You have to find an experienced Lead Engineer, Technical Manager or perhaps a Project Director for an important new project. You probably have a clear idea of the experience you need and the kind of person who would fit your organisation. The only thing is: that person is probably already working somewhere.
For specialist, senior and management roles in the maritime industry, that is more common than not. Some professionals may be open to something new, although you would never know it from their LinkedIn profile. Others are not looking at all, but might listen when a position comes along that really makes sense.
So how do you get that ideal professional into view, without opening the floodgates to a whole army of headhunters?
Middle Point Selections: Middle Point’s specialist executive search label
Middle Point Selections finds and selects experienced professionals for key positions within maritime, engineering and technical management. We build on almost 20 years of Middle Point experience in this market. That experience matters because a search needs a clear starting point. Before approaching anyone, we want to understand what the company actually needs.
Maarten van Haren, Managing Director Middle Point: “Executive search needs focus. You are looking for the professional who fits that specific position, the organisation and the ambition behind it. For us, a search does not start with the question of how many candidates we can find. We first want to understand exactly who is needed and why. A job profile tells you a lot, and of course it matters. But we first look at what you really need. Why is this position coming up now? Where is the team today? What should this person have achieved in two years? How are decisions made? How much freedom will they have? Is there an existing team that needs direction, or is someone coming in to build something new?”
Those answers make the search much more specific. They tell us which experience really matters, where we are likely to find it and which professionals are worth approaching.
The best candidate may never send you a CV
Publishing a vacancy shows you who responds. Executive search gives you another view: who is already out there doing the work Middle Point Selections maps the relevant part of the market. Who has already worked at this level of responsibility? Where is the specialist knowledge? Who has worked on comparable vessels, systems or projects? Which professionals have the background to take on what your organisation needs next. We have almost 20 years of Middle Point experience to build on. Middle Point works with major shipyards and maritime companies across North-West Europe and has developed a specialist network in yacht building, shipbuilding and engineering.
Finding a name on LinkedIn is the easy part. Deciding whether there is enough reason to approach that person takes more work. A profile can show experience, projects and responsibilities. It does not tell you whether the professional is interested, what could make your position relevant or whether there is enough reason to start a serious conversation.
Another recruiter in your inbox? We give someone a reason to listen
Experienced maritime professionals get approached. A lot. A Lead Engineer, Technical Manager or specialist with scarce knowledge has probably seen plenty of recruitment messages before. So reaching someone is only the first step. You also need a good reason for that person to listen.
That is why Aleksandra Popova, Senior Recruitment Consultant at Middle Point Selections, works from a concrete position and company need. She identifies the professionals whose experience gives her a real reason to approach them. No vague message about ‘an interesting opportunity’. There is something real to discuss.
“That matters for the professional, because it respects their time. And it matters for the client too. You do not need your position pushed towards everyone who happens to match a few requirements on paper. Sometimes the answer is simply no. Someone may be perfectly happy where they are. The timing may be wrong. Or the position may not appeal to them. Fair enough. It is better to find that out early. When there is genuine interest, we can go further. Why does this particular position appeal to someone? What would they be leaving behind? What do they expect from a possible next step? Does that fit with what the company can actually offer? By the time a professional is introduced to the client, there should be more to discuss than a CV that happens to fit the job description.”
What would you really like to do?
One of the questions Aleksandra likes to ask is surprisingly simple: what is your dream job? The answer can tell you something that may never appear on a CV.
Aleksandra: “I like to ask people about their dream job. Just describe the job you would go to every day with a big smile. What would you be doing? What would the conditions look like? It is very individual. Even if something is a good match professionally, it should also be a personal match.”
“One experienced engineer may have no interest in management and prefer to stay close to complex technical work. Someone else may be ready to lead a team after years in a technical role. Autonomy can matter. So can the type of project, international cooperation, working arrangements or the chance to build something within a company. For the employer, that information is useful. It helps establish whether someone who looks right professionally also has a genuine reason to consider this particular company and position. And that can save a lot of time later in the process.”
How do we make sure there is a real fit?
Two professionals can have similar experience, relevant projects behind them and the right level of responsibility, yet perform very differently in the same organisation. A good search therefore cannot stop at professional experience. We look at what the position actually asks of someone. For a management role, leadership and professional competencies may carry considerable weight. For a highly specialist engineering position, technical depth and experience within a particular project environment may be more important. Depending on the recruitment situation, additional tools can help to get a clearer picture.
Aleksandra: “A good match cannot be assessed on experience alone. There are different tools that can be applied depending on the recruitment situation: an assessment, personality test or competency-based interview. Their main purpose is to provide the information needed to make a decision.”
The tool itself is never the point. It should answer something relevant about the appointment. And that requires knowledge of the other side too. We want to understand how our client works, what is happening within the team and what the new person is actually walking into. Some of the most useful information never appears in a vacancy text. The challenges within a department. The amount of autonomy someone will really have. What is expected from a new leader. Where the organisation wants to be in a few years. That is where knowing our clients well makes a real difference.
Sometimes the position cannot be public yet
There are situations where publishing the vacancy is simply not an option. A new project may still be confidential. A management change may not have been announced. In some executive searches, the position may even still be occupied while the company needs to start looking for a successor. For a shipyard or maritime supplier, that can be commercially and organisationally sensitive. A key position cannot simply remain empty, while announcing the search too early may create unrest or expose information the company is not ready to share.
In some cases, the company first needs to identify a suitable replacement and prepare the appointment before anything can change publicly. Then the timing of the search, communication and eventual agreements becomes important too. Aleksandra has experience with confidential management searches from earlier roles. In these situations, direct search becomes particularly useful. You cannot post the role and wait for applications. You have to know where to look, identify suitable professionals and approach them carefully. Information also needs to be handled accordingly. Who knows what? What can be shared with a potential candidate? At which stage can more information be given?
Discretion here has a very practical purpose: protecting sensitive information and helping the business maintain continuity while the search is taking place.
A shortlist can be short
The value of executive search is not measured by the number of CVs on the table. If a client receives twenty profiles and still has to work out which three are genuinely worth meeting, much of the selection still has to be done. We would rather do more of that work earlier.
Professional expertise and relevant experience remain the starting point. From there, the actual position determines what else needs to be explored. Depending on the search, that may include seniority, leadership, motivation, competencies, ambition and personal fit. That may lead to a short shortlist. Fine. The point is that the people sitting down with the client have already been selected for a reason. They have relevant experience, the position has been properly discussed with them and there is enough genuine interest to make the meeting worthwhile. Sometimes that meeting is a formal interview. For a senior position, a lunch or dinner can also be a good way to get to know each other beyond the formal questions. Because eventually, people have to work together.
And then the recruitment process starts
Finding the professional is an important part of the job. Getting a senior appointment over the line can involve quite a bit more. There may be several interviews. An assessment. Contract discussions. And for an international appointment, the professional may also be considering what the move means for a partner or family. This is where Aleksandra sees another important part of the consultant’s work.
Aleksandra: “The recruitment process can sometimes be quite a challenging journey for a candidate. There are different interview stages, assessments and sometimes relocation for the candidate and their family. It is good to have a helping hand from a professional who understands the steps, can deal with the frustrations along the way and can make the process easier, even with some fun. Sometimes a few friendships have grown out of that as well.”
That personal relationship develops through actually going through the process together. For the employer, good guidance matters too. A lot of work may have gone into finding this particular professional. Clear communication and guidance throughout the process help both sides know where they stand and what comes next.
Why a compact team can work in your favour
Middle Point Selections has the market knowledge and network built through almost 20 years of maritime recruitment, while the team itself remains compact. For Aleksandra, there is a practical advantage to that.
Aleksandra: “I think it is a very good combination of quality and price. A smaller organisation can be more flexible. Large organisations need a lot of structure around themselves, and those additional costs are ultimately covered by the customer. Here, we can stay mobile, look at what the client actually needs and work from there, while keeping the quality very high.”
That flexibility also applies to how a search is arranged. Scarcity, seniority, confidentiality and the scope of the position all influence the approach. A search can therefore be based on exclusivity, semi-exclusivity or a tailored agreement. The assignment determines what makes sense. For the client, that also means short lines with the people actually working on the search. We can spend our time where it counts: understanding the position, mapping the relevant market, approaching the right professionals and assessing who should move forward.
When is Middle Point Selections relevant?
Not every vacancy needs executive search. You may need it when the usual route no longer gives you enough visibility of the relevant market. Perhaps you have been searching for one specialist for months. The applicants are good engineers, but the position needs a level of experience you are not seeing. An engineering department is growing and now needs someone who can lead its next phase. A major project requires expertise that is scarce. Or a senior appointment is too sensitive to put into the public market.
In those situations, waiting for the right CV has an obvious limitation: you only see the people who decide to apply. Middle Point Selections helps shipyards, maritime suppliers and technical organisations look beyond that group. We know many of the companies in this market. We know many of its professionals. We understand yacht building, shipbuilding and engineering, and we have almost 20 years of Middle Point relationships and market experience behind the search.
Where that network gives us a starting point, we use it. Where it does not, we search further. Because a warm network is valuable, but it should never define the limits of an executive search. The real question is quite simple: who in the relevant market could do this job well, and which of those professionals has a genuine reason to sit down with your organisation?
Would you like to discuss a specialist, senior or management position within your organisation? Contact Maarten van Haren or Aleksandra Popova at Middle Point Selections.
Read more about Middle Point Selections.
