Executive Search & HR Consulting

Empowering leadership and elevating success.

About Us

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Our Mission

Stirling Hunter are a privately held professional services firm that helps organizations to optimize business performance through the timely delivery of executive search, project recruitment, succession planning, background screening. leadership, strategy, and HR consulting.

Operating across the United Kingdom and internationally, our cross functional expertise spans financial services, financial technology, private equity, professional services, biotechnology and sustainable developments.

Our mission is to empower individuals and organizations to reach their full potential by making meaningful connections and driving success through people.

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What we do

Executive Search & Assessment

Stirling Hunter was founded as an executive search firm, it remains a cornerstone of our business. Our senior level executive search services are tailored to the specific needs of each client. Our task is to identify, evaluate, attract and help to develop extraordinary culturally aligned executives who will drive new levels of organizational performance for short and long-term growth.

Project Recruitment

Our "search class" project recruitment expertise aligns high calibre professional and technical talent needs with business strategies.

We seamlessly help organisations meet target hiring goals across the full spectrum of the recruiting and resourcing life cycle. From attraction and engagement, to development and retention. This is delivered without compromising candidate quality and provides meaningful reductions in both the cost and time to hire.

Higher calibre candidates who are better assessed and aligned to a company means fewer interviews, fewer rejected offers and a vast reduction in the time management needs to spend on recruitment.

SME Succession Planning

All organisations lose good people, whether it’s for personal or professional reasons, planned or unplanned. The loss of talented employees can leave a large gap in any business and brings periods of uncertainty, change and turbulence.

Succession planning ensures an organisation remains ready to continue growing and performing by minimising the impact of losing key talent and leaders.

We help build coordinated succession strategies that connect the assessment and development of internal and external candidates with the goals and culture of the organisation.

When working with early stage or family businesses, our consultants help align the founders or family, the board and management with the succession planning process.

We can further advise on wider board composition including adding independent directors to a board. This can offer much-needed experience and objectivity when it comes to the planning and the assessment of succession candidates in family businesses.

Background Screening

Background screening has become a crucial step in the hiring process, enabling employers to make informed decisions about who they are hiring.

We are able to deliver a variety of employment screening and background checks including Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), legal and regulatory referencing (SMCR), online verification and Right to Work checks and executive digital profiling.

HR Consulting

Our HR consulting services elevate workforce potential, enhance employee engagement, and align HR strategies with business objectives, we help businesses build strong HR strategies that drive growth and success.

Our HR Consulting Services Include:

Talent Acquisition & Workforce Planning - Helping businesses attract and retain the right talent through strategic hiring and workforce optimization.
HR Strategy & Organizational Design - Aligning HR policies, structures, and processes with business goals to enhance operational efficiency.
Leadership Development & Training - Providing customized training programs to strengthen leadership capabilities and employee performance.
Compensation & Benefits Advisory - Designing competitive compensation structures that attract and motivate top talent.
Employee Engagement & Culture Transformation - Creating high-performing workplace cultures through engagement strategies and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
HR Compliance & Risk Management - Ensuring organizations meet regulatory requirements and mitigate HR-related risks.

We partner with businesses of all sizes, from startups to multinational corporations, helping them build a people-first culture that fosters innovation, productivity, and long-term success.

Leadership Advisory

We understand that strong leadership is the foundation of any successful organization. Our tailored advisory solutions ensure that companies have the right leaders in place to navigate change, foster innovation, and create lasting impact.

We help businesses identify, develop, and retain top executive talent. By leveraging deep industry insights, innovative assessment tools, and a strategic approach to leadership succession, we empower organizations to build high-performing leadership teams that drive sustainable growth.

Key Offerings Include:

Board Advisory - Enhancing board effectiveness through governance best practices, director search, and strategic counsel.
Leadership Development & Succession Planning - Building leadership pipelines to future-proof organizations.
Culture & Organizational Effectiveness - Aligning leadership strategies with corporate culture to drive performance.

With a client-centric approach, we partner with organizations across industries, from major multinational companies to high-growth startups, ensuring that leadership teams are equipped to meet today’s challenges and seize tomorrow’s opportunities.

Strategy & Intelligence

We offer bespoke strategy and intelligence advisory services to mitigate the risks for organisations considering entry into new markets or during the acquisition process.

This evaluation of the capability of the target company leadership team and key people to deliver in the long term, is just as crucial as assessing the value of any other asset. Acquiring a company is also about acquiring people.

Our "people" due diligence helps maximise the chances of a successful acquisition. It also helps retain top talent and where key people do leave, ensures succession plans in place for key positions that minimise disruption and damage to morale.

Benchmarking analyses from Stirling Hunter is based on the most robust and credible data available and avoids overreliance on a single data source.

We can also help innovators and investors with feasibility studies, venture funding, academic research and market entry.