A newly launched executive search firm, Praeva Partners aspires to be the partner of choice for high-growth, ambitious businesses in the UK & Europe. Here, Praeva's Mark Sherman shares his thoughts on what makes the business what it is, and where he hopes to take the firm in future.
Quite simply, I always felt like search as an industry could do better. There's often lots of well-meaning chat about valuing employees and providing a premium service, but in my view, most firms fall short on actually delivering. I wanted to set up a firm that approaches search differently - with a huge focus on developing our own people, so that they can in turn provide the best service to clients. Praeva has been set up from day one to do more: more for colleagues, more for candidates and more for clients.
We're a people-first business. Praeva gives our people the opportunity to create their own practice areas within our company model. I see it as the best of both worlds - it's a bit like being a founder of your own search firm, without the risk. We've also developed a training plan called Praeva Excel, which is all about empowering our people to develop. The search industry is notoriously poor at developing its own talent, that's where we can win.
One thing I've been very clear on is our tech-enabled approach. We use a lot of technology here - but it's not tech for tech's sake. We use tools to take away the parts of the search process that kill time and don't add value, and free up people's time to do the bits that have an impact - client and candidate engagement.
The idea is that well-supported, rewarded and engaged people deliver a higher quality service - it's a win/win for clients and our colleagues.
We want to be the partner of choice for ambitious, growth-focused businesses across the UK & Europe, and hopefully even further afield in the future. These are companies scaling quickly, navigating complex growth phases. We especially like working with founder-led businesses, where the leadership challenges around cultural fit, relevant scaling experience and succession, are all key components for long-term success.
The biggest difference is context and timing. In large, slow-paced organisations, leadership hiring is often reactive. High-growth private companies operate in a completely different reality. The business itself is evolving faster than the leadership team was ever designed for.
Traditional search often starts with a role description. We deliberately start earlier. We spend time helping management teams step back and look at themselves objectively; not just role by role, but as a leadership system.
That insight led us to build our Discovery tools: practical, management-side diagnostics designed to surface capability gaps, succession risk and execution challenges before search begins.
