Why Standard Evaluation Fails at the Executive Level
Executive hiring fails at a 40% rate within 18 months. The primary cause isn't a lack of functional capability — most executives who fail were genuinely competent at their function. The failure is typically a mismatch between operating model, decision-making style, and organizational context. Those variables are invisible on a CV and rarely surfaced in a standard interview process.
Majhi Group's evaluation framework is built to surface what standard processes miss. It treats every executive candidate as a hypothesis — and tests that hypothesis with evidence rather than impression.
The Four Evaluation Dimensions
Functional Capability
Can they actually do the job at the level this role requires? Functional capability is assessed through structured evidence: specific outcomes in comparable roles, the scale and complexity of the problems they've solved, and — critically — how they solved them, not just what they achieved. Title inflation is common at the executive level. We look for verifiable outcomes, not claimed scope.
Pattern of Outcomes
What does the candidate's career arc actually show? A consistent pattern of strong outcomes across different contexts is more predictive than exceptional performance in one context. We look for trajectory — are outcomes improving over time? We also look for how candidates have handled failure and transition — these are often more revealing than their successes.
Leadership Operating Model
How do they actually run a team? How do they make decisions, manage ambiguity, handle conflict, build trust, and delegate? This dimension requires behavioral evidence — specific examples of how they've operated in situations comparable to what this role will require. The goal is to understand the candidate's default operating model, not their ideal self-description.
Founder Compatibility
For growth-stage companies, this dimension is often the deciding factor. A VP who would excel in a mature organization may fail in an early-stage environment where role definition is fluid, resources are constrained, and the founder's involvement is high. Founder compatibility is assessed through direct conversation with both the candidate and the founder — looking for alignment on autonomy, communication style, pace, and how disagreement is handled.
The Evidence Dossier
Every candidate Majhi Group presents is accompanied by an Evidence Dossier — a structured brief that documents our assessment across all four dimensions with specific, verifiable evidence. The dossier is not a profile. It is an evaluation — including risk flags, not just strengths.
Evidence Dossier Contents
Why We Include Risk Flags
Most executive search firms present candidates in the best possible light. We include risk flags explicitly because a hiring decision made without full information is not a decision — it is a gamble. Our job is to give the hiring CEO complete information, not to close a placement.
"The 40% executive failure rate isn't caused by incompetence. It's caused by incomplete information at the point of hire. Every risk flag we surface is a decision the CEO can make in advance instead of discovering at month eight."
The QMS Gate
Before any candidate is presented to a client, they pass through our QMS Gate — a structured quality checkpoint that ensures the Evidence Dossier is complete, the assessment is supported by evidence, and the candidate genuinely meets the criteria established in the mandate intake. We do not present candidates who don't pass the gate — regardless of pipeline pressure.