear history; what they really care about is lifecycle alignment. They want to know if you can find a leader who can solve their specific, current operational bottleneck.

    Here’s the fix: when structuring a case study, frame the narrative around corporate friction. Was the client facing a 14% customer churn rate? Were they drowning in technical debt? Were they trying to transition a legacy architecture to cloud-native? Your case study should establish the macroeconomic villain immediately. Because without that tension, there’s no narrative value.

    2. Isolate the “Invisible” Search Mechanics

    Any agency can run an inbound keyword search on LinkedIn or post a job description. Elite search firms command premium retainer fees because of their invisible, proprietary sourcing mechanics. So your case study should pull back the curtain on that process. 

    Here’s a tip: don’t just say you “found talent.” Detail the architecture of the search:

    • How did you map the passive market to identify leaders who weren’t looking?
    • How did your partners confidentially navigate the ecosystem without triggering market rumors?
    • What peer-to-peer strategic narrative did you use to convince a highly compensated, thriving executive to consider a risky turnaround opportunity?

    By spelling out the sophistication of your process, you justify your premium pricing and prove you’re a consultative partner, not an order-taker.

    3. Quantify the Velocity and the Ultimate ROI

    In B2B tech, a C-suite vacancy is an expensive bleed. Every week a Chief Product Officer or VP of Engineering seat sits empty, product shipments stall, engineering morale drops, an attrition chain reaction is triggered, and market share strays dangerously toward competitors.

    To address this, every high-performance case study should feature speed and long-term fiscal impact.

    • The Velocity Metric: “Secured the shortlist within 21 days; placed the executive within 62 days.”
    • The ROI Metric: Don’t just stop at the placement date. Follow up with the data. Did the new CPO lower product churn by 10% over the next 12 months? Did they help secure a successful Series C funding round?

    Showing the business trajectory after the placement connects your recruitment expertise directly to enterprise revenue expansion.

    The Corporate Blueprint: The Hero’s Journey for Search

    When structured correctly, a B2B case study functions as a corporate Hero’s Journey:

    1. The Client (The Hero) is facing a critical growth plateau or transition crisis.
    2. The C-Suite Vacancy (The Villain) is actively draining market share and delaying product roadmaps.
    3. The Search Firm (The Guide) deploys a precise, passive sourcing methodology (The Magic) to uncover the elusive 1% of talent.
    4. The Placement (The Resolution) churn stabilizes, engineering accelerates, and ARR is preserved.

    From Execution to Asset

    As a Managing Partner, we know that your days are consumed with vetting talent, managing client relationships, and closing mandates. Squeezing in time to sit down, interview your consultants, extract the technical nuances of a turnaround, and write a high-performance corporate report probably isn’t a realistic expectation.

    On the other hand, staying silent leaves your best revenue-generating assets on the table.

    If your firm is ready to transform past placements into strategic content pipelines that convert enterprise tech prospects into long-term retainer clients, let’s talk.

    Executive Writers Room specializes in building high-performance executive recruitment copy that consistently places top leaders.

    Executive Writers Room builds high-performance executive recruitment copy for firms that place top leaders. DM me with samples of your current outreach assets, and I’ll provide you with a 1-page audit review of what you’ve got right now.