When the role, as written, has no candidate
When a search does not close, you do not get paid. You did the mapping, built the list, ran the interviews — and it ended for a reason that was never yours: the package does not reach the profile, the board froze the decision, or the client worked out that what they have is an eight-month project and not a job. The account leaves the pipeline, the work does not come back, and the relationship goes cold for six months.
C-Fractionals exists for those searches. Not to compete with the ones that close.
Underneath, it is still hunting
There is a profile to define, a search to run, a professional presented to the client, and a seat that ends up filled by them. What changes is the basis — part-time instead of full-time — and the horizon, measured in months instead of years. The logic of your work is the same; what changes is the instrument you have in hand when the full-time role is not viable.
The seat is genuinely filled: the executive decides, answers for what they decided, and accounts for it. Weekly rhythm, a mandate measured in months, no minimum term and no exit penalty.
Four searches you will recognise
The package does not reach the seniority.
The client describes a CTO with fifteen years in a regulated environment and offers the package of a senior manager — you know the list will be turned down before you have finished building it. What to offer: the same seniority for a fraction of the time, inside the budget that actually exists.
The role is a project dressed as a job.
Choosing and rolling out the ERP. Deciding between building and buying. Setting an AI strategy without handing the company's data to a vendor. Integrating IT after an acquisition. These are six to twelve month decisions, not five-year careers — and whoever is hired full-time for them has no role left when they end, or leaves before that. What to offer: a mandate for as long as the decision lasts, without creating a permanent job for a problem that finishes.
The search froze.
The committee hesitates, the budget is moved, the priority changes: the position stays open on paper and dead in practice, and the operation carries on with nobody in that seat. What to offer: the seat filled while the decision to hire matures — and if the permanent hire does happen, the mandate ends, with no penalty and no minimum term.
The client cannot describe what they need.
The job description was written by someone who never sat in that seat, and you present good candidates only to hear “that is not quite it” three times running. What to offer: someone who fills the seat and writes the profile from the inside.
A mandate opens searches that did not exist
A filled C-level seat does not replace hiring: it defines it. Part of the work of a CTO mandate is designing the team — who to hire, in what order, with which profile.
In mandates run by our executives this came out as a formal deliverable: the technical profiles defined, separating what has to be permanent from what is temporary, the skills each technology and provider demands, and a gap analysis of the existing team. The stated purpose of that material is to guide hiring.
Where there was one stalled board-level vacancy, there are now positions in engineering, data, product and technical leadership — with a profile written by the person in the seat, a defined priority, and a budget justified by results instead of guesswork. They are faster searches to run, because the specification arrives written, and less prone to rounds of rejected lists.
Some mandates
Venture capital fund5 months
The board started deciding with numbers on the table, not a vendor deck.
Insurer, agribusiness5 months
Risk assessment without depending on a field inspection.
Investment manager, litigation assets8 months
Screening that took days now takes minutes.
Real-time data management softwareFractional CRO
Forecast accuracy from 45% to 75%, with the sales plan delivered.
When it is not the answer
Saying this matters more than it looks — you do not burn capital introducing something that does not apply.
When the seat demands daily presence and hour-by-hour decisions.
When what is missing is execution, not decision. Then the client needs a team, not a seat.
When the client wants someone to carry out a task already defined. That is staffing, and it is not what we do.
When the client can and wants to sustain a full-time executive and the search is closing. In that case your search is the way, and we stay out of it.
When nobody in the network fits the profile. We would rather say so than allocate whoever is available.
Have a search that will not close?
Bring us the situation. The first conversation is for reading: if a fractional mandate is not the answer, we say so — and your search carries on without us.