Senior Associate - Executive Search

Sustain Talent; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Performance bonus

Benefits

Job summary

Sustain Talent in London is seeking a Senior Associate to join the core delivery team in a high-impact retained search environment. You will own searches end-to-end, lead candidate identification, market mapping, direct outreach, and create focused longlists.

You will mentor junior Associates, coordinate interview schedules, provide weekly client updates, and leverage AI-enabled tools and CRM systems to drive delivery quality while maintaining senior stakeholder relationships.

Qualifications

• Experience in retained executive search and delivering end-to-end research for senior mandates.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with ability to craft structured candidate reports.
• Mentoring and developing junior team members; collaborative stakeholder management.

Responsibilities

• Lead candidate identification, market mapping, and proactive outreach.
• Manage end-to-end search processes, qualification interviews, and scorecard evaluation.
• Produce clear, consultative reporting and longlists; coordinate interview schedules.
• Mentor and guide junior Associates, uphold delivery quality and best practices.

Job description

Senior Associate - Executive Search

Location: London (Hybrid)

Job Type: Full-time / Permanent

Sector: Executive Search / Recruitment & Headhunting

Salary: Competitive Base + Performance Bonus & Benefits

Why Join Our Client?

Our client is an award-winning, globally recognised executive search and interim management firm that combines international scale with the agility, high-touch care, and collaborative feel of a boutique partner. By joining them, you will partner with high-growth and market-leading businesses—including prominent private equity-backed enterprises—to appoint board, C-suite, and functional leadership teams driving genuine organisational change. This is a high-impact, empowered delivery role where your expertise is genuinely valued, allowing you to take full operational ownership of retained searches and free up Partner capacity so you can focus purely on high-level execution, research strategy, and candidate engagement without personal business development targets. Furthermore, you will work smarter with state-of-the-art search tooling and AI-driven documentation assistants (such as Metaview) integrated into daily operations, all while playing a pivotal leadership role guiding and mentoring junior Associates in a high-performance, supportive environment.

The Role & Responsibilities

We are acting as a recruitment partner to represent our client in their search for an experienced Senior Associate to join their core delivery team. This is a high-impact, non-fee-earning execution role designed for an established candidate manager or search researcher who wants to take full ownership of retained mandates and directly influence search throughput and delivery quality at scale.

In this capacity, you will independently lead candidate identification, market mapping, and proactive direct outreach, producing focused target lists and insightful longlists. You will conduct thorough qualification interviews, evaluate talent against precise scorecard criteria, and synthesise evidence into clear, consultative reporting. Additionally, you will manage active assignment workflows, coordinate interview schedules, lead structured weekly client updates, help steer search outcomes, and leverage modern search tooling and AI documentation assistants to maintain real-time accuracy on the firm's CRM (such as Ezekia). Finally, you will mentor and guide junior Associates, upholding delivery quality, consistency, and best practices across the research team.

Requirements & Background

We are looking for candidates who bring proven experience as an Associate, Senior Researcher, or Delivery Consultant within a retained executive search firm or specialised boutique, coupled with a strong track record of managing end-to-end research, mapping, and candidate engagement for senior-level mandates. You should possess exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to draft structured, insight-led candidate reports. Alongside being technologically fluent and comfortable utilising executive search databases and modern AI-enabled workflow tools, you will need a collaborative mindset with a natural aptitude for mentoring others and building trusted relationships with senior stakeholders.