Executive Search
A Chief People Officer for a carve-out with nine months of runway
A sponsor-backed software business was separating from its parent. The people function had no executive leader, the transition services agreement was expiring, and the board needed someone who had run a carve-out before rather than someone who had read about one.
- Sector
- Private Equity & Portfolio
- Region
- United States
- Duration
- 9 weeks to offer
- Weeks from calibration to signed offer
- 9Weeks from calibration to signed offer
- Candidates on the final shortlist
- 4Candidates on the final shortlist
- Day onboarding plan agreed pre-start
- 100Day onboarding plan agreed pre-start
- 01Reframed the brief from a generic CPO specification to a separation mandate with explicit first-year deliverables.
- 02Mapped operators who had carried a carve-out or divestiture end to end, including leaders one level below CPO in larger businesses.
- 03Ran a structured assessment against the separation milestones rather than a general competency model.
- 04Modelled compensation against both sponsor-backed and corporate comparators to avoid a late offer failure.
Outcome
What changed.
- Four-candidate shortlist delivered with a written case for and against each.
- Appointed leader had previously executed two carve-outs at a comparable scale.
- Sponsor and CEO aligned on the first-hundred-day plan before the start date.
Representative mandate profiles. Client identities are withheld and details are generalised to protect confidentiality.
Next step
Bring us a mandate with the same shape.
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