How I work
The detail on what an engagement looks like: who it's for, what you get, what I won't do, and the questions I get asked most.
The firms I work with
The firms I work with most usefully tend to share four things:
- Retained executive search, not contingency or volume recruitment
- Five to fifty fee-earners, small enough that a workflow change reaches everyone, large enough that the time saved compounds
- A structured methodology rather than ad hoc, and a CRM the team actually uses
- An existing concern for consistency in what reaches the client
How long does an engagement take?
Discovery is the part most consultancies skim. I don't. It's typically two to four sessions over a fortnight, some on a video call and some onsite if it helps me see how the team actually works, plus shadowing a researcher or consultant through a live workflow where it's useful. The output is a written summary of where AI fits, where it doesn't, and what to build first.
From there, pilots on a single use case typically run two to four weeks. Full builds across multiple workflows run six to twelve weeks.
Quicker than most consulting timelines, because the unit of work is 'ship a tool the team can use', not 'produce a deck.'
What does this typically cost?
Engagements typically run £5,000 to £25,000 depending on scope, with shorter discovery work below that and ongoing retainers above. Pricing is based on the value of the workflow being built, not time spent.
Training for the consultants who'll use the tooling is included in every engagement.
Tooling costs (the AI subscriptions themselves) are separate, and typically £25 to £75 per user per month.
You'll have a clear scope and price before any work begins.
What lands at the end of an engagement
Scope drives the deliverable. A short pilot lands one workflow in use. A longer build lands several workflows, a custom application where warranted, and a handover that leaves the firm self-sufficient.
The workflow itself
- Configured AI workspaces: Claude Projects, Custom GPTs, or Microsoft Copilot agents with system prompts that encode your firm's voice, structure and standards.
- Prompts and templates: a tested library, plus the Word or Drive templates they sit inside. Editable by your team, not locked.
Making it stick
- An evaluation process: what "good" looks like for each workflow, and a QA step before anything reaches a client.
- Documentation: what each workflow does, what it doesn't, what to do when it produces something off. Plain English.
- Training: direct work with the consultants and researchers who'll use the tooling. The scope sets out the training the rollout needs.
- Slack or Teams support: once an engagement is underway, I'm on your Slack or Teams during UK working hours.
The handover
- A document that captures everything in one place. Nothing depends on me being available six months later.
- Optional extensions for larger engagements: a custom application, CRM or document-store integration, or a search layer over historical data. Scoped per engagement.
Training built around your team
Adoption is where most AI consulting work quietly fails. Tooling that no one uses three months on is a sunk cost. Training is part of every engagement, and is available as a standalone piece of work where it makes sense.
One-to-one consultant training
Direct sessions with individual consultants and researchers, built around the workflows they actually do. Calibrated to where each person is, and grounded in the tooling that's been built for your firm, rather than generic prompt-engineering theory.
Wider firm training
Group sessions for whole teams or partner groups, designed to bring everyone to a working baseline. Particularly useful at the start of an engagement, or when a firm wants to bring its AI posture up across the board before deciding where to invest.
General AI literacy: referrals
For broader AI training that isn't specific to executive search (small business AI literacy, productivity tooling or general team upskilling), Maneform recommends specialist providers rather than offering a watered-down version. Happy to make the introduction.
Hands-on with the tools that matter
Maneform works with the established AI tools and picks the right one for the workflow, the data and the team. Maneform has no partner programmes or commissions. Recommendations are not tied to a vendor.
MicrosoftPlus the tooling around them, chosen per engagement: workflow automation, data pipelines and evaluation harnesses.
What I won't do
- 01Put AI in front of your candidates or your clients.
Approach messages, interview conversations and shortlist calls stay human. AI belongs upstream of the relationship, not inside it.
- 02Hand you a strategy deck and walk away.
Every engagement ends with working tooling your team can use the week after handover, with documentation they can return to.
- 03Act as your data protection function.
Senior candidate information is sensitive and sits under UK GDPR. I'll give you practical guidance on licence tiers, data residency and tooling posture so you start from the right place. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't replace your DPO, your legal team or a formal DPIA. Anything contractually binding goes through your own counsel.
- 04Tell you that AI replaces judgement.
It replaces assembly. It does not replace judgement: reading a board, calibrating a candidate against a culture, or knowing when to push back on a brief.
- 05Recommend a tool I have a commercial relationship with.
I don't have any. The recommendation follows your stack, your data and your team's familiarity, not a partner programme.
- 06Publish your name on this website.
Maneform works confidentially and quietly. Client logos, case studies and named testimonials don't belong on a public site in a profession built on discretion. References from current and past clients are available on request, after an initial conversation.
Seven questions worth answering
You can do some of it. Most firms who try get one or two consultants generating decent first drafts in ChatGPT and stop there. That leaves most of the value on the table and creates inconsistency in client-facing output.
The work Maneform does is the part that doesn't happen by itself: designing the workflow around the tool, building prompts that produce consistent quality at your firm's standard, getting the data and licensing right, and integrating the result into how your team actually operates.
That's the difference between AI as a personal productivity hack and AI as firm-level capability.
Copilot may well be the right tool. The question is whether your team has a tested way to use it for the work in scope. I build that method around your material, with training and checks against a standard you agree. If your existing setup already does the job, there is nothing here worth paying for, and I will say so.
Possibly. They would need time to design the workflow, test it with colleagues who are less comfortable with AI, document it, and maintain it when the tool changes. That is real capacity, not a weekend. If you have it, an internal build is a reasonable choice. I am the alternative when you do not, or when you would rather not learn this on live client work.
Ask them to demonstrate the specific workflow on material that looks like your firm's, and ask what review and training come with it. If the feature exists and works, use it. A feature on a roadmap still leaves you deciding what to do about the work, and the unofficial AI use, happening now.
If the constraint is research judgement or candidate relationships, yes. AI does not add that. If experienced people are spending hours assembling material into a repeatable format, that is the part worth testing first. Discovery should tell the two apart before you commit to either.
Senior candidate information is sensitive and sits under UK GDPR. Maneform provides practical guidance on licence tiers, data residency and tooling posture so you start from the right place. Maneform is not a law firm, and doesn't replace your DPO, your legal team or a formal DPIA. Anything contractually binding goes through your own counsel.
The most consequential decision is usually the account you process candidate data in. Business and enterprise tiers give you contractual terms, administrative control and data-location options that consumer accounts do not, and a training toggle on a personal account is not a substitute for those. Getting that right is part of the engagement.
Executive search runs on discretion. Publishing client logos, named case studies or testimonials on a public site sits awkwardly with that. The firms Maneform works with would, reasonably, prefer not to be listed. References from current and past clients are available on request, after an initial conversation.
The fact you can't see the client list before reaching out is the same posture you'd want Maneform to take with yours.
The next step is a conversation
Forty-five minutes, on a video call, no slides. With the people who know the problems your Consultants and Researchers face.
We walk through how your team currently produces candidate reports, sector briefings, proposals and approach research, and identify the two or three workflows where AI saves the most time without compromising client-facing quality.
I'll demo the most relevant workflows I've already built, so you can see how they work and what the output looks like.
Within two working days you'll have a written summary: the workflows we identified, two or three recommended next steps, and indicative pricing for each. If nothing from the conversation warrants a proposal, I'll say so.
What do you want to solve?
Or just email
If you'd rather skip the form, write directly. Tell me about the firm, the problem, and what "good" looks like.
Once an engagement is underway, I'm on your Slack or Teams during UK working hours. Quick questions get quick answers; nothing waits for a scheduled call.