Case Study: How The Grant Partners use Clockwork to lower days to placement and deliver a winning client experience

The Grant Partners is a growing retained executive search firm specializing in C-level roles and their direct reports within the industrial manufacturing industry. When they launched six years ago, a priority was to set the team up for success by implementing a time-saving software solution at the outset.

To get their firm up and running the right way, using a homegrown system for their search process wouldn't cut it.

• They needed right-sized tools for executive search: At previous firms, The Grant Partners' team used a combination of DIY systems and Salesforce, neither of which were suited to executive search.
• They wanted to save time on administrative tasks: Manually adding candidates to a search was laborious and time consuming, and the new firm needed to run searches as efficiently as possible to be competitive.
• They lacked real-time data insights to share with clients: Without a single source of truth to share real-time data points on a search's progress with clients, the team had to rely on manually-updated spreadsheets.

That's where Clockwork came in.

Clockwork is executive search software purpose-built for boutique retained executive search firms. Grounded in proven methodology, Clockwork equips teams to run an efficient search process, deliver an exceptional client experience, and grow their business exponentially over time.

"Clockwork gives our whole team access to insights on every search. In real time, we're able to see where candidates are in the process, give clients access to the pool being built, and enable them to provide feedback. It allows our clients to have a controlled view of their search that's custom-tailored to them."

 

- Ryan Grant, President & Founder,

The Grant Partners

How Clockwork helps The Grant Partners save time with every search and exceed client expectations:

1. Actionable Search Insights in Real Time

   Working in Clockwork gives both The Grant Partners team and their clients valuable visibility into the progress and success of their searches, with no additional team effort required. And, with a shared understanding of their performance against internal success metrics, the team can focus on how to improve their processes.
   
   

   Example: The Grant Partners team uses insights from their Clockwork dashboard to inform team collaboration and problem-solving in weekly meetings.

2. Time-Saving Candidate Data Imports

   Clockwork's database makes manual candidate data imports a thing of the past for members of The Grant Partners team. They value the speed and efficiency with which they can import candidate data from LinkedIn, freeing up administrative time and boosting efficiency in the research stage.

   Example: When adding a candidate into their database, they can pull in key profile information that would otherwise need to be populated manually.

3. Efficient Team-Wide Task Management

   Adopting Clockwork has helped The Grant Partners refine how they communicate about and assign tasks, using the software's task feature to guide internal collaboration toward successfully completed search projects.

   Example: Team members can be assigned tasks directly within Clockwork to help move searches along and make progress toward key success metrics.

"Clockwork helps us stay on task, on time and on target for what we're trying to accomplish for our clients. It gives us the visibility and analytics to understand what we're doing well and what we're not doing well. Then, in our weekly meetings, we can come up with new ideas and strategies to tackle those things, which is invaluable."

What results have The Grant Partners achieved using Clockwork?

• A 90-day Average Time to Placement

The Grant Partners' average time to a successful placement is 90 days, which is 27 days below industry average.

• 95% Placement by External Candidates

Of the 300+ search projects The Grant Partners have completed since inception, 95% of those positions have been filled by external candidates.

• Productive Client Engagement

Their clients love the experience of collaborating in Clockwork, and their engagement speeds along successful searches.

"I have a friend who's thinking about starting her own firm, and I told her, 'Whatever you do, use Clockwork.' It allows you to import candidates, track searches, manage your database, and bring clients along on the journey. It's efficient, it's effective, and it's simple. And being web-based, you can leverage it from anywhere."

Make your firm's value visible to clients from day one, without adding to your workload.

Give your team the tools to present better candidates, close searches faster, impress more clients—and make your firm unbeatable.