Join us for the sixth edition of Considerations, a collection of thematic reports from XST Capital Group’s senior advisors, designed to provide actionable insights on timely industry topics. In this edition, we are pleased to introduce Chris Stambolidis, joining XST Capital Group as Managing Director of Executive Search through a new partnership with Career Solutions Group. Chris brings over a decade of recruiting and executive advisory experience, including as a recruiter at Amazon and a track record of coaching and placing over 1,800 senior executives at organizations including Google, Stripe, Morgan Stanley, and Coinbase.

Chris makes the case that C-suite hiring at most companies is fundamentally broken, and that the organizations paying the steepest price are growth-stage operators who cannot afford to get a senior hire wrong. Drawing on his rare dual perspective, having sat on both sides of the hiring table, he identifies the systemic failures that cause even well-resourced companies to make costly executive hiring mistakes: job descriptions written for the last person in the role rather than the next, reference checks that are largely performative, and timelines compressed by urgency rather than rigor. He walks through the six qualities that actually separate executives who thrive from those who don’t, and closes with ten interview questions designed to get past rehearsed answers and surface something real.

This piece offers practical perspective for founders, CEOs, and board members navigating one of the most consequential decisions any organization makes. As Chris has observed across hundreds of searches, the companies that get C-suite hiring right are not the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones with the most rigorous process and the most honest assessment of what they actually need. We hope you enjoy the read. Stay tuned for future editions of Considerations covering other prominent topics across the industry. Thanks for joining us and please feel free to reach out if you have any feedback.

Read the full report here: Considerations