Calling all HR tech product managers: we have some bad news. We don’t need more features. Give us a decent API — and we’ll vibe-code them ourselves. In a couple of evenings.

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“HOW DO WE STOP THEM USING CHATGPT FOR THE TAKE-HOME ASSIGNMENT?” asks yet another hiring manager. A quiet thought creeps in: okay, are we banning Google too?

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So, the day has come. Your AI-first boss has an idea: “Let’s fire the sourcer. Agents will do it all for us.” Where, exactly, should you tell them to go?

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How do we hunt C-level executives at Fiera Hiring? We don’t. And that’s exactly the secret behind why 9 out of 10 senior executives respond to our outreach and keep the conversation going.

It may sound counterintuitive, but the principle is actually very simple: act like a thoughtful HR business partner, not an aggressive headhunter.

Here’s what we mean.

The first goal of C-level outreach is not to sell a vacancy. It is to build a relationship.
How is the person’s career developing? What might they consider in the medium term? And not as generic small talk — the conversation should be grounded in their actual professional background and track record.
That kind of genuine curiosity opens the door to a conversation far more effectively than a dry wall of text describing a job.

Why does direct headhunting so often fail?
1. First, the person may simply not be looking for a job.
That does not mean they are completely uninterested. At the beginning, they may not even realise they want to make a move. Maybe they have thought about it before, but never had a real reason to act on it.
Then you start talking. A relevant opportunity comes up. They think: well, why not take the interview? Actually, this sounds interesting. They think about it a little more. And eventually: screw it, I’m leaving.
And suddenly, you have filled the role.
Yes, it happens.

2. Second, people at this level usually have a very clear area of responsibility. Long lists of irrelevant requirements and generic questions from recruiters are, frankly, irritating.
C-level executives are people with a reputation and a public track record. Beyond their CV, there is often plenty of publicly available information about what they have been responsible for and what they are known for.
So an opening like:
“Hi, we have a vacancy. Could you tell us about your experience?”
is painfully awkward — and a pretty reliable way to get ignored or blocked.

3. Third, many executives are cautious about engaging with recruiters at all. And that is completely understandable.
Imagine the fallout if it became public that a business unit director was enthusiastically responding to a competitor’s recruiter and attending interviews.
There is nothing inherently wrong with considering alternatives. Signing an employment contract is not the same as getting married — usually.
But explaining that to shareholders, owners or colleagues may be considerably harder.
So C-level search, much like big money, prefers discretion.
A low-pressure first contact allows a person to speak with a recruiter without having to position themselves as someone who is “open to opportunities.”

In practice, this initial relationship-building stage is critical. It shapes the entire conversation that follows: how the candidate perceives you and what they will be willing to discuss with you later.
In our experience, this approach produces a response rate of over 90% — and importantly, these are positive responses.

If you think there is something wrong with our approach, tell us in the comments.
We would be very happy to improve that conversion rate to 100%.

TOP 3 FAILURES IN A C-LEVEL CANDIDATE INTERVIEW.
Bad advice on how to make a terrible impression on a senior executive.

Bad advice #1: Show up insecure. Otherwise, you risk making the person feel comfortable with you from the very first minutes. Tension during an interview is obvious almost instantly, on both sides. For a recruiter, a visibly uncomfortable executive can be a red flag: if a senior leader cannot relax even with HR, it is not entirely clear how they will handle difficult or conflict-heavy situations in the business. The reverse is also true: candidates respond much better to recruiters who are calm and confident.

What helps you feel confident (definitely don’t do this!)? The basics: get yourself into the right state. Take a few minutes to breathe before the interview. You can open Zoom on your own and try conducting the interview with the wall. Then watch the recording: you will immediately see where your voice starts shaking and where you start rambling. At first, you may look like a frightened little piglet.

Bad advice #2: Don’t understand the business. Deep preparation is for overachievers. Don’t read the news, don’t look at financial performance, don’t follow the blogs of senior industry leaders. The less you know about all that EBITDA stuff and current market pain points, the more boring the conversation will be for the executive. They will quickly realise that they have to explain their entire experience to you from scratch, they won’t open up, and you won’t have to torture them with interesting follow-up questions. Interview ruined, business card in the bin.

An example of the kind of conversation you must NEVER allow to happen in a truly terrible interview:
Candidate: “Before this, I was responsible for Business Unit X at Matrix.”
Recruiter: “I heard that Mr Anderson was leading that area at Matrix at the time and was implementing XYZ. Did you work on that together?”

And that’s it. The candidate is yours. They have just realised that they are not talking to a random recruiter reading from a checklist, but to someone who actually knows the key decision-makers in the market. Even if they are not right for the role, they may still give you a huge amount of useful information that can ultimately help you close the search.

Bad advice #3: Don’t study the role. There is absolutely no need to understand the business need in depth or ask the hiring manager too many questions. You do not need to know:

• what is currently happening with revenue;
• what the KPIs are;
• what the team looks like;
• whether it needs to be rebuilt;
• what condition the function is currently in;
• why this position exists in the first place.

The perfect recipe for disaster: the candidate asks specific questions about their future role, while inside your head there is nothing but tumbleweed and a couple of notes in a Google Doc. “Better ask the hiring manager about the hiring goals,” “I can’t give you the numbers right now,” “There will be more information at the next stage, I’m mainly handling the organisational side” — classic lines from a failed interview.

Follow these simple recommendations and you will successfully make three mistakes that all lead to the same result: within a few minutes, a C-level candidate will realise that there is no point having a substantive, peer-level conversation with you.

Send us your own bad advice — we want to turn this into a full bingo card.