EXECUTIVE ADVISORY
Advisory support that helps your organization make a successful permanent hire into its top HR seat — the Chief People Officer or Chief Human Resources Officer. Selection Support de-risks the decision: getting the role defined right, the evaluation structured, the decision-makers aligned, and the new leader set up to succeed.
A CPO hire is high-stakes — and easy to get wrong
Roughly one in three external senior-executive hires fails, and a failed CPO hire costs several times the executive’s annual compensation once lost productivity, disruption, and a repeated search are counted. The failures are rarely about a shortage of candidates. They are about selection — a role that was never clearly defined, an evaluation run on instinct and interview charisma rather than evidence, decision-makers who were never aligned on what they actually wanted, and a capable hire left to integrate alone. Selection Support exists to prevent exactly those failures. It is not how you find candidates; it is how you make sure the candidate you choose is the one who succeeds.
Who This Is For
- Organizations preparing to hire their first CPO or CHRO — a newly created seat with no internal precedent
- Companies replacing a departing top HR executive who want the next hire to succeed where guesswork might not
- CEOs and boards who will run the search themselves and want the selection done with rigor, not instinct
- Organizations already working with a retained executive search firm who want the process-design and decision rigor the search firm is not engaged to provide
- PE firms and portfolio companies making a consequential people-leadership hire where a mis-hire is expensive
- Decision-making groups — a CEO, a board, an executive team — who need to be genuinely aligned before they evaluate candidates
Selection Support Is Not Executive Search
These two services are easy to confuse, and the difference defines what Selection Support is. An executive search firm finds the candidates — sourcing, networks, market research, outreach to passive candidates. That is essential work, and it is not what Selection Support does. Selection Support makes the hiring decision succeed — defining the role, structuring the evaluation, aligning the decision-makers, and integrating the new leader. It is the part of a senior hire that search firms are not engaged to own, and that organizations most often get wrong.
TGC&C does not source executive candidates. Where you need sourcing, the right answer is a retained search firm — and we will gladly recommend a reputable one and work alongside it. Selection Support strengthens the half of the process the search firm does not own.
Two Ways Selection Support Is Engaged
Selection Support is delivered in one of two contexts. The scope points and pricing are the same in both — what changes is how the work fits your situation.
- Client-led search. Your organization is running the search itself — with no retained search firm, or only a contingency recruiter supplying resumes. Selection Support provides the whole selection apparatus: the role definition, the evaluation structure, and, at the higher scope points, the candidate assessment, the decision-maker alignment, and the transition design.
- Search-firm-partnered. You have engaged, or will engage, a retained executive search firm to source and screen candidates. Here Selection Support is the process-design and decision-rigor layer alongside the search firm — deliberately the work that retained search, as an industry, does least well. The search firm brings the candidates; Selection Support makes sure you defined the role well, evaluate the slate with your own independent lens, and choose and integrate well.
“If I am paying a search firm, am I paying twice?”
No — because the two engagements do different work, and one has an interest the other does not. A retained search firm is invested in a hire being made: its fee and its replacement guarantee are structured around a placement closing and surviving a short guarantee window. That is a real and useful stake — but it is a stake in a hire, not necessarily the right hire, and not in the slow kind of failure that surfaces well after any guarantee has expired. Selection Support has no placement to close and no candidate of its own. Its only interest is that the role was defined well, the evaluation was rigorous and independent, the decision-makers were aligned, and the new leader was set up to succeed. That independence is the value — and it is complementary to the search firm, not a duplicate of it.
One Service, Three Scope Points
Selection Support is a single service offered at three points along a scope ladder. What moves an engagement up the ladder is how much of the hiring arc you want TGC&C to support. Each is a flat project fee. We will recommend the right scope point in a discovery and scoping conversation.
Selection Foundations — $10,000
TGC&C builds the framework for a sound hire and hands it to you to run the search, evaluation, and decision yourselves. This is the front half of the hiring arc — and it prevents the most common and most expensive failure: a role that was never clearly defined.
What you get: A defined role and success profile that translates “we need a CPO” into a concrete account of what the role must accomplish and the capabilities it genuinely requires; explicit evaluation criteria; a structured interview framework with scorecards so your panel evaluates consistently; and a working handover so your team can run the evaluation well.
Selection Support — $12,500
Everything in Selection Foundations, plus TGC&C is engaged through the evaluation itself — assessing the actual finalist candidates and synthesizing the evidence for your decision-makers. You are no longer running the evaluation alone.
What you get: Everything in Selection Foundations, plus assessment of the finalist candidates against the evaluation criteria — bringing structured interviewing and, where appropriate, our assessment instruments to evaluate capability, leadership style, and fit on evidence rather than impression — and a written recommendation report that gives your decision-makers a clear, honest, evidence-based account of each finalist.
Selection Partner — $15,000
Everything in Selection Support, plus the two elements that extend the engagement across the full hiring arc: facilitating the alignment of the decision-makers before candidates are evaluated, and designing the new leader’s transition into the seat after the offer is accepted.
What you get: Everything in Selection Support, plus stakeholder-alignment facilitation — actively bringing the CEO, the board, and the executive team to a shared, explicit agreement on what this hire must be, before the evaluation begins — and transition design, an onboarding and first-period plan so a capable hire is set up to integrate rather than left to do so alone. Senior hires fail in integration as well as in selection; this scope point protects the hire after it is made.
How It Works
Frame the Engagement
A free discovery call confirms that Selection Support is the right service — not a sourcing need better met by a search firm — and which of the two engagement contexts you are in. We then confirm the scope point and set the engagement on a clear footing.
Define the Role
We surface what each decision-maker actually wants the hire to be — and they rarely want the same thing. We name the disagreements while they can still be reconciled, and build the success profile: the written, agreed definition of the role the whole hire rests on.
Structure & Run the Evaluation
We turn the success profile into explicit evaluation criteria and a structured interview design. At Selection Support and above, we then assess the actual finalist candidates against that standard — on evidence, not instinct — and synthesize a recommendation.
Secure the Hire & Transition
We support an evidence-based decision — the choice stays yours — and, at Selection Partner, design the new leader’s transition so the hire you worked to secure is set up to succeed. The engagement closes deliberately, with any genuine next need surfaced honestly.
Frequently Combined With
A CPO hire rarely stands alone. These are genuinely separate engagements, scoped on their own terms, that often sit alongside or follow a Selection Support engagement:
- Interim CPO — When the CPO seat is empty and will stay empty while the search runs, an Interim CPO leads the function through the gap. Selection Support secures the permanent hire; the Interim CPO covers the seat in the meantime — a natural pairing.
- Fractional CPO & HR Advisory — Once the new CPO is in the seat, ongoing part-time advisory support for the new leader is a Fractional CPO retainer — the most natural follow-on, especially after a Selection Partner engagement.
- Organizational Design & Restructuring — When defining the role surfaces that the HR function or the wider organization itself needs restructuring before — or as — the new CPO arrives.
[Placeholder: Add a testimonial from a Selection Support engagement. Focus on the rigor the process brought to a high-stakes hire — a clearly defined role, an evidence-based evaluation, aligned decision-makers, and confidence in the choice.]
Common Questions
How is Selection Support different from an executive search firm?
An executive search firm finds the candidates — sourcing, networks, outreach to passive candidates. Selection Support makes the hiring decision succeed — defining the role, structuring the evaluation, aligning the decision-makers, and integrating the new leader. TGC&C does not source candidates. The two services are complementary: a well-run CPO hire often uses both, and where you need sourcing we will recommend a reputable search firm and work alongside it.
We are already using a search firm. Doesn’t this overlap?
It does not. A search firm is invested in a hire being made — its fee and guarantee are structured around a placement closing. Selection Support has no candidate of its own; it is invested only in the right hire and a sound process. Search firms, as an industry, under-invest in process design — role definition and interview structure tend to be treated as administrative work. That is precisely where Selection Support adds value: the rigor of the role definition, the structure of the evaluation, the alignment of the decision-makers, and the integration of the hire. Against a large search fee, a focused process-and-rigor layer is proportionate insurance on the part of the decision the search fee does not truly cover.
Who makes the final hiring decision?
You do. Selection Support assesses candidates and makes a clear, evidence-based recommendation — but the decision to hire a CPO belongs to the CEO and the board. Our role is to make that decision rigorous and informed: to ensure the people deciding have an honest, structured account of each candidate rather than a set of impressions. A decision made on the evidence and owned by you is the goal.
How long does a Selection Support engagement take?
The engagement runs in step with your hiring process, which you — or your search firm — drive. The role-definition work comes early, before sourcing begins; the evaluation work comes when candidates are in hand; the transition work comes after the offer is accepted. Because the calendar depends partly on your search timeline, we scope the engagement against that timeline rather than fixing rigid dates a search may not meet.
What if we mostly need help finding candidates?
Then what you need first is a retained executive search firm, and we will tell you so plainly — and can recommend a reputable one. Selection Support is not sourcing. That said, finding candidates and choosing well are different problems, and many organizations need both: a search firm to source, and Selection Support to make sure the role is defined well and the evaluation is rigorous. We will be candid in the discovery call about what your situation actually calls for.