The hire your client can afford is usually one title down
A client briefs you for a director and wants someone who has been a director. Those people exist. They are paid as directors, and most of them have no reason to make a sideways move. The shortlist built from them is expensive and slow to close.
The person who will move is often a level down: the manager who has been carrying director-sized work for a while, at a company as large as your client or larger, without the title to match. For them the role is a promotion, which is a reason to take your call. A sideways hire never gets that.
A title search cannot find these people, because their title is the wrong one by definition. So the play searches the feeder titles as a lane of their own, keeps every hard requirement from the spec, and then reads the dated history to see whether the scope has outgrown the label.
Be clear about what that reading is. Readiness is inferred from tenure and trajectory. It is a hypothesis with evidence attached. Nothing on a profile tells you that someone wants the step, can lead at that level, or would accept the package. The call decides that, and the play hands you the questions for it.
What you get back
A ranked CSV: name, current title and employer, time in the current role, the readiness rating, the evidence for it and the gaps against it, the mobility rating, the questions for the first call, the LinkedIn profile, and a personal email where one was found.
People rated not supported are listed separately with the reason, so you can see the lane was searched and what it turned down.
Variations worth knowing
Run it beside the direct search. In turn a job spec into a ranked shortlist this lane is an add-on with no reserved places. Run it alone when the direct market is worked out or out of budget.
Stale junior titles. A long-serving junior whose history already shows mid-level scope can enter a senior search. The word in the title proves nothing either way. The history does.
Add what the client said out loud. Rules that never reached the spec can be tested on the same list with score against the unwritten brief.
Where this goes wrong
Reading tenure as intent. Years in one seat can mean plateau or contentment. The rating says which evidence it rests on. It does not say the person will pick up.
Two levels, or another function. A multi-level leap or a move across functions is rated not supported. The play does not bridge them to add volume.
Missing dates. A profile without dates is unknown, never ready. Those people stay visible and get no boost.
The headcount floor thins the pool. Filtering on employer size keeps the search inside one database. The agent reports the count with and without it.
