Why I Built ProFound Differently — Part 2: What I’ve Learned Over Three Decades

Image: Terri Davis

By Terri Davis

There’s a line in a Hemingway novel about how change really happens.

“Gradually, then suddenly.”

That’s how ProFound began, too.

When I was a partner in a large national firm, nothing dramatic happened on a single Tuesday afternoon that made me walk away. There was no blow-up meeting, no defining conflict. From the outside, everything looked successful. And it was. I was busy placing executives. Clients were satisfied.

And yet, after a while, and then pretty much every day, I would leave the office with the same thought.

There is a better way.

Gradually and then suddenly I understood that the only way to practice executive search in the way I believed it should be practiced was to build it myself.

That decision became ProFound.

What Experience Clarifies

Three decades in this profession have taught me that executive search is not simply about sourcing talent, nor is it only about managing risk. At its best, it is about judgment. It is about understanding organizations and people deeply enough to bring the right leaders together at the right moment.

Early in my career, like a lot of us eager to prove our worth, I believed effort was the key. Just work harder, interview more candidates, produce detailed reports. Effort and diligence would guarantee some kind of outcome. At least it would prove I’m capable of superwoman effort.

Of course we all come to learn that working smarter is the way. But it usually comes at the cost of a lot of unnecessary effort in our early careers to learn that lesson.

Working smarter for me meant really looking at where things went wrong on recruitment projects.

I saw the most expensive hiring mistakes were careless somewhere along the way. Not even in a big way necessarily. Just something overlooked or waived off. They were decisions made without enough regular discipline. Maybe candidate chemistry in the room was mistaken for capability and fewer follow-ups were done. Or a track record on paper was assumed good enough not to follow through with phone calls to references.

By the time misalignment surfaced, the cost was already paid in culture, strategy, and performance.

The lessons I’ve learned along the way are why ProFound’s process is structured the way it is. Structure creates discipline and forces the separation of intuition and intellect. It slows the moment when enthusiasm can outrun analysis.

The Relationship Behind the Process

If the method is one pillar of ProFound, the relationship is the other.

When a board or CEO engages us for a senior hire, they are not delegating a task. They are sharing responsibility. Their reputation sits inside that decision.

Over the years, I have learned that great service in executive recruitment isn’t about being agreeable. It’s about being accountable.

It means telling a client when their preferred candidate needs deeper testing. It means raising concerns and resisting the subtle pressure to move faster than the evidence.

I like to think that clients remember that, even if in the moment it can feel uncomfortable. We are taking every care we can to ensure the final decision is made with clarity and confidence.

Where I Am Today

When I started ProFound, the goal wasn’t simply to build another search firm. I wanted to build a different kind of experience for both clients and candidates.

Part of that motivation came from my own life at the time. As a single parent, I was also experiencing firsthand how much the workforce was changing and how many talented people were trying to work differently. I believed executive search could do a better job listening to those realities.

I also believed the profession had become too transactional. Too often the human side of the process had been reduced to a commodity.

So ProFound was built around a simple idea: bring care back into search.

Care for the client’s decision.

Care for the candidate’s career.

Care for the integrity of the process itself.

Executive recruitment shapes what happens next for strategy, culture, growth, and resilience. And effects of an executive recruitment decision ripple outward long after the search is closed. To me, that responsibility deserves more than bottom-line efficiency.

And that’s what ProFound was built to protect.