Insights from Caldwell’s Shawn Banerji
Client expectations around shortlist timelines have never been more compressed — and the stakes of getting it wrong have never been higher. Caldwell’s Shawn Banerji recently joined a Hunt Scanlon webinar, Speed vs. Certainty: How Leading Search Firms Deliver Fast Shortlists Without Increasing Risk, moderated by Ben Mones, CEO and Founder of Fama, for a candid conversation about how the industry is navigating this tension. Below are highlights from the discussion.
Watch the full recorded webinar here →
How has the definition of “what good looks like” evolved for the clients you work with?
“We tend to always fall back on performance as our baseline. Performance transcends brands, industries, and specific organizations, and there’s actually a ton of information out there about it. We’re always a bit gobsmacked at the lack of emphasis on performance, how certain brands may resonate more so than others without actually looking at the performance of the business.
For public companies, there are a variety of denominators that go into the calculus — shareholder value, stock price, revenue, and margin. Fortunately, the resources and data exist in a variety of public spheres that we can quickly aggregate and put to work as part of our identification. It can be a bit more difficult with private companies and earlier-stage businesses, but there’s a lot of information out there. Our ability to harvest that information and operationalize it — to convert it into insight for ourselves and our clients — has increased manifold. What we’ve seen change just in the last six months is remarkable.”
Caldwell has applied a “coaching tree” framework to executive search. Can you walk us through that?
“In sports, you’d look at the coaching tree model — how, when you distill back in various leagues, there tend to be different figures that many of the top performers have been developed by. You’d see the Marv Levy tree, the Walsh tree, the Gibbs tree. These are stylistically very different approaches. We looked at that model and actually re-engineered it.
In my industry, we looked at organizations such as General Motors, which had been one of the preeminent technology shops, and at a gentleman named Ralph Szygenda, who had really created that function. At one point, something like 10 of the Fortune 50 CIOs had worked somewhere in the Ralph Szygenda sphere of influence.
It gives you a lot of insight — not just into performance, but into how and what shaped their thinking, culture, and values — so you can better fit those individuals to the right environment. Because someone could be incredibly successful in environment A, but in fact those same competencies and proficiencies would make them a disaster in another situation.”
How is AI actually changing the speed equation, and what are the limits?
“The tools available to us today are allowing us to do this so much more quickly and effectively. The human interface is still the priority, and our ability to engage with candidates and clients, allowing these tools to drive the automation and optimization, gives us the gift of time. Now we can have more forthright and substantive interactions.
That said, sometimes you’ve got to go a little slow to go fast. Just because these are the first five people doesn’t mean they’re the five best people. Let a two- to three-week cycle play out so you can sit back and reflect. That’s the judgment.
We’re working with a couple of interesting service providers right now who have managed to do things that would have taken us two weeks — they’re able to do in a couple of hours. But it’s always a judicious balance that we’re seeking.”
You’ve been candid that clients now have access to many of the same tools search firms do. How does that change the value of what search firms bring?
“Let’s call a spade a spade. These customers have access to the same technology. It’s not as if we in executive search have exclusive access. They’ve got Perplexity, they’ve got Gemini, they’ve got all these different tools — and some of the biggest companies in the world have software like Glean, which allows them to plug an agentic start to their day into all the business tools and software they use.
But what I am saying is that this technology is empowering users, regardless of where they may be domiciled, to take greater ownership and potentially drive better, faster results. The closer you reside to your client, and the better you can use these tools to serve them, the better off you will be. The further you reside from the client and the less skilled you are around using these tools, the greater risk you’re at — if not in absolute jeopardy.
Interestingly, as science and STEM are allowing us to do things better, faster, and more cheaply, the premium is on guidance, counsel, and judgment. That’s where the real power ultimately resides.”
What’s Caldwell’s own experience been like adopting these tools internally?
“Our journey reflects what’s happening across the industry. Recruiters are masters of R&D — rip off and duplicate — and we have the good fortune to be engaged with so many incredible clients that are often the genesis of these sparks of genius. We then start to pick them off and try to apply them.
At Caldwell, there’s almost a Moore’s law effect right now. Things are changing so incredibly quickly. What we’ve seen change just in the last 90 days is a greater accelerant than what we saw in the last six months, two years, three years. We’re fortunate — we like to think we’re big enough to be relevant but not monolithic, so we can be nimble and adaptable.
We’ve certainly rethought our own business within the last three months — how we go to market, how we become more insightful and impactful, and how we bring that value to our clients, whether or not they use us as their search partner. We are doing everything we can to embrace this — drinking from the proverbial firehose while still making it actionable. And so far, most of our colleagues are excited and want to go on that journey with us.”
You shared a striking real-world example on the webinar about candidates using AI. What happened?
“Let me throw something wild that I experienced for the first time — and it’s coming for everyone. I asked a candidate, given some directional guidance around what the compensation program would be with my client, to come back to me with what they were seeking. Well, I got a five-page document back, likely authored by Claude. I got to about page two and stopped reading.
If I were to present this to my client, there’s no way they would have moved forward with this candidate. And it wasn’t only the content and how it was presented — it was perhaps the judgment, which for me was now a tell about how this person might behave. Granted, it’s a CTO position, so maybe they’re demonstrating meaningful mastery and efficacy of using AI tools. But this was a time when it should have been 90% human, 10% technology, and they had clearly inverted it.
I counseled this person that I did not believe it was a productive exercise. But this is something we all need to be aware of now. Candidates have these tools, and how they’re going to use them in our ecosystem is going to be very interesting.”
What’s your advice to search firms still relying entirely on traditional shortlist methods?
“Evolve or perish. Because that’s where this is going.”
Shawn Banerji is the Co-Leader of Caldwell’s Technology Practice. The webinar “Speed vs. Certainty: How Leading Search Firms Deliver Fast Shortlists Without Increasing Risk” was moderated by Ben Mones, CEO and Founder of Fama.
