Rakshitha B S
The searches that reach Rakshitha are usually the ones two other firms have already failed to close.
Connect on LinkedIn ↗Rakshitha has 12 years in niche, leadership and executive search across management consulting, business research, analytics and technology. Clients call her when the profile is rare, the domain is narrow, and the previous two firms could not close it: the research manager with one exact domain, the principal consultant who has done the work, the analytics leader to build a function from nothing.
She writes on how to run a search with no obvious talent pool, what separates the senior hires that stay from the ones that leave, and what GCCs get wrong when they hire out of consulting.
Read more from Rakshitha.
Counter-offers are biting again, but which ones actually hold?
The “80% leave within six months” figure is folklore. The real number is about a third, and the ones who go are the people whose reason for leaving was never pay.
Why your shortlist is worse than your candidate pool
Most GCC TA teams filter for the wrong signals. We ran an audit across our mandate book. The pattern is uncomfortable.
The hybrid reality no policy document admits
The debate isn’t days in office. It’s whether the time together does anything the rest of the week can’t.
Assessing for judgement over skill
Skill is easy to test and a weak predictor of whether a senior hire holds. Where the signal actually lives, and how to read it in an interview.
Retention is a sourcing problem
The bench you fought to build leaves in year two because expectations were mis-set at hire. The durable fix lives in the search, not the retention program.
The close starts at the first call
The three objections that kill senior offers are all predictable. Surface them at the first conversation, not at offer.
The managers people follow out the door
The strong manager everyone loves is also a concentration risk, and when they leave, the team follows. How to de-risk single-manager loyalty.
Where the twelve-month attrition actually landed this quarter
Retention read across sectors and seniority bands, drawn from placements followed past the start date rather than to the offer.
Three signals a senior hire has already decided to leave
An observable-behaviour early-warning checklist for managers: scope withdrawal, network reactivation, the quiet handoff.
The two experience levers worth funding this year
Ranking EX spend by retention impact for senior staff, and the perks to stop paying for.
One hiring pattern worth knowing, every ten days.
The Mandate Desk is our read on the senior GCC talent market — one signal that moved, the read behind it, and one thing worth doing. Written from live placement data.