We placed a Director of Sales in 14 days. Here's exactly what we did differently.

No job board. No LinkedIn Easy Apply. No CV pile to sort through.

Fourteen working days from brief to accepted offer.

Here's what the process actually looked like, and why it worked.

The brief

A VC-backed SaaS company came to us with a Director of Sales search. They had a clear motion, a defined ICP, and a strong product. What they didn't have was time.

They needed someone who could walk in and lead. Not learn the job, not be onboarded into a framework that didn't exist yet. Lead. Own the number, build the team beneath them, and operate at founder pace.

That's a harder profile than it sounds. Director-level candidates who can still roll their sleeves up are not on job boards. They're not responding to InMails from people they don't know. They're in roles they're broadly happy with, and they move when someone they trust brings them something worth moving for.

That's where most searches go wrong before they even start.

What we did differently

We didn't post the role.

The first thing most agencies do is post the role and wait. That surfaces active job seekers, which is a fraction of the Director-level market and rarely the best fraction.

We went straight to the network.

Within 48 hours of the briefing call we had a longlist of twelve people. Not scraped from a database. Twelve people we had relationships with, knew were open to a conversation, and who on paper fit the profile.

We qualified fast and honestly.

By day five we had spoken to all twelve. Six were eliminated immediately, either wrong stage experience, wrong compensation expectations, or simply not the right moment in their career. That's fine. The goal is not to fill a shortlist, it's to find the right people.

We presented four candidates on day eight. Three had not applied for a job in years.

We ran the process with the hiring team, not around them.

One of the biggest reasons senior searches stall is process overhead. Multiple rounds, scheduling delays, internal alignment issues. We worked directly with the hiring decision maker throughout. No account managers. No layers.

Interviews were completed within three days of shortlist delivery.

We managed the close.

A Director of Sales candidate at that level has options. When the preferred candidate received a counter-offer from their current employer, we had already done the work. We knew why they were moving, what mattered to them, and what the counter-offer couldn't solve. The offer was accepted within 24 hours.

Day fourteen. Signed.

What made it possible

The search was fast because the network was warm.

Building relationships with senior GTM leaders across Ireland and EMEA is not something you do during a search. It happens over years of market presence, consistent follow-through, and treating candidates as long-term relationships rather than short-term placements.

When a Director of Sales search comes in, we are not starting from scratch. We know who is open to a conversation, who is not, and who is worth approaching even when they say they are not looking.

That's the difference between a 14-day placement and a four-month search.

What this means for a hiring company

If you are running a Director of Sales search right now through a job board or a generalist agency, you are not accessing the same candidate pool.

The people who make the biggest difference at Director level are the ones who aren't applying. Reaching them requires relationships that most agencies don't have and can't build on demand.

If you're at the stage where this hire matters, and it always matters, the process above is what we run. Every time.

The Recruiter is Ireland's specialist GTM recruitment agency. We work exclusively with VC-backed SaaS and tech companies from Pre-Seed to Series C across EMEA. If you have a Director-level or senior GTM search open, book a 30-minute call at therecruiter.ie. No pitch decks. No pressure.