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Executive Search & HR Consulting

Strategic Talent Solutions for High-Growth Organisations

About Us

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Our Mission

Stirling Hunter a privately held professional services firm that helps organisations to improve business results 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, sustainable developments, and the adult and children's care sector.

We understand the unique leadership challenges facing care providers and help organizations build strong, compassionate leadership teams that deliver exceptional care outcomes.

Our mission is to empower individuals and organisations 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, this remains a cornerstone of our business.

Our executive search services are tailored to each client's unique situation, whether you're a regulated bank needing FCA-approved directors, a PE firm building a portfolio company C-suite, or a family business planning founder succession.

Our task is to identify, evaluate, attract and help to develop extraordinary culturally aligned executives who will drive new levels of organisational performance for your short and long-term growth.

Recent placements include CFOs for fintech scale-ups, Managing Directors for PE portfolio companies, and C-suite executives for regulated financial services firms.

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, we deliver without compromising candidate quality and provide meaningful reductions in both the cost and time to hire.

When candidates are thoroughly assessed and culturally aligned, the benefits are clear: fewer interviews, fewer rejected offers, and significantly less management time spent on recruitment.

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 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 your goals and culture.

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 can 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

At Stirling Hunter, we're not a corporate HR firm with a one-size-fits-all approach. We tailor our services to each client, whether you're an ambitious SME, a family business, or a PE-backed growth company.

Our HR consulting services help your team perform better, enhance employee engagement, and align HR strategies with business objectives.

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 initiatives.

HR Compliance & Risk Management - Ensuring organizations meet regulatory requirements and mitigate HR-related risks.

We partner with businesses from 10-person startups to FTSE 100 firms, 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.

By leveraging 30+ years of executive recruitment and assessment, we empower organisations to build high-performing leadership teams that thrive and grow.

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 financial services firms, PE portfolio companies, biotechnology ventures, and care providers from Series A startups to FTSE 250 enterprises

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 improve 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.

Our benchmarking draws on salary surveys, industry reports and our proprietary knowledge of 1,000's of executive placements.

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