How to find executive jobs that aren't advertised: search firms, boards and your network

Below a certain level, a job search is mostly about finding the vacancy. Above it, the vacancy goes to a shortlist, and the question is whether your name is on it. That shift catches out plenty of capable people the first time they go for a general manager, director or C-suite role. They search the job boards, find very little at their level, and decide the market is dead. Usually it isn't. It just isn't public.

Why are so many senior roles never advertised?

There are good reasons, and all of them make sense from the company's side.

• Someone is still in the seat. A company replacing an executive who hasn't left yet, or hasn't been told, cannot put the role on a job board.
• An advert sends a signal. Customers, staff, competitors and investors all read job boards. A listing for a new chief financial officer invites questions a company may not want to answer yet.
• The field is small and known by name. For a senior role in a given industry, the credible candidates are a short list of people, not a crowd. It is faster to approach them than to sift an inbox.
• The first choice is often inside. Of the 59 S&P 500 companies that named a new chief executive in 2025, 73 percent promoted from within, according to Spencer Stuart's count of CEO transitions.

Some senior roles are advertised, including much of the public sector, and it is worth watching for them. It is not worth waiting on them.

How does retained executive search work?

A retained search firm works for the company, not for you. The company engages it for one specific role, usually on an exclusive basis. The AESC's Candidate Bill of Rights, the standard the executive search profession's association sets for its members, says the firm you speak with should be the only one the client has authorised for that search, and that it protects the confidentiality of your interest.

The consultant and a research team map the market: who does this job now, at which companies, and who is rated by the people around them. Then they approach people directly, many of whom are not looking. They interview, assess and take references, and bring a short list to the client. The client makes the decision.

That shapes how to deal with them. A search consultant is not your agent, and a firm with no live search that fits you has little it can do with your resume today. What they value is someone who fits a brief they are working on, or someone who can help them fill one.

Contingent recruiters, paid when a candidate they put forward is hired, work more of the middle of the market. Both are worth knowing, and working well with a recruiter follows the same rules either way.

Who else fills senior roles?

A search firm is one route. The others run through people who sit above the role.

• The board and the chair. Directors are usually senior people with long networks of their own, and when a senior role opens they are natural people to ask who they know.
• Investors. Private equity and venture investors have a direct stake in who runs the companies they back, and they know executives they have worked with before.
• Advisers. The company's lawyers, accountants and consultants hear about leadership changes early, and are asked for names.
• The executive team. A chief executive hiring a new direct report will think first of people they have worked with, and ask the people around them.

Many of these people also talk to the search firm. Part of mapping a market is asking well-connected people who they would recommend. Your name reaches a shortlist most reliably by being said out loud by someone the consultant or the client trusts.

At senior level, one of the most valuable things you can have is people willing to say your name.

How do you get on an executive recruiter's radar?

• Be findable. Search researchers use LinkedIn to map a market, so a headline that says your level and your work (“Chief operating officer, logistics and supply chain”) gets found where a slogan does not. Put scope in your roles: the size of the team, budget and business you ran.
• Know the consultants in your sector. Ask peers who moved recently who ran their search, and notice which firms appear in appointment announcements in your industry. Then write to two or three of them: a short note on what you have done, what you would consider next, and an offer to help.
• Be a good source. When a consultant calls about a role that isn't right for you, help anyway, and suggest two people who would suit it. Consultants remember who helped them fill a search.
• Stay close to the people they call. Former bosses, directors you have worked with and peers at competitors are exactly who a researcher asks for names. Keep in touch, and tell them discreetly what you would consider.
• Don't blanket-send. A resume emailed to every firm on a list, with no search in mind, gives nobody a reason to act. A specific note to the right few consultants does more.

How should you handle a call from a headhunter?

Take it, even when you are happy where you are. A first call is a conversation, not a commitment, and it is one of the few ways a senior role reaches you before it is filled.

Listen more than you talk. Ask what the company is trying to fix, why the role is open now, who it reports to and what the consultant thinks the hardest part of the job is. Be honest early about anything that rules it out, such as location, timing or package, so nobody spends three weeks on a role you would never take.

If it isn't for you, say so plainly and say what would be. “This one isn't right for me, because I want to stay closer to operations. If you work on a chief operating officer search in logistics, I'd like to hear about it. In the meantime, two people you should talk to are…” That answer turns a no into a relationship, and it is the one the consultant is most likely to remember.

If it might be for you, ask what happens next and when, then do what you say you will, when you said you would. How you handle the process is part of how you are assessed.

What does a search consultant need from you in a process?

• A straight answer on what you want, and what you don't.
• Honest numbers on your current package and your expectations. A surprise late in a search costs trust on both sides.
• A resume that shows scope, the budget, team and business you ran, and is accurate to the last figure. Consultants and clients check.
• References who are ready, and have been told to expect a call.
• Discretion. The search is confidential for the company as well as for you.
• A heads-up if you are in other processes, or if anything changes.

Treat the consultant as a trusted adviser. They know the client, the brief and the politics, and a placement that works matters to them as much as to you.

How do your network and a search firm work together?

They aren't alternatives. The strongest position is to be the candidate the search firm finds and the board has already heard of.

If you know someone on the board or leadership team of a company where a search is running, tell the consultant rather than going around them. A consultant who hears from you that the chair knows your work can use it. One who finds out later that you went behind the process has less reason to put you forward next time.

And keep working your network when no search is running. Senior moves often start with a conversation about a problem, not a vacancy: a former colleague who now runs a business mentions something that isn't working, and a role takes shape around the person who could fix it. That is the side door at senior level, and it only opens if you have kept in touch. If you haven't, reconnecting after years of silence is easier than it feels.

Where FutureDay fits

FutureDay keeps both routes in one place. Search consultants, directors and former colleagues sit in Contacts, the companies you would want to lead sit in Target Companies, and each morning Home brings back the next person to keep in touch with, with a message ready to copy that you send yourself. The LinkedIn Optimiser writes your headline and About from your resume, so the profile a researcher finds says the level you work at.