We run the search. You keep running the business.
Every partner at Ahoy has owned a business and held senior leadership roles, VP through CEO, across a wide range of industries and functions. That experience shapes how we run every search: a fee fixed before we start, a transparent match report, and a guarantee that holds. The search stays our job so the business can stay yours.
Most recruiters are salespeople first.
Close the deal, collect the fee, move on to the next one. That shows up in who gets sent your way, because a firm working that way has no reason to care whether the person is still there in a year.
Traditional firms churn candidates for volume and haven't done the jobs they're placing into. Premium care usually gets reserved for executive search, while professional-level hiring is treated as a commodity. We built Ahoy Partners to fix all of that.
The Ahoy Compass Report
We read the company as rigorously as we read the candidate. The Compass Report sets both sides against the same requirements, then shows exactly where they align and where they don't, instead of profiling a candidate in a vacuum and hoping the rest works out.
Structured analysis organizes and surfaces the evidence. The assessment itself is a partner's, based on documented experience, interview performance, what the role actually requires, and where the company is trying to go.
Fee integrity, by design
A standard percentage-of-final-salary fee creates a structural incentive to push compensation higher. Ours is calculated against a target figure we agree on jointly with the client, in writing, before the search begins. If the final number lands higher or lower than that target, the fee doesn't move.
How a search actually runs
What's included
| Executive SearchExec |
Professional SearchPro | |
|---|---|---|
| A partner who leads the engagement personally | ||
| A fee fixed to an agreed target compensation figure | ||
| Replacement guarantee | 12 months | 90 days |
| A structured 30/60/90-day check-in | – | |
| A structured 30/90/180/300-day executive check-in | – | |
| A Compass Report for everyone assessed |
Why we started this
We spent years on the hiring side of this problem: promotions that failed, search firms selling fast lists instead of the right ones, and do-it-ourselves hiring that ate months and produced nothing. We kept looking for a partner who could solve it. Eventually we stopped looking and became one.
We've also worked alongside a lot of exceptional people over the years. The controller who caught the problem nobody else saw coming. The operations manager everyone quietly went to before they went to their boss. The GM who turned a struggling location around without a single new hire. Those people are the difference between a company that works and one that doesn't, and finding them for someone else turned out to be worth doing full time.
