Directorbank

Directorbank is excited to announce a new partnership with AssessioAI to bring science-backed, technology-driven leadership assessment to its clients.

AssessioAI, a pioneer in its field, helps to equip organisations with the clarity and confidence needed to make smarter decisions across hiring, succession planning and leadership development.

What does this mean for our clients?

In a nutshell, it helps them de-risk critical hiring decisions. As we well know, finding the right leadership talent is crucial to business success. By integrating Assessio’s cutting-edge tools into our search processes, we add an extra layer of value for our clients. The better the candidate data, the sharper the insight, and the greater the likelihood of a candidate thriving in the role, the team, and the organisation.

Directorbank’s Simon Thomas comments: “For our private equity, portfolio and other mid-market clients, the right leadership team is the most powerful driver of value creation. By partnering with Assessio, we bring greater confidence to key hiring decisions through a proven, science-backed, technology-driven approach to evaluating candidates. This allows us to go beyond the CV, interview and references to measure those deeper leadership capabilities, team dynamics, and ultimately the candidate’s ability to deliver real impact in the role.”

AssessioAI combines decades of validated psychometrics with cutting-edge technology and business context, to dive into the deeper level characteristics and motivations of candidates. And, by bringing together multiple streams of intelligence – from assessment results and human judgment to CV content and interview feedback – Directorbank can present a more holistic view of the candidate and a more precise understanding of whether their competencies and values align with the needs and ambitions of the hiring organisation.

Our clients will benefit from:

A more structured, consistent interview process:
Assessio’s scorecard system is based on extensive research into the competencies and behaviours of high performing individuals. Incorporating this into the interview process brings improved focus, consistency and fairness.

A much deeper understanding of candidates:
Grounded in 70 years of proven psychometrics, Assessio leverages cutting-edge science, data and AI technology to translate diverse candidate data into clear, contextual insights that clients can trust.

Support in building high performing teams:
Assessio assesses and compares members of the leadership team to bring deeper understanding of team dynamics, strengths and risks. This helps drive growth by shaping collaboration, aligning values, overcoming challenge, and elevating performance.

Alo Arro, CEO of AssessioAI, comments: “After careful research and analysis of several leadership assessment tools, we are delighted Directorbank has chosen AssessioAI. This reflects their commitment to innovation and reinforces their position as a trusted search partner to their private equity and other entrepreneurial clients seeking to recruit ‘best fit’ industry experts, build high-performing leadership teams, and deliver ambitious growth targets.”

For more information, please email Simon Thomas, Director at s.thomas@directorbank.com, or Jo Clasper, Head of Research at j.clasper@directorbank.com

MID-YEAR REVIEW OF ACTIVITY:
Following a slow start, 2025 is now turning out to be a very positive year for the Directorbank team.

As reported in our January commentary, we noticed a softening of the market in the last quarter of 2024, possibly reflecting a cautious reaction both to the UK Budget and the outcome of the USA election. This continued until Easter 2025, since when there has been a marked strengthening in demand in the Mid-Market. Based on our current pipeline of retained projects we expect this to continue well into October/November; we do not know if this will sustain depending on the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement together with the potential impact of wider international economic uncertainties. Nevertheless, while UK assets continue to be seen as undervalued, there is room for cautious optimism, particularly if interest rates and inflation reduce further.

In terms of Executive Search activity, we are experiencing normal demand for CEOs/MDs, CFOs and Chairs and much stronger demand for COOs and Sales & Marketing Directors. We are also seeing a steep rise in non-recruitment services. We have devoted considerable time to improving the quality of our database over the last two years and it is very heartening to see our clients now exploiting this together with our wider market intelligence.

At the sector level we are seeing good performance in the mainstream Industrial sector while Technology and Business Services are both holding up well. Our German Practice continues to perform excellently and continues to contribute a third of our overall business.

As a leading search partner of mid-market Private Equity investors for portfolio Board positions in the UK and DACH, we entered 2025 with a clear priority: to support ambitious businesses at every stage of their journey through the identification of the best human capital talent available. As always, we remain focused on assignment delivery for our clients and look forward to hosting our usual programme of events for our PE investor clients and Board-level candidates throughout the remainder of 2025.

Click on the following link to view a summary of our 2024 activity and highlights:

REVIEW OF 2024: From delivering excellent search outcomes for our private equity, listed and private clients through to a successful events programme and London office move, 2024 was a positive year for the Directorbank team.

The first quarter of 2024 saw a softening market, but from the beginning of April we noticed a strong rebound which lasted through until November, at which point there appears to have been a very cautious reaction both to the UK Budget and the outcome of the USA election. While we have been party to a high level of pre-deal activity, investors do seem to be deferring decisions until the overall economic environment is clearer. Nevertheless, there are signs of longer term optimism and 2025 could well see a strong rise in deal volumes while UK assets continue to be seen as undervalued, particularly if interest rates and inflation start to come down.

In terms of Executive Search activity, we experienced strong demand for CEOs/MDs and Chairs. At the sector level we saw good performance in the mainstream Industrial sector while Technology and Business Services both held up well. Our German Practice continued to perform excellently and again constituted a third of our overall business.

As always, we remain focused on assignment delivery for our clients and look forward to hosting our usual programme of events for our PE clients and Board-level candidates throughout 2025.

Click here for a summary of our 2024 activity and highlights

Tech Sector Update – Dec 2024: 

As 2024 draws to a close, our Head of Tech Practice, James Searby, shares a snapshot of recent activity across the Tech sector …

Whilst Private Equity funding has become more selective and deal activity has dropped, investors are increasingly focused on ‘profitable’ growth across their portfolio. PE firms are looking more forensically at their investments to identify where and how they can scale, whether through innovation, infrastructure, operational efficiency, strategic acquisition or geographic expansion.

This shift in focus is clearly mirrored in our placement activity. This year, most of our search work has been for executive roles, mainly CEO and Operations Directors (c. 40%), CFOs (c. 20%) and Sales and Commercial roles (c. 15%) as investors seek those energetic, high-skilled leaders to drive through ambitious plans. Sub-sectors demonstrating resilience and growth activity have been cybersecurity, AI, data analytics, software development and fintech.

Please click on the following link to view recent examples of work in the sector – JS_Tech update 2024

If you would like more information on our credentials, or a confidential discussion regarding a search need within your business, do get in touch with James.

James Searby
Director and Head of Tech
j.searby@directorbank.com
07809 507300

Market recognition: Directorbank has been identified by The Financial Times as one of the UK’s leading recruiters. From a pool of 7,000 firms, we received a silver award in both the Executive Search and Tech & IT categories based on the number and strength of recommendations from our clients and candidates.