1st Executive

EXECUTIVE SEARCH

Finding top-tier leadership talent is crucial to driving business success, but securing the right executive can be challenging.

At 1st Executive, we specialize in connecting organizations with high-calibre leaders who transform companies and shape the future.

1st Executive

CUSTOM DESIGNED LEADERSHIP

At 1st Executive, we are a premier executive search and recruitment firm, specializing in identifying and securing top-tier leadership talent for organizations across industries.

With decades of experience and an extensive network of C-level professionals, we deliver customized hiring solutions tailored to your business needs. Our expert consultants leverage advanced talent mapping, market insights, and a relationship-driven approach to ensure precision in every placement. Whether you’re seeking a permanent executive, an interim leader, or a board member, we connect you with exceptional candidates who drive business success.

Partner with us today—book a call to discuss your executive search needs.

National and Global Executive Search

executive search affiliate spenglerfox
new npa worldwide logo

Finding the best talent in your Global Executive Search exercise needs to be undertaken with a combination of diligence, reach, robustness and discretion. Apart from our own extensive networks and sourcing capabilities, we tap into a global network of like-minded Global Executive Search and Executive Recruitment partners on every continent to deliver the best talent outcomes to our clients and quite often to those of our partners around Australia and overseas

Interim Management Case Study Restructure

Executive Search Method

Our rigorous assessment process ensures that every candidate aligns with your company’s vision, culture, and long-term growth objectives. All searches are managed by…
Non-Executive Directors meeting outside

Executive Search Pricing

Executive Search is usually a skilled, discrete and labour intensive service. Consequently, Executive Search fees will be quoted in an individual proposal for each assignment.

Executive Search:
Separate The Great from The Good

In Executive Search and Executive Recruitment, there is a compelling correlation between what Jim Collins called long-term “Level 5 Leadership” in the C-Suite and generating shareholder value. While many recruitment processes will identify the professional skills required to do the job, the value, insights, vision and self awareness required to build enduring greatness are often overlooked. Having leaders that possess the right balance of these values and attributes is the key to long-term success. Our Executive Search and Executive Recruitment processes and partners work tirelessly to separate the great from the good.

 

Finding good leaders is not too difficult, but finding great ones is a real challenge

 

Get in touch if you’d like to know how we do it!

1st Executive Guarantee – Innovative Pricing and Guarantees reflect a commitment to excellence

Why Choose Our Executive Search?

Executive recruitment processes that tick boxes to shortlist feed mediocrity. Most CVs are not perfect responses to a job brief. Talented individuals can be flawed. However, real executive search interrogates the depth of an individual’s story, and capabilities, balances flaws with unique talents to find winners and avoid the exclusion of deeper ability. Leaders such as Sir Richard Branson, Sir Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs may all have failed a checklist test.

Diversity

Diversity is evaluated not quoted. Diversity of work life experience, multicultural exposure, and the capacity to understand the workplace implications of changing world create long-term value.

+50x ROI

There are simple measures of business productivity that can determine the ROI of a new leader. In addition, we are happy to support going deeper to understand the impact of the new leader on the triple bottom line, corporate social responsibility or ESG.

Retention Focused

It is generally accepted that CEOs take three years to fully embrace a role, five years to generate payback on the investment in and seven or more to make a sustainable difference. A selection process focuses on the likely retention of a new hire and their overall approach to the retention of valuable people in the new organisation.

On the Lookout for Top Talent – Transformational People Services

Expert in Executive Search & Leadership Recruitment

Countless organizations have strengthened their leadership teams and achieved significant growth by partnering with us to secure top executive talent. Identifying the right leaders is essential for driving innovation, shaping company culture, and achieving long-term success. As a premier global executive search firm, 1st Executive specialize in recruiting top-tier professionals for critical leadership roles, including:

  • Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
  • Chief Operating Officer (COO)
  • Chief Information Officer (CIO)
  • Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
  • Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
  • Chief Risk Officer
  • Chief Legal Offficer
  • Finance Director
  • HR Director
  • IT Director
  • Marketing Director
  • Sales Director
  • Operations Director
  • Supply Chain Director
  • General Manager
GENERAL WHITE-COLLAR RECRUITMENT

Non-Executive Directors

We are seeing greater focus on non-executive directors with skill sets in: growth, sales and marketing, people and culture, supply chain, strategy, transformation and change, the digital revolution, sustainability (particularly ESG).

On the Lookout for Top Talent – Transformational People Services

Executive Search:
Case Study

Successful Global Executive Search is as much about revealing the hidden talents required to take a business forward as it is about meeting the specific requirements of a brief. We tap into a worldwide network of global executive search and practitioners, we tap into our deeper understanding of the businesses we get to know, we tap into our knowledge of what drives organisational culture and leaders who look inside themselves for solutions.

San Francisco
Melbourne
Tokyo

The Challenge:

A San Francisco Partner won a global executive search project to place senior finance people in Tokyo for a global corporation based in the USA

The Solution:

Identification of specific skill sets and experience made identifying potential candidates possible, but severly limited the available talent pool. Once candicates were found, the real value provided to the partner and the client was in promoting the career opportunities a move to Tokyo provided. The successful placement was completed discretely, strategically and on time. The candidate was a perfect fit, multilingual candidate who had the requisite experience and extensive knowledge of the required USGAAP and JGAAP accounting standards

Reduce Risk and Evaluate Talent with Psychometric Assessments

OUR GLOBAL EXECUTIVE SEARCH TEAMS

Insights, vision and self-awareness are enemies of mediocrity for top talent in the best global executive search consultants.

Our team, some of the world’s best executive recruiters, identify potential greatness. They’ve usually been right where that leader is going, and they have been leading their own organisations for years.

executive search affiliate spenglerfox
new npa worldwide logo

Through our membership and shared ownership of NPA Worldwide and our affiliate status with Spengler Fox, we have access to talented executive search consultants globally. These specialists are expert at finding, engaging with and assessing the best business executives in the geographies and industries they cover, provide us with global reach to most of the world’s top leadership talent.

MEET OUR GLOBAL SEARCH TEAM

andrew thoseby

Andrew Thoseby

CEO & Director of 1st Executive

Melbourne, Australia

suzanne whitmarsh

Suzanne Whitmarsh

Managing Director of 1st Executive

Melbourne, Australia

ANDREW THOSEBY
LOCATION

Melbourne, Australia

 
COMPANY

1st Executive Pty Ltd

 
EXPERIENCE

24 years in Executive Search and Recruitment

 

Strategic thinker and business executive with 40 years of executive corporate and entrepreneurial experience across retail, services, manufacturing, marketing, automotive, fmcg, consumer durables, IT and T, internet, entertainment, not for profit, government, consumer electronics and sports sponsorship and administration. Has worked extensively across EMEA, The USA, South East Asia and the Pacific as well as Australia and New Zealand.

SUZANNE WHITMARSH
LOCATION

Melbourne, Australia

 
COMPANY

1st Executive Pty Ltd

 
EXPERIENCE

25 Years in Executive Search and Recruitment

 

Suzanne is the founder of 1st Executive and has been a successful Human Resources professional for the last twenty years. Her main focus at 1st Executive is on executive recruitment, professional and personal development, coaching and mentoring, employment practices, team performance and facilitation.

Executive Search:
1st Selection

Every day we assess exceptional candidates. Inevitably, only one is chosen, often leaving us with up to four job ready executives – interviewed, assessed and reference checked. These are $200k to $1m+ package people. 1st Selection is your chance to get a Star Player on your team nearly instantly!

Click “Find Executives” to detail your current needs and we will send you a short selection of recent candidate profiles within 24 hours – permanent or interim

executive recruitment melbourne

Read Our Insights

Quick takeaways Diversity questions are now routine in executive search, and rightly so — but they need to be asked at the …

Quick takeaways Add this near the top of the blog, just after the opening paragraph. AI is not replacing recruitment and executive …

AI in recruitment is not automatically biased; the risk comes from poor design, weak governance, historical data, proxy variables, and human misuse — while well-governed AI can improve early-stage fairness and candidate visibility.

Looking for Your Custom Career

We will engage you, the candidate in a discussion about your custom by design career. The right career choice for you produces the best value for our clients. See our featured and all current roles or just complete a Registration Application to stay on our radar