Executive Search · CEO, CFO, COO · Private Equity-Backed Companies
We map the network before we name a candidate.
Bracken Hale runs retained search for private-equity sponsors and their portfolio companies during a change of control — when the wrong hire costs a fund an entire hold period, not just a bad quarter.
Approach
Retained search, one mandate at a time.
We run a maximum of six live searches at once across the firm, so every partner carries no more than two mandates. A search starts with two weeks mapping the actual org — not just the open seat, but who the new hire needs to manage out, manage up to, and win over inside the portfolio company — before we build a single candidate list. We present a shortlist of three to five, never a rolling pipeline, and we stay engaged ninety days past the start date to catch onboarding problems before they become a second search.
“The org mapping takes longer than the candidate search. That’s on purpose — a placement fails because of the org, almost never because of the candidate.”
Placements
A sample of the record.
Chief Executive Officer
[PE-backed industrials platform, ~$180M revenue]
Still in seat, year 4
11 weeks to close
Chief Financial Officer
[PE-backed healthcare services roll-up, ~$95M revenue]
Still in seat, year 2
8 weeks to close
Chief Operating Officer
[PE-backed specialty distribution, ~$220M revenue]
Still in seat, year 3
14 weeks to close
Chief Executive Officer
[PE-backed industrial services, ~$60M revenue]
Departed year 1, replacement completed at no additional fee
9 weeks to close
Company names withheld per engagement agreement; roles, revenue bands, and timelines are as recorded internally. 47 total placements since 2013; 91% still in the original seat after three years.
Team
Seven people. No researchers you never meet.
Every search is staffed by one partner and one associate who both meet every candidate in person before a name reaches the client — no outsourced research team doing the actual candidate contact.
Eleanor Bracken
Founding Partner, 17 years
CEO and board-level searches
Desmond Hale
Founding Partner, 15 years
CFO and finance-function searches
Priya Kanth
Partner, 10 years
COO and operations-leadership searches
“Bracken Hale told us six weeks in that our first-choice candidate wasn’t going to work with our CFO, before we’d even made an offer. They were right, and the person they proposed instead is still running the company three years later.”
“We’ve run four searches with them across two portfolio companies. They’ve never once tried to hand us a name outside the mandate to keep a pipeline moving. That restraint is rare in this business.”
Contact
Tell us the seat, and what happens if it’s wrong.
A first call is 30 minutes. Bring the org chart around the open seat, not just the job description — that’s what we actually search against.
Start a Searchsearch@brackenhale.example · (617) 555-0138 · Boston, MA