Three searches, start to finish.
The same engine, three different briefs. What each brief asked for, what the market actually held, and where the hire came from. The clients are real. The people are not shown.
The scope was there. The title was not.
The brief
AdaCore builds software development tools for safety-critical industries: defense, aviation, air traffic management, rail. It needed a Chief Revenue Officer to own the whole revenue engine, sales, marketing, customer success and channels, through a phase of modernisation. Twelve or more years of go-to-market leadership, a background in developer tools or embedded software, and residency in the Eastern Time Zone to bridge the US and Europe.
The questions before the run
Ravenite asked five things a good recruiter would ask before touching the market. Is the developer-tools background transferable or must it be exact? Transferable. Is selling into defense and aviation a gate or a bonus? A bonus. Is the time zone a hard requirement? Hard. Does global sales-only leadership count if the scale matches? It does.
The market
400 companies mapped around AdaCore, from direct peers to the firms that sell to the same certification buyers. 52 ways those companies name the role, from Chief Revenue Officer to Head of Commercial. 1,586 profiles screened, every one of them read against the brief rather than matched on keywords.
The turn
The person who fit best was a sales director at a much larger firm. No CRO title anywhere on the profile, but the scope of the job matched the seat. Ravenite reads the responsibility behind the title, so the profile scored on what the person actually ran. AdaCore made the hire.
- 400
- companies mapped
- 52
- titles in scope
- 1,586
- profiles screened
- 5
- questions answered before the run
The train was already in motion.
The brief
Praxedo, a field service management software company, needed a General Manager for a business that was already working. The previous General Manager had built it from the ground up, made it a success, and was going back to Europe. The team was protective of what they had, and rightly so. The new person had to take over a moving train and keep it moving.
What made it hard
The criteria cut across every function. Someone who had managed software teams, new business, existing business, customer care, even technical support, plus marketing. Someone who had been a first-line manager and a second-line manager, and could still zoom in on a deal or a ticket when needed, then zoom back out. Hands dirty, not too high level. Very few profiles carry all of that at once.
The market
A keyword search on the title returns a thousand profiles, most of them either too senior to run a team day to day or too narrow to run all of it. Ravenite read each one against the whole brief, function by function, and came back with about 120 genuine fits: people who had actually carried a business of that shape.
The turn
Because the brief was that granular, every conversation started on solid ground. Nobody had to be talked into the scope of the job; they had done it before.
- 1,000
- profiles a keyword search would return
- ~120
- genuine fits after Ravenite read them
- 6
- functions the person had to have run
- 2
- management levels, first line and second line
It opened in Manhattan. It closed in Atlanta.
The brief
DataDome protects websites and apps from bots and online fraud. It wanted a Chief Revenue Officer in Manhattan, down to a handful of zip codes, with a must-have on leaders who had sold to finance.
What the first pass said
31 people fit the brief as written. A shortlist that size is honest, and it is thin for a CRO search.
Where Ravenite challenged it
Instead of padding the list, Ravenite showed what one loosened criterion would open. Widen Manhattan to the Northeast: 109 more people who fit everything else. Drop the finance-leaders must-have to a nice-to-have: 57 more. Each number came with the people behind it, so the decision was DataDome’s to make, on evidence.
The turn
The hire was made in Atlanta. Nobody wanted to make concessions on the rest of the criteria, and once the location moved from a rule to a preference, the best person on the whole market was obvious.
- 31
- fit the brief as written
- +109
- with the Northeast instead of Manhattan
- +57
- with finance leaders as a nice-to-have
- 1
- hire, in Atlanta
Your search is the fourth.
BDR to CRO, scored against your brief, in about twelve minutes.