The best referral I ever received came from the person whose job I was hired to fill.

The outgoing HR leader had been running Serrala’s North American function, part of a global finance automation software company. Five hundred to a thousand people worldwide, headquartered in Germany, with roughly a hundred and twenty of them in the United States and Canada.

She loved the company and was accustomed to running considerably larger HR organizations. On her way out, she called me, and she was specific about what she wanted. Not another executive at her level. A high-potential. Someone bright enough to be challenged by the role and grow into it over years. The home office in Germany meant real HR support behind the seat, even though the North American business ran largely on its own.

Then she told the company to call me.

The trap

The search landed with the Senior Vice President of Finance for North America. That detail tells you most of what you need to know. There was no HR leader left to run an HR search, so it fell to Finance, which is how these roles get misspecified in the first place.

The obvious move was to replace like with like. Post a Head of HR role, interview a slate of senior HR executives, hire the most impressive resume.

Finance did not want that, and was right not to.

What they wanted was someone who would grow into the role. Someone who would not leave. Someone who could own the function for years and be genuinely satisfied doing it.

That is not the same person as the most impressive resume. It is frequently the opposite.

What I recommended

Hire under the title.

Not Director. Senior Human Resources Manager, with the entire North American function reporting through it: the full employee lifecycle across the US and Canada, compliance, employee relations, engagement, a team of direct reports, and a seat with senior leadership here and globally. Real scope, deliberately modest title.

Recommending the smaller title meant a smaller fee. I made the recommendation anyway, because the alternative was selling a search that would have to be repeated.

What happened

First contact reached me on 25 July 2022. The offer was accepted on 6 September. Six weeks.

Lauren Hesselbach started that September as Senior Human Resources Manager.

In April 2025, thirty-one months later, Serrala promoted her to Human Resources Director.

She is still there. Four years this September.

Watch Lauren’s testimonial

Why this matters

Over-hiring is the most expensive mistake in executive search, and it is almost always made in good faith. Nobody sets out to buy the wrong person. They look at two candidates, notice one has a bigger logo and a bigger title, and reasonably conclude that more is better.

More is not better. Right is better.

The measure of a search is not who accepted. It is who is still there in year four, and whether they got promoted along the way.