For CPOs, Heads of Talent and Heads of Executive Recruitment

Add an independent pressure assessment to your executive hiring process.

You do not need another recruitment process. If your Talent team already runs structured executive hiring well, Pressure Match adds something deliberately different at the final stage. Your process establishes whether the candidate is capable. We assess what happens when that candidate's pattern under pressure meets the CEO, the leadership team and the demands of the plan, and we give you one answer, go, conditional go or no-go, inside two weeks and before you make the appointment.

Discuss a senior appointment How Pressure Match works
Where we fit

Your process establishes capability. We do not repeat it.

Structured interviews, scorecards, case work, references and, where you use them, psychometrics can establish whether a candidate has the experience, competence and attributes the role requires. By the final stage of a well-run process they usually have. What none of those methods can easily observe is how the person behaves when the job becomes difficult, and what happens when that behaviour meets the CEO they will report to, the team they will join and the plan they will be asked to deliver. That is the one question we answer.

What your process already establishes

Can this person do the job?

Experience and track recordWhat they have done, where, and with what results.
Functional competenceCase work, presentations, technical assessment.
Motivation and intentWhy this role, why now, why here.
ReferencesConfirmation of capability from people who have worked with them.
Psychometrics, where usedTraits and disposition, measured in isolation.

We take all of this as established and do not ask the candidate to repeat any of it.

What Pressure Match adds

Will this person work here?

Behaviour under real pressureThe pattern that recurs when preparation runs out, from three independent evidence channels.
Candidate × CEOWhere the two patterns compound and where they collide, and what happens at the first miss.
Candidate × TeamWhat this executive needs from an environment to perform, and whether this team provides it.
Candidate × PlanWhich of the next two years' conditions activate their strengths and which expose the vulnerabilities.
Candidate × RoleThe specific pressures this seat creates, measured against the role scorecard you have already agreed.
Foreseeable pressure scenariosThe two or three situations most likely to test the match in the first six months, with the early warning signal and the repair move for each.
Conditions for successWhat the CEO must do, what the executive must do, what must change in the environment, and the ninety-day markers.

Every finding is labelled with the number of evidence channels supporting it, and both founders sign the verdict.

What you receive

One answer, with the reasoning shown.

Not a score, not a percentage, and never a judgment on the candidate's worth. A verdict on the match as the conditions stand, in a five-page Decision Memo, followed by a debrief with the CEO and the hiring team. The candidate receives a feedback summary as standard, and six months after the appointment we test our own verdict against what colleagues actually observe and show you the result.

Go

The pairing works under the current conditions. The memo still names the scenarios most likely to test it and the early warning signal for each.

Conditional go

The match works if specific conditions are met. Each is named precisely enough to act on, with who must do what and by when.

No-go

This pairing will not work under these conditions. The memo states what would need to change for the answer to change.

How it fits your timetable

Two weeks, inside the process you already run.

We work directly with you as CPO or Talent lead. Nothing about your process changes except that the final stage now has an independent layer of evidence in it. Three things have to be true for a verdict: capability has already been established by your process; the decision is still open, at shortlist, preferred candidate or a final two where a genuine choice remains; and the CEO gives us sixty minutes. That last one is the interview the product cannot work without, and it is framed around the appointment succeeding rather than around the CEO being assessed.

At shortlist
Talk to us when you are down to the final few. We agree the role scorecard with the hiring leader, prepare the consent pack and hold the interview slots, so the two weeks can start the day the preferred candidate is named.
Days 1 to 5
The candidate completes the Pressure Signature Survey and a ninety-minute biographical pressure interview with both founders. Three referees who have watched them under real pressure are interviewed against the same framework. The CEO gives sixty minutes. Where we do not already hold your leadership team's pressure data, a Hiring Environment Baseline is established in the same fortnight.
Days 6 to 10
Synthesis through the four lenses. The candidate reviews the factual content of the candidate-side analysis and may correct errors of fact; the verdict is ours. Both founders sign.
Days 10 to 12
Debrief with the CEO and the hiring team, memo issued, candidate feedback summary sent. The conditions for success become the first-ninety-days plan.
Six months on
A short observation survey to the new executive's colleagues, and a one-page comparison of our verdict against what they saw, whichever way it falls.

Investment is quoted per engagement following a thirty-minute scoping call. Where senior hiring is a repeating need, Pressure Match can also be held as annual capacity, with guaranteed founder access inside the two-week window. The full method, the evidence channels, the memo and the questions we are most often asked are on the Pressure Match page; the process we recommend running around it is in our guide to executive hiring.

Pressure Match is designed and delivered by David Carry and Katherine Ready, who conduct every candidate and CEO interview and sign every verdict. Page published .

Discuss a senior appointment

If you have a consequential senior appointment under way, tell us the role, where you are in the process and who the person will report to. We will tell you quickly whether Pressure Match can add meaningful evidence before the decision is made.

Discuss a senior appointment