For Companies
The cost of a failed senior transformation hire is not just the placement fee. It is 18 months of lost execution velocity, a change programme that stalls, and a team that loses confidence in the process before the work even begins.
The problem you already know
What transformation roles actually need
Tolerance for ambiguity. High-velocity decision under incomplete information. The energy to act before the map exists. Comfort with resistance when the organisation pushes back. These traits are rarely in the job description — and almost never assessed in a standard interview process.
What standard recruiting delivers
Candidates who perform well in structured settings. Who give coherent answers to prepared questions. Who have credentials that match the template. And who, in 40 to 60% of transformation roles, leave within 18 months — because the environment was not what the hiring process implied.
The cost of getting it wrong
EUR 26,000–50,000 in placement fees. Twelve to eighteen months of lost execution velocity. A board that concludes the transformation was too hard, when the real answer is: the hire was cognitively mismatched to the conditions of the role.
"The constraint was never the talent. It was always the match."
How APT works for companies
APT operates in three stages. Every stage is mandatory. The sequence matters.
Stage 01 — APT Place: Employer Readiness Assessment
Before we assess a single candidate, we assess your environment. You complete a 33-indicator readiness assessment across five dimensions: Structural Clarity, Autonomy Architecture, Feedback Quality, Cognitive Environment Fit, and Transformation Readiness.
This produces a scored Readiness Profile on a 96-point scale across four bands. It takes 45 minutes. It tells you, precisely, what cognitive profile your organisation can actually use — and where the environment needs to be calibrated before the hire lands.
Most recruiting skips this step entirely. That is why most transformation hires fail.
Stage 02 — CognitiveEdge Assessment
Every candidate in the APT network has completed a 28-minute validated digital assessment measuring five cognitive dimensions: Absorption & Drive, Ambiguity Tolerance, Decision Calibration, Inductive Reasoning, and Resilience & Recovery.
No medical data collected. No clinical labels attached. GDPR-by-design. The output is a cognitive operating profile — a precise map of how the candidate performs under the conditions transformation roles actually present.
Stage 03 — The APT Match
We match your Readiness Profile against candidate cognitive profiles and generate a ranked placement recommendation with a predicted retention probability for each name.
You receive a structured case — not a shortlist — with the reasoning behind every placement. The match is algorithmic. The reasoning is human. The accountability is ours.
The APT difference
Standard Recruiting | APT | |
Placement fee | 20–25% of salary | 25–30% retained |
Assessment method | Interview + CV | CognitiveEdge + APT Place |
Environment assessed | Never | Always — Stage 01 |
Transformation failure rate | 40–60% in 18 months | Predicted before placement |
Post-placement support | None | 90 days included |
Retention data | Not tracked | Updated at 30/60/90 days |
The APT fee is equivalent to one month of a failed transformation hire. The risk-adjusted case is not a conversation. It is arithmetic.
Who we work with
APT operates in three segments where transformation hiring failure is most costly.
PE-backed Mittelstand in post-merger integration. Where cognitive fit between hire and integration complexity is directly value-determining. Where the wrong CHRO or CDO sets the whole programme back by eighteen months.
DACH Series B/C deep tech scale-ups. Where the organisation is moving fast, the environment is structurally ambiguous, and standard profiles stall within the first year.
Transformation-heavy corporates. Running active change programmes across digitalisation, energy transition, or supply chain restructuring — where the role exists because the organisation has never done this before.
Start a mandate
We work with a small number of companies at any one time. Quality of match is the only metric that matters — and it requires depth, not volume.
First mandates: Preferred fee in exchange for reference rights and anonymised retention data. If you have an active transformation programme with senior hires needed in the next six months, we want to hear from you.