Some Searches Only Need One Name

Three hundred CVs came in for a recent search. The CEO saw one.

He didn't ask for more. He didn't ask who came second, or whether there was anyone worth putting alongside. He read the one CV, met the one person, and that was the process from his side of the table.

Most of the work happened before he ever heard a name. Reading 300 CVs is not the hard part. Anyone can sort them. The hard part is knowing what the organisation actually needs, which is rarely what the job description says. It sits in how the CEO talks about the business, what has gone wrong before, and what the team will quietly tolerate and what it won't. I spent the time understanding that before I opened a single CV.

Once I had it, the pile shrank fast. Not because I was rushing, but because most of those candidates were good people who were right for a different company. When I finished, nobody else was close. One person fitted the brief, the culture and the moment the business was in. I didn't have a top three with a clear favourite. I had one.

I have sent shortlists in the past, and I understand why they exist. Three names feels safe for everyone. The client feels they've had a proper process. The recruiter feels covered, because if the hire doesn't work out, there were alternatives on the table and the choice was theirs.

But a shortlist of three, when you already know the answer, hands the client a piece of work they hired you to do. Now the CEO has to run comparisons, weigh trade-offs and read three sets of strengths against each other, without the context that would make any of it easy. He's paying for judgement and receiving homework.

So I told him plainly that I had one candidate, and I told him why. I didn't dress it up or pad the recommendation with a couple of names to make it look thorough.

That took trust, and I don't take it lightly. He gave me his time and his confidence, and a CEO extending that to a search partner is exposing himself a little. The fair return is not to protect myself with options. It's to carry the risk of the recommendation myself.

I could be wrong, of course. Anyone in this work can be. Certainty on my side isn't the point. The point is that if I'm going to put my name to one person, I have to have done enough work to stand behind that. Which means understanding the organisation properly, being honest about who doesn't fit, and being willing to say so out loud, even when it would be easier to hedge.

It paid off. The hire is working, and the CEO got his time back, which for most senior leaders is worth more than the extra names.

I'm not suggesting every search should end with one candidate. Some briefs are genuinely open, and some organisations don't yet know what they need. In those cases, showing a range is part of the work. But when you know, you should say so, and a shortlist that exists only to protect the person who made it isn't really a service.

If you've hired through a search firm, did you want the three names, or did you want someone to tell you which one?