"Hey Claude – one of our board members keeps missing board meetings. She's been a valuable contributor but recently is completely absent. How should I handle this?" I typed that on a Tuesday morning, before my first client call of the day. Seconds later I had a...

I’ve never denied the shortcomings of the executive hiring toolkit. The senior level hiring process (well, all levels of hiring for that matter) is imperfect and fallible, and much of the work we do as executive search professionals is an attempt to add rigour and...

Netflix Tells Employees to Benchmark Themselves. I Did That. Here’s What it Reveals. Netflix famously encourages its employees to benchmark themselves regularly against the external market. Not as a gun-wielding threat, but as a discipline so they’re aware of their...

Almost everything written about CEO appointments assumes you’re working for a large (listed) corporation, have the luxury of a structured onboarding programme, and are guided by a patient, measured board. If that's not your reality - and for most newly appointed CEOs,...

Right now, it’s almost impossible to scroll through LinkedIn or any other social media platform without encountering some variation of career doom-scrolling:  “all the jobs are going to the bots,” “white-collar recession due to AI,” “graduates can’t find entry-level...

If you happened to be the proverbial fly-on-the-wall in rooms leaders are being interviewed, you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s business as usual in 2026.  You’d be sitting there, all fly-like, thinking ‘This is so last year. Nothing new to be seen here’. But...

Why Talent Mapping Matters More Than Ever Many organisations today operate in skills markets that are constantly shifting. New roles emerge, others evolve and critical capabilities become scarce faster than traditional hiring models can respond. Talent mapping has...

For years, board appointments happened quietly and informally. Someone on the board knew “a good person,” a respected executive, or a seasoned retiree... and that was that. Seats were filled through networks, handshakes and relationships built on golf courses rather...

As organisations expand across Africa, whether homegrown or global, one truth becomes increasingly clear: hiring the right C-suite leaders on the continent requires a very different approach to traditional global executive search. In a recent conversation between...

Every organisation understands the importance of appointing the right leader. Executive searches are rigorous, costly, and deliberately exhaustive - and rightly so. But as Debbie Goodman, CEO of Jack Hammer Global and seasoned leadership coach, highlights in her...

Attracting exceptional mid- and senior-level leaders in South Africa has always been a high-stakes game. The talent pool is competitive, the demand for specialised skills is high, and the best candidates, especially the ones not actively looking, are more discerning...

Leadership has been equated with charisma, assertiveness and a commanding presence for the longest time. The loudest voice in the room or the most outgoing personality often tends to dominate. This leaves introverts, those quieter and more reserved individuals,...

As the mom of a new college freshman, it’s been extremely disturbing to read headlines like: “Death of the entry-level job – AI can do it better.” “White-collar recession at highest levels since the global financial crisis – AI is the cause.” “Trust collapse in hiring...

By 2030, 230 million jobs in Sub-Saharan Africa will require digital skills. - Debbie Goodman, CEO of Jack Hammer Global The numbers are staggering. But the question remains: Will Africa have the talent on the continent to meet that demand, or will its brightest minds...

In this past week, several leaders in my network expressed disappointment in their recent CMO hires. Now, whilst there's always a measure of risk in any new hire at any level, I've observed that when critical elements of the interview and screening process are...

July was a special month for me, highlighted with week of inspiration and connection which I was grateful for. The key event was the inaugural Africa Impact Summit, here in Cape Town, with me as a delegate sharing perspectives with leaders from across the continent;...

As an advisor to one of the A-list blockchain venture capital funds in the US, I am privileged to enjoy a unique vantage point in the sector as a result of helping both early-stage and established blockchain and crypto companies with their hiring. For those of them...

Each year as we approach Women’s Month in South Africa, I eagerly await the news reports about women in the boardroom or C-suite, and the interviews with great female leaders.  At Jack Hammer, our data centre conducts periodic updates on the make-up of JSE top 40...

I’ve called it a hiring ‘frenzy’. I’ve even resorted to the cliché ‘war for talent’ when describing the fierceness of the competition for skilled blockchain and crypto professionals. And that’s because the reality of what’s taking place in this incredibly hot market...

After more than two decades as an executive recruiter and business leader in frontier and emerging markets, I have lived and worked through numerous waves of hiring splurges as new niches, in new industry sectors and new markets, started to spike. The tech boom in the...

Although it’s clear that most companies are far from ready to communicate a comprehensive masterplan about the future of work logistics (according to a recent McKinsey and Company survey, less than one third of companies have a plan that they have communicated to...

An abundance of research now exists to show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that appointing women to the C-suite is not only the right thing to do from an ethical and moral perspective, but also the savvy business strategy. In fact, all high quality, commercially-oriented...

Taken as a general sentiment from a cross-section of testimonials, it appears our clients genuinely appreciate how much time and energy we apply to getting to understand their business. We apply a rigour to the briefing and pre-research process that is usually...