Conducting an Executive Search for a Chief Operating Office to grow Victoria’s start-up ecosystem and build the confidence and capability of Victorians to create, scale and invest in technology start-ups.
The Brief
The Future Leadership team was approached by a Victorian start-up agency to partner on the appointment of their Chief Operating Officer.
The appointee will have a deep understanding of and experience working in a technology start-up ecosystem. Ideally, they will have led entrepreneurship programs targeting founders and investors or experience in an executive role in a start-up that has achieved high growth. An appreciation of working with Government and the investment market would also be beneficial.
Candidate net Promote Score
Future Leadership combines truly personalised relationships with innovative technology solutions to ensure an approachable and efficient process for all our Net Promoter Score across clients, successful candidates and unsuccessful candidates is well above industry standard.
Candidates supported every year
We maintain genuine relationships with past candidates and continue to support them with leadership solutions long term, after they land their role.
Senior Women Appointed since 2002
Over half of the executive search assignments undertaken by our team have resulted in the appointment of outstanding female or LGBTQI+ leaders to high profile roles.
Candidate Retention Rate for 12 months since 2002
Our thorough briefing process and ability to engage passive candidates mean that we go to great lengths to find the right person for the role – long term!
The Process
Future Leadership undertook a comprehensive briefing with the CEO and Acting COO. In addition to this, the Future Leadership team represented by Adam Kyriacou and Pauline Gates conducted a national search utilising our broad candidate and referral partner networks.
The Future Leadership team sought to identify a candidate who has been a founder or has been involved at an executive level in a start-up, or ideally a scaleup. The successful candidate will be comfortable with lean and agile ways of working and happy to roll up their sleeves to pick-up the simplest of tasks to keep things moving and be able to hold their own in technology discussions. They will ideally have a minimum of 5 years experience in a start-up.
Following Future Leadership interviews, a total of 18 candidates were presented to the selection panel with 7 proceeding to client interviews.
The Outcome
The successful candidate will begin in the role in January 2025. They previously held the role of General Manager at one of Australia’s leading delivery services, where they led considerable growth whilst maintaining culture and energy of a lean start up and is heavily focused on continuous improvement. The successful candidate feels a strong alignment with the mission of the company.
