Hire the people your competitors cannot find.
Empire Resource Group runs executive, senior management and technology searches for employers in Canada and the United States. We approach candidates directly and assess them personally. The search runs through to the hire, not to a shortlist.
What we do
Four ways we hire for you.
Executive search
Retained search for the roles that set direction, in technology and beyond it. These are the appointments that are hardest to undo.
Senior management
Directors, heads of function and the layer that runs the business day to day. The appointments where judgement and references decide.
Technology recruitment
Senior individual contributors with scarce skills. Staff engineers, security architects, data leads, Salesforce and ERP specialists.
Contract and interim
When the need is defined and the clock is running. The same search discipline, run on a shorter horizon.
How we search
What actually happens.
Here is the whole search, step by step, from the brief to the hire. Nothing in it is proprietary; the difference is in the doing. Who owns each step? See how we work.
The brief, properly
Not the job description. Craig takes the brief himself. He will ask which requirement the fewest candidates can meet, and what you would trade if none can. Everything downstream is built on those answers.
Build the longlist
Recruiters map the market against the brief and put a number on it: how many people clear the bar you have set. Every name is researched before anyone is approached. If the pool is small, you hear that early.
Approach directly
Then the approaches, made by the same recruiters who built the list. One call or message at a time, in confidence, with every reply tracked. A strong candidate who answers on the third attempt is not one lost on the first.
Assess personally
The assessment is a conversation, and Craig has it. He interviews everyone who reaches the shortlist and scores each candidate against the brief. The view he brings you is one he will defend.
Present with context
Craig walks you through each person he puts forward: what the candidate wants, and what would make them say no. A resume without that context is just paper.
Run the interviews
Account managers coordinate your interview rounds and gather your feedback after each one. The search keeps moving; a candidate on hold is managed, not forgotten.
See it through
A search ends at a hire, not at a shortlist. Craig stays on the judgement calls through the offer, and if a search does not end in a hire, you hear plainly why: whether the reason came from your side, the candidate’s, or ours.
What you also get
An honest answer, even when it is no.
If the role as written cannot be filled at the rate you have set, you will hear that in the first week, not after two months of activity that looks like progress.
If the market has a handful of qualified people and three of them work for your competitor, you will hear that too, and what it would take to land one.
A search that ends in a placement nobody regrets is worth more than a search that ends quickly.
Bring us the role you cannot fill.
One call is enough to know whether we can help, and what the search will take.