Your highest-stakes hires
Land the hire that matters most.
Mis-hires at the top are brutally expensive — and most of the risk gets in before the search even starts. FocusedFit is a hiring platform for your highest-stakes roles: it runs your search with an expert recruiter’s process, Evidence Based Alignment for reading the fit between a role and its context, and AI agents that carry the work — so the doubts surface and get tested before the offer goes out, not after the start date.
Build your craft into the platform
Get every search right.
Your firm’s craft — the judgment that wins searches — built into a customizable agentic system that runs on every role, at the scale your clients hired you for. Your method stops living in one recruiter’s head and starts compounding across the whole firm.
The kickoff surfaced several different pictures of this role. The must-have skills, the level, and the scope aren’t written down yet, and who owns the final call is still open.
What earns Yellow?
A written decision on the must-haves, level, scope, and who owns the call.
Draft the scope decisionIn the second interview, they spoke to owning the problems they were handed. Not yet visible is a moment they took something on before being asked — the unprompted ownership this role leans on.
What earns Green?
Ask about a time they redesigned a process without being asked.
Add to interview planThrough the second interview, they kept asking why — following questions past the brief and testing their own assumptions out loud. The evidence for curiosity is clear and consistent.
What earns Platinum?
Look for a moment where they taught the panel something new.
Signals from your interviews and working sessions — the color is the reading, the next step is yours.
Where the risk gets in
The risk is built in before the search starts — and it grows the whole way through.
A critical hire rarely disappoints for lack of effort. It disappoints because the decisive work goes undone, and undone work compounds: the role was never pinned down, so it drifts; the process wanders from its own plan; and the alignment cracks that were there at the start only open up once interviews begin. FocusedFit builds that work in — and keeps it honest from kickoff to offer.
The bill for all of it: by Heidrick & Struggles’ count, 40% of senior executive hires fail or leave within 18 months (Financial Times, 2009). And the most common reason people give for quitting a new job fast is that the role wasn’t what they expected (Jobvite Job Seeker Nation survey, 2022).
- 1The stakeholders never actually agreed on what the role is
- 2The job description is a wish list — not criteria anyone can evaluate
- 3Interviews produce confident impressions, not documented evidence
- 4Doubts surface in hallways — and never get tested before the offer
- 5The candidate is sold a role that doesn’t match the reality on the ground
- 6Hiring gets done on the side of a full-time job, so the careful work is the first thing to go
The opportunity in front of you
The firms that win the next decade have their craft built into the platform.
When a senior recruiter leaves, their method, voice, and judgment walk out with them. The craft that differentiates your firm should live in the platform — on every search, at partner standard, every time.
The math is simple: more searches run at your standard, without thinning out the judgment that makes you worth hiring.
- 1Senior craft walks out when senior people leave
- 2Junior work elevated to partner standards under senior review
- 3Volume work belongs on the agent — not the recruiter’s desk
- 4Throughput shouldn’t be gated on partner availability
- 5Clients churn when fees outrun the value they can see
- 6Your judgment is the product — it should scale like one
Why FocusedFit is different
Three forces behind every great hire — built in.
An expert recruiter’s process, an evidence-backed read of fit, and AI agents that run the search. Here’s what each does to protect the hire.
Expert Recruiter Process
A veteran recruiter’s craft, encoded into the work.
- Defines what “right” means before sourcing
- Grades every candidate against that bar, with evidence
- Keeps the final decision yours
Evidence Based Alignment
A rigorous, evidence-based read of the fit between a person and a seat. The alignment, not the person.
- Alignment with the role — Strong
- Alignment with the team — Solid
- Alignment with where you’re headed — Strong
- The fit is what gets graded — never the person. Every read backed by specific evidence.
Always-On AI Agents
Run the search on their own, between your meetings.
- Source on a cadence
- Grade the pile against the role
- Draft outreach in your voice
- Check in only for your call
How we read fit — Evidence Based Alignment
We read the alignment — not the person in the abstract.
Evidence Based Alignment is the discipline we work by: an ongoing read of how well a person and a seat fit, shaped with cofounder Dr. Sanchit Maruti, MD. It works by subtraction — removing uncertainty, unasked questions, and untested doubts, the things that put a hire at risk. The stance is simple: a senior hire succeeds or fails on alignment — this person, the way they actually work, meeting this role, this team, this moment in the company. The same person can thrive in one seat and struggle in another; what changes isn’t the person — it’s the alignment. That is what gets read, and every finding ties to specific, documented evidence you can open and check.
Four ways work moves
Every direction gets read: how they run a team, influence the leadership above them, work across peers, and represent you to the outside world.
Four corners, one read — read one without the others and the judgment breaks. And the read is contextual, not a fixed label: the same person reads differently in a different seat, team or moment.
Alignment, not verdicts
We don’t grade people in the abstract. The read is whether this person, in this seat, on this team, right now, works — a judgment about the fit in that context, not a fixed label on the person.
Evidence behind every finding
Each observation is tied to the specific words and moments behind it — something you can check, not an impression or a hunch.
A method you can interrogate
Grounded in established clinical frameworks and transparent by design. Every finding shows the criterion it was read against and the evidence behind it — and you can question it, challenge it, or overrule it. Nothing asks to be taken on faith.
It starts before the first candidate
Half of de-risking the hire is agreeing what "right" means.
Before FocusedFit sources a single candidate, it gets the people doing the hiring onto one explicit role standard — what the role really is, what success looks like in year one, and who actually thrives in your business. It’s the conversation most teams skip, and where most of the risk gets in. And because real searches drift — the market talks back, stakeholders change their minds — an explicit standard is what makes drift visible, so you adapt it on purpose instead of watching the search quietly become a different search.
- Aligns every stakeholder before the search starts
- Turns a vague wish list into explicit, evaluable criteria
- Becomes the bar every candidate is measured against
- Makes drift visible — so the target moves on purpose, never by accident
Chief Financial Officer
Series B SaaS · $8M ARR
Mission
Set up a clean Series C and eventual IPO — financial discipline, investor-grade reporting, disciplined capital allocation.
Goals
- 1Lead the Series C raise ($40–60M)
- 2Stand up investor-grade reporting
- 3Extend runway past 24 months
- 4Build the finance team (3 → 8)
Role qualities
The Role Alignment Profile — agreed before the first candidate, moved on purpose when the search teaches you something.
What runs in the background
Six jobs handled for you. One search you actually control.
These aren’t features sitting on a tool. Each is real work the platform carries — a mission, a task, a deliverable it produces for your review — so getting it right doesn’t depend on someone finding the hours.
You make the calls. The grind runs itself.
The search keeps moving between your meetings.
FocusedFit doesn’t wait for you to prompt it. The work wakes from a request, a schedule, or a check-in — it loads the search and what it already knows, takes the next useful action, records what happened, and rests until it’s needed again.
Between your sessions, the search keeps moving. Sourcing runs. Candidates are graded. Outreach drafts queue up. It checks in when it needs your judgment — not before.
On ask
Triggered by your request — runs until the task is done, then reports back.
On schedule
Wakes on a cadence — daily sourcing, weekly pipeline reviews, recurring pulse checks.
On pulse
Monitors for signals and surfaces the moments that need human judgment.
This run
- Sourced 9 candidates · Staff RevOps
- Graded 6 against the role
- Drafted outreach to 3
- Flagged 1 — needs your call
Checks in only when it needs your judgment.
The runtime wakes, works the search, and rests on its own — checking in only when it’s your call.
How it works, end to end
Every step, done right — and visible to you.
Not a checklist you have to manage. A sequence of real work — evaluated candidates, drafted outreach, evidence reads — that lands in your queue for review and approval. You stay in control of the direction.
The search starts with a target everyone actually agreed on.
Nobody guesses what good looks like. The role standard turns hiring-manager context and company goals into explicit criteria — one bar, inherited by every downstream step. And when the search teaches you the target has moved, you move the standard in the open, not by drift.
The sourcing agent runs the mission.
It wakes on a schedule, sharpens its sourcing strategy, finds people, grades them against the role standard, and drops work into your review queue — without you managing it session to session. Grunt work done. You review what matters.
No black box. See exactly how it’s thinking.
The sourcing flow is visible: what strategy is being pursued, what paths it is taking through the market, and where it is focusing attention. You stay in control of the direction. The platform handles the execution.
Sourcing strategy
Built from the role standard · sharpens with use
Two-pass grading
A pipeline, not a pile — the strategy sharpens every run.
Sourcing flow — the path from role criteria to sourced candidate, made visible.
Pipeline moves between sessions — not just when someone remembers.
Momentum holds through the entire search lifecycle. Candidate records, outreach drafts, stage tracking, and work items all stay current. Hiring managers stay informed without getting buried in coordination.
See the evidence before you make the offer.
Candidate records combine sourced information, outreach history, and interview evidence. The evidence brief is attached so the team compares candidates against the role criteria — not against each other’s impressions.
The work is automated. The hire is yours.
You see every move. You make the hire.
Sourcing, grading, outreach drafts, interview plans, transcript summaries, decision evidence — that is the platform’s work. The conversations, the relationships, and the hire — that is still yours. FocusedFit extends recruiting craft. It does not replace it.
FocusedFit handles
Autonomous execution and evidence synthesis
- Carries the multi-week search mission
- Sources and grades candidates on a cadence — the ones that miss the bar are set aside, reason on record
- Drafts outreach for human approval
- Builds interview plans and evidence reads
- Summarizes transcripts and flags decisions
- Checks in when judgment is required
You decide
Direction, relationships, and the hire
- Define what success means
- Approve sourcing strategy and outreach
- Talk with candidates
- Weigh tradeoffs and context
- Make the final hiring decision
FocusedFit Live
Expert-on-demand — early access
- Sanity-checks the role standard
- Tunes sourcing strategy
- Reviews finalist evidence
- Coaches interview discipline
- Helps with close and offer risk
Build it in — and it compounds
You’re not buying a search. You’re building a hiring machine.
Every search makes the next one sharper. Your role standards, your skills library, your alignment standards, and the hard-won sense of who actually thrives in your company all accrue inside FocusedFit. Hiring stops being a fire drill you survive and becomes a practice you own.
Standards, captured once
Define what "great" means in a role standard, then run every search against it — no reinventing the bar each time.
A skills library that grows
Your company’s definition of great, encoded as reusable skills and tuned with every role you fill.
Context that compounds
The system carries who thrived, who didn’t, and why — so it gets smarter about your business search after search.
A practice, not a scramble
The 14th hire is easier than the 4th. Velocity and quality climb together as the machine learns your company.
Why we know this works
We’ve built hiring this way before — taking an expert, structured process, turning it into a system, and letting a company hire and scale on that machine instead of on luck. FocusedFit is that machine, rebuilt as an agentic system built on Evidence Based Alignment, so any company can build the same thing without the years of trial and error.
The team behind FocusedFit
Operator, builder, and physician.
We didn’t study this problem from the outside. We lived it — the recruiter running searches, the engineer building platforms, and the physician who reads how working relationships thrive. Getting hiring right takes all three. FocusedFit is the result.
Chris Hefley
Chief Executive Officer
Co-founder of LeanKit (acquired by Planview)
Christel Alvarez
Chief Business Officer
Founder and Managing Director of Alvarez Search
Sanchit Maruti, MD
Chief Operating Officer
Psychiatrist and executive coach
Pricing for recruiters and hiring teams.
Pay by the role-month: one role, on for 30 days, worked by FocusedFit from the search through outreach and interview plans. The introductory price is yours for 12 months from your account’s first purchase; the price after that is shown beside it.
Trial
Free for 30 days
Start on one real role and see the work before you pay.
- 25 Data Credits, given once
- Contact details come with a paid plan
- Start without a credit card
Monthly
$199$149 per role, a month
Introductory price for 12 months from your account’s first purchase, then $199 a role-month, plus applicable tax
For one critical hire, or a few at once.
- Up to five roles on at once
- 300 Data Credits per role, each month
- AI work and your whole hiring team included
Annual
$1,990$1,490 per role, a year
Introductory price for year one, then $1,990 per role a year from year two, plus applicable tax
For teams hiring through the year, or more than five roles at once.
- 3,000 Data Credits for the year, usable any time
- Pay by card or invoice
- AI work and your whole hiring team included
Data Credits pay for the data behind your searches: finding profiles and looking up contact details. How pricing works
FocusedFit™ Live: expert support on demand
In early access: need surge capacity on a critical role? A credentialed recruiter will work inside your FocusedFit workspace so process and knowledge stay in your system.
FocusedFit Live — expertise that stays in your system
Bring in an expert recruiter — and keep everything they add.
Great hiring is built into your company. And when a role calls for outside expertise — a niche, a tough search, a critical hire — FocusedFit Live brings a vetted senior recruiter right into your workspace, at whatever level you need — from a single expert consult to a full-service search — at a fraction of a search fee. Because they work inside your FocusedFit, their judgment, candidates, and learnings become part of your machine and make it better — instead of walking out the door when the engagement ends.
Run it yourself
Your FocusedFit hiring machine — agentic sourcing, the expert process, and the fit method built in. This is where most of your hiring happens.
- Always on, in every plan
- Agentic search, end to end
- The expert method, baked in
Add an expert consult
Hit a moment that needs judgment? Pull in a senior recruiter to calibrate the role, pressure-test a finalist, or coach the close. You stay in the driver’s seat; they weigh in when you want them.
- Role & scorecard calibration
- Finalist evidence review
- Interview & close coaching
- Pay per consult — no retainer
Hand off a high-stakes search
Need it fully run? Hand that one search to a dedicated FocusedFit recruiter who takes it end to end — inside your workspace, at a fraction of a traditional search fee. You approve the finalists; everything they build stays in your machine.
- A dedicated senior recruiter
- Runs inside your FocusedFit
- A fraction of a search fee
- Price you see upfront
It comes into your system
Live experts work inside your FocusedFit — the candidates, criteria, and judgment land in your machine, not a separate inbox you lose track of.
It improves your machine
Every engagement sharpens your role standards, skills, and criteria. The expertise compounds into your hiring instead of resetting each time.
It stays yours
When the engagement ends, everything the expert built — standards, criteria, context — stays in your account, ready for the next hire.
Early access — senior recruiters only. See how Live works →
For search firms
Put your specialty to work. Fulfill FocusedFit Live requests.
Run a search firm — especially one with a niche or a deep specialty? Join the network of experts who’ll fulfill FocusedFit Live consults and concierge searches. Bring your judgment and your relationships; let the platform carry the grunt work around you. You meet companies who need exactly your corner of the market — already aligned, already moving.
Contact us for detailsNiche & specialty welcome
The deeper your corner of the market, the better the match.
Consult or full search
Take single-call consults or run high-stakes searches end to end.
The platform does the grind
Sourcing, scheduling, and evidence run themselves around you.
You bring the judgment
Relationships and the hire stay where they belong — with you.
Questions worth asking
FAQ
Isn’t this just another AI recruiting tool?
No. Most AI recruiting tools automate the grind and stop there — anyone can build a sourcing bot. What’s rare, and what FocusedFit is built around, is the craft: a veteran recruiter’s process and Evidence Based Alignment — the discipline we read fit by — encoded into how the work gets done and how fit gets read, and running inside our own platform. The AI does the work; the judgment stays yours — and that’s what de-risks the hire.
Do I need to already have a recruiting team?
No. FocusedFit is built for the team that does not have recruiters — the founder, chief of staff, or operator who has to get a hire right without a five-figure search fee. If you already have a recruiter, it makes them faster. If you have always outsourced, it brings the capability in-house. If you could never justify a search firm, this is how you hire as if you had one.
No — for firms it works the other way. A small team can run more searches at partner standard without building a back office of coordinators and sourcers to do it.
Does this replace recruiters?
No. FocusedFit puts the structure around the people you have. The platform handles the volume work; your team makes the decisions. A good recruiter gets faster. A stretched team gets less stretched.
No — it does the opposite. Your craft is your product. FocusedFit takes the slog off your team’s desk so they can spend more time on the work clients actually pay for.
How do you keep humans in control?
Every action is on the record and reviewable. Outreach is never sent automatically — it waits as a draft for a person to read, edit, and approve. Grading is automatic: when candidates are graded against the role standard, the ones that meet it are shortlisted and the ones that miss it are set aside as not advancing. Each of those moves is recorded with its reason, and a person can bring any candidate back. FocusedFit shows what it did and what it plans next. The conversations and the hire are yours.
How is this different from an AI assistant or copilot?
An assistant waits for you to ask. FocusedFit works on its own: it wakes from a request, a schedule, or a regular check, picks up the search and what it already knows, plans the next action, takes it, records what happened, and pauses until the next useful moment. Between sessions, the work keeps moving — so the search runs whether or not you are watching.
Who owns the candidate data?
Your searches live in your account, and everything the platform builds for you — role standards, candidate records, evidence, skills — accrues to your hiring machine. Have a specific data-handling or security question? Ask us — we answer in writing.
Does FocusedFit decide who gets hired?
No — people do. Candidates are read against an explicit role standard: evidence-anchored criteria defined up front, the same standard for everyone. The read is inspectable — open any grade and see the criterion and the evidence under it. Grading places candidates as shortlisted or not advancing by that standard, with the reason recorded, and a person can bring anyone back. The offer and the hire are a person’s; FocusedFit never makes either.
Does FocusedFit type or label people?
No. We assess the fit between a role and its context — not the psychology of a person. It’s Evidence Based Alignment — the same judgment a great recruiter applies, made consistent. Not a personality test. Every finding is tied to documented evidence and open to challenge — and because fit lives between a person and their context, it is specific to that context, not a fixed label a person carries from role to role. A static label never could be.
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Start a trial.
Sign up and put FocusedFit to work on a real role — free for 30 days, with 25 Data Credits included. Your plan starts only when you choose it.
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Get hiring right
Start with the hire that matters most. Keep the machine built to get the next one right.
We built this because we run searches ourselves and watched the old model ship risk straight into the offer. Bring us the hire that has to land — and walk away with great hiring built into your company for good.
Your method. Your voice. Running at platform scale.
Bring a live search to a working session. We will configure FocusedFit against your method so you can judge it on a real role — not a choreographed demo.