The questions
1. How will you reach candidates who are not looking?
This is the whole product. If the answer centres on database size, platform reach or advertising, you are buying recruitment rather than search. Both are legitimate; they are not the same thing and should not cost the same.
A good answer describes a research process: which companies would be targeted, how the list is built, who makes the approach, and what is said in the first thirty seconds.
2. Who actually does the work?
In larger firms the person in the pitch is frequently not the person running the search. Ask directly, and ask how many live mandates that person is carrying. More than five or six at a senior level usually means someone is being under-served.
3. What would make you decline this mandate?
A firm with standards has turned work down. The answer tells you whether you will get an honest briefing or a sales conversation, and whether you will hear it if your salary band is unrealistic.
4. Show me the market before you show me candidates.
For a senior role, a firm that can describe the pool - how many people plausibly do this job in Vietnam, where they sit, what they earn - has done the work. A firm that moves straight to CVs has not started it.
5. What exactly does the guarantee cover?
Ask for the exclusions in writing. Redundancy, restructuring, a change in the role after start date and non-payment of the original invoice are commonly excluded across the industry. The exclusions are more informative than the headline period.
6. What is the fee calculated on?
First-year total cash compensation is the usual base, but definitions of what sits inside it vary. Two firms quoting the same percentage can differ meaningfully once guaranteed bonus and allowances are settled. Our own structure is set out on the fees page.
7. How do you handle counter-offers?
In Vietnam, a strong director-level candidate resigning from a well-run employer should be expected to receive one. A firm that has no answer beyond "we will talk to them" has not managed many senior resignations.
8. Tell me about a search that went badly.
Everyone has one. A firm that cannot describe a failure and what it changed afterwards is either inexperienced or managing you. This is the single most revealing question on the list.
What not to weight too heavily. Client logos, office size, and the number of consultants. None of them predict whether your specific search will be run well. The consultant and the method do.
After you choose: why senior hires still fail
A good search does not guarantee a good outcome, and the failure modes are predictable enough to be worth naming.
- The brief was for a role nobody had agreed on. Two stakeholders wanted different people and the disagreement surfaced after the start date. This is the most common cause and it is a client-side problem, not a search problem.
- Authority did not match accountability. The person was hired to change something and then could not make decisions about it. Senior people leave over this faster than over money.
- The first ninety days were unstructured. No agreed priorities, no stakeholder map, no early win. Expensive hires are often left to find their own way in on the assumption that seniority makes onboarding unnecessary.
- References were taken from the wrong people. Three friendly names rather than two people who actually managed the candidate.
Only the last of those is within a search firm's control, which is worth saying plainly. A firm that implies it can guarantee performance is overselling. What a firm can do is brief honestly, assess properly, write down the gaps, and tell you when the role as written is the problem.