Hiring Strategy

YES Candidate Perspective · Hiring 10 MIN READ Beyond the Offer: What Senior Candidates Really Weigh Before Saying Yes S Sahar Al-Rashidi Partner · Gilbert Lennard Dubai Published June 2026 Focus Senior Hiring · GCC Ask any board what candidates look for in a job and you’ll hear one word: money. Ask the candidates themselves — the senior ones, the ones you most want — and money rarely tops the list. Understanding the real executive job decision factors is the difference between an offer that’s accepted and one that’s politely declined. The Setup A firm extends what it believes is a market-leading offer to its first-choice candidate for a C-suite role. The base is strong, the bonus is generous, the title is right. A week later the candidate declines — and takes a role elsewhere paying slightly less. The hiring team is baffled. The candidate is not. This scenario plays out constantly at the senior end of the market, and it exposes a persistent gap in how organisations think about what candidates look for in a job. At junior and mid levels, compensation and title carry much of the decision. At the executive level, the calculation changes entirely. Senior candidate expectations are broader, quieter, and far harder to satisfy with a number. The factors that decide whether someone accepts a job offer have shifted — and the firms that still lead with salary are losing people they could have kept. ~70% Of senior candidates who decline an offer cite non-financial reasons — directional figure, verify before quoting 3–5 Distinct decision factors a typical executive weighs before accepting — not one 48 hrs Window in which a senior candidate’s confidence in an offer is won or lost after the final stage What Candidates Look for in a Job — at the Top The phrase “what candidates look for in a job” gets answered with a generic list — good pay, work-life balance, a nice culture. For senior candidates that list is almost useless, because it describes a baseline they assume, not the factors that actually move their decision. Below the surface, executive job decision factors cluster into a small number of areas that a strong process addresses directly and a weak one ignores entirely. The mandate, not the title. Senior people want to know what they are actually being asked to do, what success looks like, and whether the organisation has the appetite and resources to let them do it. A grand title attached to a hollow mandate is a red flag, not an attraction. The first thing a serious candidate evaluates is whether the role is real. The people they’ll answer to and work with. An executive is betting years of their career on a small group of people — the board, the CEO, the leadership team. Senior candidate expectations around this are high: they want genuine access to those people during the process, not a single staged conversation. Who they’ll report to, and whether they trust that person’s judgement, is frequently the single largest factor in the decision. At the senior level, candidates aren’t choosing a job. They’re choosing who they’ll spend the next five years trusting with their reputation. Compensation is the floor of that decision — never the ceiling. Sahar Al-Rashidi · Gilbert Lennard Dubai The trajectory. Where does this role lead? A candidate considering a Chief Operating Officer seat is quietly assessing whether it’s a credible path to CEO, or a ceiling dressed up as an opportunity. Executive job decision factors are almost always forward-looking — the question is never only “is this role good” but “where does this role take me.” The risk. Every senior move carries downside: leaving a stable seat, betting on an unproven strategy, relocating a family. The candidates you most want are the ones with the most to lose, which means they scrutinise risk hardest. A process that’s honest about the challenges reduces perceived risk. A process that oversells increases it. Senior Candidate Expectations Have Changed Compensation is the entry ticket, not the decision This is the point organisations most often miss. A competitive package doesn’t win a senior candidate — it merely qualifies you to be considered. Once the number clears their threshold, additional money produces sharply diminishing returns on the decision. Senior candidate expectations have moved past the assumption that the highest bidder wins. The highest bidder wins only when everything else is equal, and at this level everything else is rarely equal. Flexibility and autonomy are now non-negotiable Experienced leaders expect to be trusted to manage their own time and shape their own remit. A role that signals heavy oversight, rigid presence requirements, or a culture of permission-seeking will lose candidates who have earned the right to operate with autonomy — regardless of the package attached. Values and reputation carry real weight Senior candidates increasingly weigh the reputation of the organisation, the integrity of its leadership, and whether its stated values survive contact with reality. A firm with a question mark over its culture or its conduct will struggle to attract the exact people it most needs, no matter how strong the offer. This is one of the quieter accepting-a-job-offer factors, and one of the most decisive. The executive job decision factors that actually move a yes A real mandate with clear outcomes and the resources to deliver them Trust and genuine access to the CEO, board, and leadership team A credible forward trajectory — where the role leads, not just what it is Autonomy and flexibility appropriate to the seniority of the seat An organisation whose reputation and values stand up to scrutiny Honesty about risk — challenges named, not hidden A package that clears the threshold; competitive, not necessarily highest Figure 01 · What candidates weigh The factors job-seekers rank highest when considering a move Work–life balance Compensation & benefits Future growth / trajectory Flexibility (schedule) Challenging, impactful work Values alignment 83% 62% 39% 35% 33% 23% Sources: Work–life balance figure from a 2025 global workforce

FAIL 9 MIN READ The Hidden Reasons Why Executive Hires Fail Within a Year S Sahar Al-Rashidi Partner · Gilbert Lennard Dubai Published June 2026 Focus Senior Leadership · GCC When a senior hire doesn’t work out, the post-mortem almost always blames the person. The truth is less comfortable: most executive hiring failures are decided long before the offer letter — in the brief, the process, and the first ninety days. The Setup A board approves a new Chief Operating Officer. References are glowing. The interviews were sharp. Eleven months later the same board is quietly discussing an exit. Nobody is quite sure what went wrong — the candidate was clearly capable, the credentials were real, and the chemistry in the room had been good. This is the pattern we see repeatedly. The executive who fails within a year is rarely incompetent. They are usually the wrong fit for a context nobody fully defined, hired through a process that tested the wrong things, and then left to sink or swim in an onboarding vacuum. The failure is real — but its causes are upstream of the person, and they are largely preventable. ~40% Of newly hired executives are widely cited as failing within 18 months — verify against a primary source before quoting 90 days The window in which most executives form the impressions that determine whether they stay or leave 2–3x Typical total cost of a failed senior hire as a multiple of salary, once severance, lost momentum, and re-search are counted Why Executive Hires Actually Fail The convenient explanation is a hiring mistake — the wrong person slipped through. That’s true less often than people think. What actually breaks down is a set of conditions that surround the hire, most of which the hiring organisation controls. First: the role was never properly defined.  Many senior searches begin with a title and a salary band, not a clear statement of the two or three outcomes the person must deliver in year one. When the brief is vague, every candidate looks plausible — and the organisation ends up selecting on presence and pedigree rather than on fit for the actual work. The hire fails not because they couldn’t do a job, but because nobody agreed on which job it was. Second: the selection tested the wrong things. Interviews reward articulacy, confidence, and the ability to tell a clean career story. None of those reliably predict performance in a specific seat. The competencies that determine whether an executive succeeds — judgement under ambiguity, the ability to build trust quickly with an existing team, resilience when the first plan fails — are difficult to surface in a panel and are routinely skipped in favour of a comfortable conversation. The executive who fails within a year is rarely the wrong person in absolute terms. They are the right person dropped into a role nobody defined, judged on traits that don’t predict the work, and then left alone to figure it out.   Sahar Al-Rashidi · Gilbert Lennard Dubai Third: culture and stakeholder fit were treated as soft considerations. A leader can be technically excellent and still fail because their operating style collides with how decisions actually get made in the organisation. This is especially acute in the GCC, where an executive relocating from London or New York may carry assumptions about pace, hierarchy, and consensus that don’t translate. The mismatch rarely shows in interviews. It shows in month four, when the new leader keeps pushing on a door the organisation has quietly decided to keep shut. Fourth: onboarding was an afterthought. The energy in a senior hire goes into closing the offer. Once the contract is signed, attention moves on. The executive arrives to no structured first ninety days, no early wins mapped out, and no honest briefing on the politics they’re walking into. The most expensive failures we see are people who were set up to succeed on paper and then abandoned in practice. Figure 01 · Why new hires fail When hires don’t work out, competence is rarely the cause Coachability (won’t accept feedback) Low emotional intelligence Lack of motivation / drive Wrong temperament for the role Technical incompetence 26% 23% 17% 15% 11% Source: Leadership IQ, “Why New Hires Fail” study (n=5,247 hiring managers), widely cited figures. Note: this is a general new-hire study, not executive-specific — directional, and worth verifying against a primary source before reuse. Interpersonal and motivational factors account for roughly 89% of failures; technical skill for only about 11%. The Leadership Hiring Mistakes Behind the Pattern Hiring for the résumé, not the mandate Pedigree is reassuring. A candidate from a recognised firm, with the right logos and the right schools, feels like a safe choice — and that feeling does a lot of quiet work in the room. But a track record built in one context doesn’t automatically transfer to another. The leader who scaled a function inside a large, resourced organisation may struggle in a leaner business that needs them to build rather than manage. The mandate, not the master narrative, is what should drive the decision. Questions a serious executive process should answer before interviewing anyone What are the two or three outcomes this person must deliver in the first year? What has caused previous people in or around this role to struggle? Who are the stakeholders this person must win over — and what do they actually value? What does the operating culture reward, and what does it quietly punish? What will the first ninety days look like, concretely, before the offer is made? Confusing interview performance with on-the-job performance Senior candidates are, almost by definition, good at interviews — they have done many of them and have a polished account of every decision they’ve made. Relying on that performance is one of the most common leadership hiring mistakes. Structured work-sample exercises, scenario discussions tied to the real mandate, and deep reference work with people who saw the candidate operate under pressure tell