Two years before the goodbye: what good succession planning looks like

One of the best-planned clients I have ever worked with starts succession planning two years before someone retires or makes a planned exit.

It is a small financial-services office. Over the years, I have placed almost everyone in the organisation.

There is very little staff turnover. I suspect some of my recruitment peers would see limited commercial opportunity in that. There isn’t a constant stream of vacancies, and developing someone into a senior position can mean there is no bigger executive-search fee further down the line.

I wear that as a badge of honour.

If I am doing my job properly, the people I place should have good reasons to stay. As a recruitment partner, my job is to help the client flourish. A successful appointment should benefit the individual, the team and the business for years.

The job description only tells part of the story

In a small office, people contribute far more than their formal responsibilities suggest.

They hold institutional knowledge, manage important relationships, cover for colleagues and quietly keep things moving when workloads change.

Replacing their technical skills is one task. Understanding everything else they bring takes more thought.

That is why this client starts early.

Competence is essential. Team fit makes the difference.

The person must have the technical ability and judgement to do the job.

Once that foundation is established, cultural and team fit can become the deciding factors.

Can they work closely with the existing team? Are they comfortable being hands-on? Will they help outside their immediate remit and wear several hats when necessary?

That does not mean everyone should think alike. Different perspectives strengthen a team when people can challenge each other constructively and still work well together.

Two years gives the successor time to learn properly

A planned transition can allow someone to be mentored through at least two year-end cycles and three or four half-year cycles.

They experience the busy periods, reporting demands, difficult decisions and practical realities of the business with an experienced colleague beside them.

They also have two years of formal and informal feedback from leaders and peers: time to build confidence, address gaps and understand what good performance looks like in that organisation.

The assessment works both ways.

The business gets to understand the person’s capabilities and potential. The individual gets to decide whether this is somewhere they want to commit to a long-term career.

That is a much stronger foundation than either side trying to make the entire judgement during a few interviews.

The business can plan for what comes next

Early succession planning also creates room to consider changing regulations, Central Bank of Ireland requirements and technology, including AI.

Those changes cannot all be predicted. But the business has time to review responsibilities, develop its people and adjust the skills it will need.

It can ask whether the successor should inherit the existing role or help shape a different one.

Trust is earned over time

Having recruited almost everyone in an organisation gives you valuable insight into how the team works. It also brings a responsibility to keep listening.

People develop. Priorities change. Each appointment deserves fresh thought.

For me, the value of a long-term recruitment relationship is being able to discuss those changes openly, challenge a brief when necessary and recognise who will thrive in that particular environment.

Good succession planning gives the person leaving a thoughtful handover, the successor a fair opportunity to develop and the wider team confidence in what comes next.

You should be planning succession across your leadership team and specialist talent, including the people whose knowledge would be hardest to replace.

If you would like to speak with someone experienced in this area, drop me a line at hugh@dolmenrecruitment.ie.

Rejection

One of the harder parts of recruitment is calling a very good candidate to tell them they didn’t get the job.

Especially when they did almost everything right.

Three interviews.

A case study that took hours to prepare.

A final-stage interview with four senior people.

Good feedback throughout.

And still a no.

I’ve had a lot of those conversations over the years, and I don’t think recruiters or employers should underestimate how disappointing they can be.

Because by the final stage, a candidate hasn’t just invested a few hours in a process.

They’ve started imagining what getting the job might actually mean for their life.

Maybe the extra money gets the family out of a difficult financial situation.

Maybe it finally allows them to apply for the house they desperately need.

Maybe it means their partner can go part-time, take parental leave or spend more time with young children.

Maybe it means a shorter commute, more stability or simply a fresh start after a difficult year.

They’ve probably discussed it at home.

They may have mentally resigned from their current employer.

They’ve pictured themselves doing the job.

After three interviews and a case study, they reasonably think they have a real chance.

Then someone calls and tells them they came second.

The difficult reality is that sometimes there is nothing particularly useful to criticise.

You can have two or three candidates who could genuinely do the job.

But only one person can get it.

The person who misses out might have interviewed extremely well, had the right experience, prepared properly and made a very strong impression.

Another candidate was simply a slightly better fit for that particular team, manager or situation.

That distinction matters.

A rejection at final interview isn’t necessarily evidence that there is something you need to “fix”.

Sometimes the process confirms you are pitching at the right level.

You just happened to be competing against somebody else who was too.

As recruiters, I think we have a responsibility to give people proper feedback where we can.

But we can only do that if the company gives it to us.

I have stopped working with clients in the past because candidates were repeatedly left waiting without meaningful feedback.

I find it particularly strange because, when the shoe is on the other foot, employers are understandably frustrated when candidates disappear, stop returning calls, or fail to answer.

Yet some companies forget what it feels like to be the person looking for work.

To invest weeks in a process.

To prepare presentations and case studies.

To take time away from work and family.

To start believing this could genuinely change something for you.

And then hear nothing.

There will always be disappointed candidates in recruitment. That is unavoidable when only one person can get the job.

Leaving people in the dark isn’t.

If you are hiring, give your recruiter the feedback.

Let them make the call.

Even disappointing news is better than silence.

A growth strategy is only credible if you have the people to deliver it

Last week, at the Irish Funds Annual Global Funds Conference, Central Bank Governor Gabriel Makhlouf made a point worth considering well beyond the conference room:

“Capital goes where the opportunity is, and it stays where it is trusted.”

His speech on 1 October explored opportunities in technology and wider investor participation, alongside the importance of operational resilience, governance and effective oversight.

From a recruitment perspective, that raises a practical question for Irish financial-services businesses:

Do you have the people in place to take advantage of those opportunities and deliver on the commitments that come with them?

A strategy might involve expanding your product range, entering new markets, building distribution or taking on more complex business.

Each ambition creates demands on the organisation. Someone has to win the business. Someone has to make it work. And someone has to understand the risks well enough to challenge the approach and help find a workable solution.

Start with the business outcome

When discussing a hire, it is easy to start with a title.

“We need a Head of Distribution.”

“We need a more commercial COO.”

“We need someone senior in compliance.”

Those may be the right appointments. But the title alone tells you relatively little about what the person must achieve.

At Dolmen, the more useful starting point is: what does the business need to deliver, and what is preventing it from doing so today?

Is the challenge opening doors in a new market? Converting relationships into revenue? Supporting a more complex product? Improving an operating model? Giving the Irish business stronger decision-making capability?

Until those questions are clear, you risk recruiting an impressive person against an incomplete brief.

Growth needs capability across the business

Consider a firm planning to launch a product and build distribution in a new market.

Leadership needs to turn that ambition into priorities, allocate resources and make decisions when commercial objectives compete with operational realities.

Distribution needs more than a good network. It needs people who understand the proposition, the intended clients and the route to market, and who can turn interest into sustainable relationships.

Operations needs to establish how the business will deliver what has been promised: onboarding, processes, systems, service-provider capacity and the handling of exceptions.

Oversight needs people who can assess performance, recognise emerging issues and obtain meaningful answers from delegates and providers.

Compliance and risk need sufficient understanding of the business to identify constraints early, explain their significance and help evaluate viable options.

These capabilities are connected. A strong appointment in one area cannot automatically compensate for gaps elsewhere.

The salesperson may open the door, but the wider organisation has to be ready to walk through it.

Commercial judgement belongs across the team

Being commercially minded means understanding how the business succeeds, what clients need and the consequences of the decisions being made.

That matters in operations, oversight, compliance and risk just as much as it does in distribution.

You want people who can explain a problem clearly, ask useful questions and work through the options.

People who can say:

“This approach creates a risk we cannot accept. Here is another way we could achieve the objective.”

Sometimes the appropriate answer will be no. Sound judgement includes recognising when an opportunity should be declined.

The value lies in understanding the objective well enough to distinguish an avoidable obstacle from a necessary boundary.

Look for evidence of problem-solving

“Commercial” and “solutions-focused” appear in plenty of job descriptions. Interviews need to establish what those words mean in practice.

Ask candidates:

• Tell me about a commercial objective you helped deliver. What was your contribution?

• When did you identify a problem early enough to change the outcome?

• Describe a disagreement between functions. How did you work through it?

• When did you challenge an opportunity the business wanted to pursue?

• What did you improve, and how did you know it worked?

Listen for ownership, judgement and specific outcomes. Also listen for how they describe colleagues. Solving a difficult problem usually requires cooperation across the business.

Give people the conditions to succeed

The Governor also emphasised that credible delegation requires genuine decision-making capacity and senior management with the expertise and authority to challenge delegates.

That has a wider hiring implication.

If you recruit someone to strengthen capability, will they have the authority, access and support to use it?

A capable hire can still struggle where responsibilities are unclear, decisions are repeatedly deferred or constructive challenge creates tension.

For hiring managers, HR and talent acquisition, the brief should therefore cover both the person and the environment in which they will work.

Before deciding which titles to add to the organisation chart, establish what the business needs to achieve, which capabilities are missing and how those people will work together.

Looking at your growth plans, where is the greatest gap between what you want to achieve and the capability you currently have to deliver it?

Hugh Murray | Dolmen Recruitment

Source: Governor Gabriel Makhlouf, “Opportunity and trust: Europe’s capital market and the Irish funds sector”, Irish Funds Annual Global Funds Conference, 1 October 2026.

Hiring Senior Leaders: Are You Ready to Be Challenged?

“We need someone who will challenge us.”

When taking a brief for a senior financial-services role, there’s plenty to cover: technical expertise, leadership experience, regulatory responsibilities, salary, team fit and why the right person would want the job.

But when a hiring manager says they want someone who will challenge decisions, it’s worth spending a little longer on that point.

Challenge whom? On what? And what happens when they disagree?

It’s easy to welcome challenge in an interview. The real test comes when your new hire questions a decision you’ve already made, pushes back on group headquarters or tells a longstanding colleague that their approach needs to change.

That’s where the recruitment brief needs to go beyond “confident communicator” and “strong stakeholder management”.

I want to understand how decisions are made internally. Where will this person have authority? Will their manager back them when their judgement is sound but their message is unpopular?

And can the people receiving that challenge take it professionally, without treating disagreement as a personal attack?

If a reasonable challenge leads to defensiveness, strained relationships or an extra layer of approval every time that person wants to act, you’ve created a bottleneck. You’ve also taught them that speaking up comes at a cost.

Equally, we need to assess how the candidate challenges. Can they explain their concerns, offer a workable alternative and hold their ground respectfully? Can they accept challenge themselves?

In a small Irish financial-services team, those relationships matter enormously. You may need someone who can challenge a board decision in the morning and work constructively with the same people that afternoon.

Getting the hire right means understanding both the person’s ability to speak up and the organisation’s willingness to listen.

A senior title is only useful if the person can actually challenge decisions.

When you ask for someone who will challenge you, what will happen the first time they do?