Reverse Headhunting
You Weren't Designed to Compete on Job Boards
The roles that would actually change your career are being filled right now — through channels you do not have access to. Reverse Headhunting puts your candidacy directly in front of the people making those decisions. Confidentially. Through direct introduction.
Book a Confidential CallThe Market Reality
The Best Roles Are Filled Before They're Advertised
Most senior professionals apply for roles the same way everyone else does. Job boards. Recruiter databases. LinkedIn alerts. The process feels productive. It rarely is.
Here is what's actually happening on the other side of the table: the hiring committee has already received a shortlist from their retained search firm. The board has already discussed two internal candidates. The role was posted publicly because procurement policy requires it — not because the outcome is undecided.
You are not competing against the advertised applicant pool. You are competing against candidates who were introduced months before the job description was written. Those introductions happened through networks that most professionals — regardless of seniority — do not have access to.
This is not a skills gap. It is an information asymmetry problem. And it is solvable.
The Approach
Reverse Headhunting — Originated by Mark Ross Roberts
Conventional headhunting works for the employer. A company briefs a search firm. The firm finds candidates. The candidates are assessed, filtered, presented. The employer decides.
Reverse Headhunting inverts that model entirely. Your background, commercial narrative, and target market are mapped with the same rigour applied to a retained executive search — except the objective is reversed.
Instead of matching candidates to a role, we match you to organisations where your profile solves an existing or emerging leadership problem. Then we make the introduction. Confidentially. Through direct channels.
Mark Ross Roberts developed this methodology over three decades of operating on both sides of the hiring equation — identifying, assessing, and placing senior executives while simultaneously advising at board level across multiple sectors. That dual perspective is the mechanism.
The model, reversed
The Engagement
What Reverse Headhunting Includes
Every engagement is principal-led. Mark works directly with you from the initial strategy session through to post-placement onboarding. No delegation. No junior associates handling your file.
Confidential Career Memorandum
A forensic, board-ready document that maps your career trajectory, commercial impact, and leadership positioning. This is not a CV. It is the document that gets placed on a hiring committee's desk — designed to pre-empt objections and frame the conversation before you enter the room.
Target Market Mapping
Strategic identification of organisations, sectors, and decision-makers aligned with your career objectives. We build a precise list of companies where your background addresses a specific gap — and where timing suggests appetite for a senior hire.
Confidential Market Approach
Your profile is introduced to decision-makers through direct, private channels. No mass mailouts. No recruiter databases. Each approach is individually authored, timed, and — where necessary — preceded by a relationship-level conversation that has nothing to do with a job specification.
Interview Preparation & Coaching
Structured training covering objection handling, salary negotiation, and controlled disclosure. Built on 10,000 logged coaching hours and informed by research from Harvard Medical School on how high-stakes communication patterns affect hiring outcomes.
Offer Negotiation
We manage the commercial discussion from first-stage offer through to final terms. Compensation structuring, notice period negotiation, contractual protections. Thirty years and 30,000 hours of board-level negotiation experience applied directly to your offer.
Onboarding Support
The engagement does not end at signature. We provide structured transition support through your first 90 days — because the data is clear: executive failure in the first quarter is overwhelmingly a function of poor integration, not poor capability.Harvard Business Review, 2013
Principal-led. Six deliverables. One point of contact throughout.
Book a Confidential CallIs This Right for You
This Service Exists for a Specific Kind of Professional
Reverse Headhunting is not for everyone. It is built for senior professionals who have outgrown the conventional job market — or who never belonged there in the first place.
You are a C-suite executive, VP, or senior director and your next move needs to be precise, not speculative.
You are currently employed and cannot afford to be seen actively looking. Discretion is non-negotiable.
You have relocated internationally and need to rebuild market visibility in a new geography without starting from zero.
You are re-entering the market after an extended break and the gap in your timeline is creating friction that your actual capability does not justify.
You have been applying through conventional channels for months and the return has been disproportionate to your track record.
of both active and passive candidates are open to new opportunities when approached correctly. The bottleneck is almost never willingness. It is access.
LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 2019Client Outcomes
What Clients Say
Within three weeks, Mark identified two organisations I hadn't considered — one of which became my current position. I had spent five months with three different recruitment firms before that, and none of them had surfaced a single relevant opportunity. The difference was not effort. It was access.
The Career Memorandum alone changed how I understood my own market positioning. I went into every subsequent conversation with a fundamentally different narrative — and the results reflected that immediately. The rigour Mark brings to this process is unlike anything I have encountered in the recruitment industry.
Six weeks from initial call to a direct introduction that led to my current role. No job boards. No recruiter calls. I had relocated from Singapore to London and spent four months applying for positions I was overqualified for with no traction. Mark repositioned me entirely and went straight to the decision-makers.
The outcome was a role I did not know existed, at a compensation level above what I had targeted. Confidentiality was critical — I was employed at board level and could not afford any visibility. The entire process was handled with a level of discretion I have not experienced from any other search professional.
The Next Conversation Is Confidential
Reverse Headhunting operates on an engagement basis. The first step is a private call with Mark to assess fit, define your target market, and determine whether this approach is right for your specific situation.
Mark works with a limited number of clients at any given time. This is a function of the principal-led model, not a marketing constraint. No obligation. No sales process. A direct conversation with the person who will lead your engagement from day one.
