$600,000. That's what our client almost spent on executive search fees

At first we thought it was a fluke, but then it kept happening...

Weekly Wrap

It's been a super exciting week onboarding Tracksuit and Ideally Global - brands that are growing super fast.

Wins:

• Empathix has delivered hiring of over 80 roles at Crimson Global Academy
• We onboarded another 5 Companies into Empathix this week
• We're helping more and more Companies to hire epic talent which is just so cool!!

Learnings:

• Integrations suck. But luckily Mark, our CTO is all over everything and managing more than 50 ATS integrations is nothing for him 😂
• I've been using MCP servers integrate: Google analytics » Website » live updates to the website + blogs. It's been working well, but I didn't realise the blogs published live, so I need to keep an eye on it 😂

The exec search market reality

A lot of you will know we have a specific product called Empathix Exec.

We released it because we know how this market works, and have placed 5 C level roles in the last 12 months alone.

But because the market is so confusing to a lot of Companies, you get crushed on pricing.

Don't worry, I'll tell you how it works and I'm actually not here to be unkind to Exec recruitment Companies, they're cool, I work with them and intro them to great CEO's all the time!!

Exec search Companies are excellent for strategic guidance and for complex searches but not every Company needs this and so we thought why can't there be a different, not so time or cost intensive process that gives complete transparency into a Global recruitment database.

I think the best Companies are thinking about multiple paths and the smartest are saving $600k in fees.

It just doesn't need to be so expensive or time consuming anymore and I'm honestly very excited about it.

The underground market is real

Most Companies don't even know direct access can exist confidentially, but imagine if it did. Because it does.

So the result is you're left staring down the invoice of a 25-35% payment of total compensation for an executive recruitment process…

We thought… what if you could access that pool directly? You definitely need recruiter support, and often that is what you are paying for, the strategic guidance.

But it really doesn't need to be so much in time or fees.

Like I said earlier, we have been receiving this feedback from our customers for a while, but it sounded almost too good to be true. But when it kept happening, that's when we realised… it's actually happening.

What's new in Empathix that help recruiters fly through their work

Recruiters can now use Empathix to sort & search a stack of applications, or their whole database in natural language, thanks to our agent Emmy. Emmy lives on the right hand side of the screen and cleverly supports with any finding necessary.

The best recruiters use Emmy to search for specific skills, experience or preference.

Example prompt: 'Find me people with startup experience'. Emmy is still new, so we've focused on getting the core search functions right first.

What's been interesting to watch is how recruiters are actually using it.

Instead of the usual boolean searches with endless AND/OR combinations, they're just... talking to their database. "Show me engineers who've worked internationally" or "Find candidates who've managed remote teams."

Emmy surfaces often don't have those exact words anywhere on their CV. She's picking up on context - someone who "coordinated virtual workshops across 3 time zones" clearly has remote management experience, even if they never explicitly said so.

It's making me think we've been doing candidate search backwards for years. Why are we forcing recruiters to think like search engines when we could just let them think like humans?

TIP OF THE WEEK

If you are putting CVs in GPT, please stop. Here's why:

1. Grab some fake CVs from GPT or another Large Language Model like Claude (never real ones) put 10 into GPT and tell it what you are looking for, ask it which candidate is likely to be successful.
2. Record who the candidate was it selected
3. Repeat with the same candidates twice more.

You didn't get the same candidates because AI is non deterministic, also, if you give GPT lots of data i.e. more than 10 (if you want to test this, test with 50), it will get confused and you'll miss candidates.

The other reasons are around privacy/confidentiality of candidate data and preserving that (along with needing consent to do that).

Building with this technology reminds me why I've always loved to be in the people space. It should never have been about becoming a human keyword filter. It's about understanding people and matching them with opportunities where they'll be happy and I'm so excited to help Companies do that without the complexity that was once involved.

Any feedback/questions or insights?

People who've subscribed here have been so generous with their insights on how I can improve the writing, and I really appreciate it (alongside all of the encouragement!)

Also to those who have converted to be paid subscribers - THANK YOU. It means a lot.

Olivia :)