In the meantime, the world has changed dramatically around it. Critical talent has become vastly more difficult to source. Market uncertainty is rising. And competition has become increasingly fierce, irrespective of either sector or market focus. Structurally, the new economic environment is characterized by globalization, growing interconnectedness of individuals and talent, significantly expanded flows of information, dramatic increases in the range and capabilities of technology, and vastly increased global connectivity.

Talent markets are becoming ever more sophisticated – they have begun effectively to transcend geographic borders and organizational boundaries. Demographic shifts as a result of the wave of baby boom retirements have begun to profoundly impact the ability of organizations to bring in key people. The so-called ‘war for talent’ is hype, but the rise in difficulty of sourcing is the increasing day-to-day reality for the vast majority of organizations.

In the context of this dramatic change, the lack of evolution in the technical methodology of search over the last four decades is striking. Each of the factors outlined above contributes to the growing need for new systems, new methodologies and new ways of doing things. In our view, stagnancy is simply unsupportable.

CriticalKnowledge has been at the forefront in pioneering Intelligence-Led Sourcing (ILS) as a result of the failure of traditional title driven recruitment to meet difficult situations that many of the organizations we dealt with were encountering. The essence of what we do lies in our ability to amass comprehensive intelligence in specialized areas in ways other firms cannot.

The methodology of ILS is complex, but our track record is simple. We are able to come in, in the most difficult situations, and deliver.

Our results speak for themselves.