Executive Profiling · For Search Firms & Leadership Teams
Executive profiling for high-stakes leadership decisions.The search is yours. So is the risk.
When a placement is questioned — by the client, by the board, by a guarantee clause — what protects you is not your judgment alone. It is what was documented before the decision was made. Structured diagnostics translate your read of a candidate into a written, defensible output that stands up when the placement is tested.
PXT Select® · Pre-Session Situation Brief · Structured Diagnostic Interview · Leadership Operating Blueprint
ARYS works with executive search firms, headhunters, and organisations making senior, critical, and high-consequence leadership decisions. If you need volume screening, CV filtering, or contingent search, this is not the right fit. If you need a rigorous, practitioner-led assessment on a role that carries real professional risk — we should talk.
Every assessment process evaluates the candidate.The hiring context rarely makes it into the output.
Most placement failures are not candidate failures. The candidate was assessed. Their competence was verified. Their references were checked. What was not examined was the operating environment they were walking into — the hiring manager whose pressure style was never named, the mandate whose success criteria were never defined, the team dynamics that were already fractured before the new leader arrived. The candidate was qualified. The context was not examined. And the guarantee clause applied anyway.
ARYS diagnostics examine both sides of the fit equation: how the candidate operates under pressure — and what the role, the manager, and the mandate must provide for that performance to hold.
The output is a Leadership Operating Blueprint: a written synthesis of fit conditions, pressure risks, named trade-offs, and a 90-Day Action Frame. It is the document that makes a recommendation defensible — before the placement is made, and after, if it is ever questioned.
Not a replacement for your judgment. Documentation of it.
Scoped to your mandate. Scaled to what is at stake.
Three engagement levels, each producing a written Leadership Operating Blueprint. What differs is depth, scope, and the range of inputs synthesised — matched to the complexity and visibility of your mandate.
PXT Select®, Pre-Session Situation Brief, and Structured Diagnostic Interview, synthesised against a defined role profile. Delivered in 5 working days. The Blueprint names fit conditions, pressure risks, and a 90-Day Action Frame.
Full diagnostic across candidate profile, hiring manager operating style, and role mandate conditions. Delivered in 7–10 working days. Includes named trade-offs and an influence and visibility map.
Full leadership operating profile synthesised across multiple candidates or decision scenarios. Consent-based stakeholder mapping included. The comprehensive Blueprint for the highest-visibility mandates.
The industry data is not abstract. It describes mandates you are running right now.
Of retained executive searches close without a hire being made
Of employers report having hired the wrong person for a position, across all levels of seniority
Of hiring failures are driven by attitude — not by a deficit in technical competence
References: ESIX, Executive Search Information Exchange · CareerBuilder / Harris Poll, December 2017 (2,257 hiring managers, US private sector) · Leadership IQ, Hiring for Attitude, Mark Murphy (20,000 hires tracked over three years)
The profile didn’t just confirm fit — it named the stretch zones, flagged what the candidate needed to watch, and gave the hiring manager a complete picture of who they were bringing in. That’s what a hiring decision should look like.
Common questions. Direct answers.
Practical answers to the most common questions from executive search firms and leadership teams considering a profiling engagement.
The difference between a psychometric report and a Leadership Operating Blueprint is the same as the difference between a blood panel and a diagnosis. ARYS synthesises the candidate profile against the specific role context — mandate conditions, operating environment, and where relevant, hiring manager dynamics. The output is not a trait summary. It is a fit analysis — and a document you can put in front of a client.
Most search firms present the diagnostic as a component of their service offering and reflect it in the mandate fee. At CHF 3,500–4,500 for the entry engagement, against a retained mandate typically ranging from CHF 50,000 to CHF 120,000, it represents a fraction of the fee — and adds a visible deliverable the client can reference. Several firms present it as a differentiator in the pitch, not a line item in the invoice.
In a fundamentally different position than without one. The Blueprint documents what was known, what was tested, what risk was named, and what onboarding conditions were recommended before commitment. If those conditions were not met by the client organisation, that is now visible in writing. You are not standing empty-handed when the client asks how this happened. That distinction — between professional rigour on record and professional exposure — is exactly what the Blueprint protects.
Typically at final shortlist — after your own candidate evaluation, before final client presentation. The diagnostic takes 5–10 working days depending on the engagement level. In time-pressured mandates, a rapid-track option is available. The Blueprint is delivered before your client meeting, not after it.
Yes. This is the element most assessment processes omit — and the one that most often determines whether a placement holds. With appropriate consent, ARYS can examine role mandate clarity, the hiring manager’s operating profile, and the structural conditions the candidate will enter. Most placement failures are context failures. This is the question the industry has not been asking. It is the question ARYS asks on every engagement.
Yes. ARYS works with executive search firms, headhunters, and senior hiring teams across Switzerland, France, and Western Europe. Engagements are conducted in English and French.
Six situations that come up constantly.The candidate gets examined. The context almost never does.
The shift from expert to manager. The most common breaking point in a career: what produced individual performance does not produce a team’s.
A proven manager changes scale. The question is not whether they have succeeded so far, but whether their operating style holds at a level where influence replaces control.
At any level, a role where failure is expensive. The candidate comes from a different environment; nothing guarantees that what worked there works here.
Departure announced, handover prepared. The internal successor is known — which is precisely what stops them being examined as rigorously as an external candidate.
Merged structures, redrawn remits, recomposed teams. The leaders in post were not hired for the organisation that now exists.
Degraded performance, entrenched tensions, a predecessor who left badly. Context weighs heavier here than profile.
Start with asingle conversation.
A first conversation of 30 minutes is enough to clarify the mandate, the risk level, and whether an engagement makes sense for both sides. No commitment required to start.
30 minutes to establish role context, risk level, and scope. No commitment required.
Tailored to the specific mandate and decision — delivered within 48 hours.
The candidate is contacted as soon as the engagement is confirmed. Blueprint delivered to the agreed timeline.
No commitment required · English and French · Confidential handling · Fribourg · Switzerland
