Acceptance verified before anything is extended.
Where searches go to die
A search can survive a thin market, a demanding brief, and a long process. What it usually cannot survive is a badly handled offer.
The standard sequence: a finalist is chosen, and only then is compensation discussed in real numbers — and the number the candidate had in mind is not the number in the budget. Only then do the decision-makers appear: a partner, a commute, a relocation — all treated as details. Then the candidate resigns, and the current employer — hearing the news for the first time — makes the counteroffer it was always going to make, to a person who has never rehearsed hearing it. The offer sits unsigned while all of this is negotiated at once. It expires, is withdrawn, or is declined — and the search restarts from a weaker position.
None of that is bad luck. Every element was knowable weeks earlier. The failure is not at the offer table; it is that the offer was the first time anyone applied the brakes.
Get the full paper
The complete paper — the rest of the argument, the working detail, and the record — as a PDF.
Hiring for a role like the ones in this paper?
Start with the question we open every search with: if we're successful a year from now, what are we talking about that really worked out well — with the candidate we place?