We place HR Directors, HRBPs, and CHROs at mid-market companies going through AI adoption, M&A, and rapid growth. Faster than internal recruiting. With a 90-day guarantee.
You pay nothing until your candidate starts. No upfront fees and no retainer required.
Three to five pre-screened finalists, delivered within 30 days of intake completion.
From signed agreement to accepted offer. Faster than any internal recruiting process.
If the placement does not work out within 90 days we replace them at no additional cost.
Most mid-market companies are rolling out AI tools without an HR leader who understands what that does to workforce planning, job architecture, and change management. The leaders who can navigate this are not posting their resumes. We know where they are.
Talk to Us About AI Adoption SearchM&A fails more often in the people layer than in the financial model. Integration without a strong HR leader means culture drift, attrition in the acquired company, and leadership team fractures. The clock starts on day one.
Talk to Us About M&A HR SearchRapid growth creates HR debt. Policies written for 30 people do not work for 300. A generalist who was fine at seed stage cannot build the infrastructure a Series B company needs. This is when the wrong HR hire costs the most.
Talk to Us About Growth HR SearchMost search firms assign a senior partner to the pitch. A junior coordinator runs the actual search.
You work directly with the founder from the first call to the signed offer. No account managers. No handoffs. No junior recruiter running your search from a template while the senior person you met moves on to the next client. The person you speak with in the discovery call is the same person sourcing your candidates, screening your finalists, and managing your close.
Open searches attract the wrong attention. Posting a CHRO role publicly signals instability to your team and your market.
Every search is handled with complete discretion from start to finish. We do not advertise your open role publicly without explicit approval. We do not share candidate information across clients. Your hiring plans and your candidates are protected equally because confidentiality protects the quality of candidates willing to have the conversation.
A generalist firm that places engineers and accountants between HR searches does not have a real HR network. They have a database.
We do not place engineers, accountants, or operations executives. HR leadership is the only thing we do. That singular focus means our candidate networks are built exclusively around HR professionals. Our assessment criteria is calibrated specifically to HR leadership competencies. When you describe your situation, we have seen it before because we work in this lane every day.
The HR Director is often the first real HR hire a mid-market company makes. Get it right and you have an operator who scales with you. Get it wrong and you spend 18 months cleaning up the damage.
We place HR Directors who have built functions before. Not just run them. Built them. In environments with limited resources, competing priorities, and no margin for delay.
The Chief Human Resources Officer at a mid-market company is often the first real board-level HR voice the organization has had. That transition from "we have an HR function" to "our people strategy is a competitive advantage" only happens with the right person.
We place CHROs who have operated at the board level and navigated the specific transformation your company is facing. AI adoption, M&A, and rapid scaling each require a different type of strategic HR leader.
An HR Business Partner embedded in the wrong way becomes an HR administrator with a fancier title. Embedded in the right way, they change how the business unit operates.
We place HRBPs who function as genuine strategic partners. Candidates with experience in high-growth and transformation environments where the ability to think ahead of the business is as important as the ability to execute.
The VP of People is the first executive HR hire. They need to build infrastructure and sit at the leadership table at the same time. Most candidates can do one. Few can do both.
We place VP of People candidates who have made this transition before. Who know the difference between building for 50 people and building for 500. And who know what happens if you get the architecture wrong at 100.
Seven phases. No ambiguity about where things stand. No surprises about what comes next. Open any phase for the full detail.
Most companies begin an HR leadership search by writing a job description and posting it. That approach produces a pool of whoever happened to be looking at the right time. At mid-market companies going through AI adoption, M&A, or rapid growth, the wrong HR leader does not just underperform. They actively slow the transformation down. Karnett starts differently.
A clear approved search brief. A sourcing strategy built around your transformation context. A timeline with weekly milestones. And a recruiting partner who understands your business well enough to represent it accurately to every candidate we approach.
Most recruiting firms receive a job description and start searching immediately. That approach produces candidates who look right on paper but are not built for your specific transformation context. The job description describes the role. It does not describe the transformation the person needs to lead. Karnett builds the search around the transformation, not the job description.
A written approved search brief. A sourcing strategy built around your transformation context. Assessment criteria calibrated to your situation. Complete alignment before the search begins. That alignment is what produces placements that work.
When a company posts an HR leadership role, they reach one pool. Candidates who are actively looking right now. The HR leaders who have navigated AI adoption, survived post-merger integrations, and scaled people operations are almost never actively looking. They are inside companies doing exactly what you need done. They are not checking job boards. Karnett was built to reach this pool specifically.
HR leaders who have already navigated your specific transformation context. Candidates not available through any job board. Proactive outreach initiated before you see the first name. A sourcing strategy that gets stronger with every search.
Most recruiting firms conduct a 30-minute phone screen and forward whoever sounds reasonable. The result is candidates who look right on paper but fall apart in the first real interview. At mid-market companies navigating transformation, a bad HR hire does not just underperform. It actively slows the transformation down.
A curated shortlist who have cleared every filter. No resume dumps. No maybes. No candidates you have to screen yourself. Every person you meet is genuinely ready for the role.
A stack of resumes is not a presentation. It is homework assigned to the client. Most recruiting firms send 10 to 15 profiles and ask you to figure out who is worth meeting. That transfers the screening burden back to you. At Karnett, by the time you see a candidate name the decision of whether they are worth your time has already been made.
Three to five finalists you are genuinely excited to meet. A written brief on each one. Candidates fully prepared. And a coordinator managing all logistics so nothing falls through the cracks.
Most placements that fail do so at the offer stage. Not because the candidate was wrong. Because nobody managed the gap between what the client wanted to pay and what the candidate needed to accept. That gap is almost always knowable in advance. Most recruiting firms have already moved on to the next search. Karnett stays in until the agreement is signed.
A compensation package calibrated to market data. A negotiation that leaves both sides feeling respected. An offer that closes without drama. And a new HR leader who arrives on day one genuinely excited about the role.
Most placement failures develop slowly over the first 90 days. A misalignment nobody addresses. A cultural friction point both sides notice but neither raises. By the time either side says something the situation has deteriorated past easy repair. Most recruiting firms never know. They collected their fee and moved on. Karnett operates differently because our guarantee is only meaningful if we actually know what is happening after the hire starts.
An HR leader fully integrated and performing at 90 days. Early friction identified and addressed. A client who knows exactly how their new hire is tracking. And a guarantee that means something because it is backed by a process that catches problems before they become crises.
Karnett Partners was founded by Amber Early. Before running executive searches, she ran HR operations at a growth-stage logistics company in California. She built the function from scratch.
That meant implementing HRIS infrastructure before anyone had defined the processes. Designing contractor onboarding for a workforce that was adding headcount faster than it could document policies. Writing SOPs with limited resources, competing timelines, and no margin for a slow start.
That experience is not background. It is the framework every Karnett search runs on. When a client describes the chaos of scaling without the right HR leader, Amber already knows what that costs. Not as a theory. As something she has navigated herself.
Karnett Partners was built on one conviction: mid-market companies in transformation deserve a recruiting partner who understands the operational complexity they are navigating. Not a generalist sending resumes. A specialist who has lived it.
Karnett Partners works on a contingency basis at 20% of the placed candidate's first-year base salary. You pay nothing until the candidate starts.
Most searches complete in 30 to 45 days from signed agreement to accepted offer.
HR Directors, HRBPs, VP of People, and CHROs at mid-market companies with 50 to 500 employees.
Yes. We place nationally across all 50 states with current focus in California, Texas, and Florida.
If the placement does not work out within 90 days for any performance-related reason we replace them at no additional fee. That is written into every fee agreement.
We are an executive search firm. We place permanent HR leadership only. No temp, no contract, no generalist staffing.
A signed fee agreement and a 60-minute discovery call. That is it.
Signal-based targeting at companies going through the same transformation as yours. Proactive outreach into passive networks. Job boards are not our primary sourcing channel.
This is where we add the most value. When internal recruiting stalls it is almost always because the available pool on job boards has been exhausted. Our sourcing reaches candidates who were never in that pool.
LinkedIn Recruiter gives you the same candidates your competitors are already contacting. We source from a different pool, assess for your specific situation, and filter out everyone who looks right on paper but would not perform in your context.
Every candidate who enters a Karnett search process receives a response. If they are not moving forward, they hear that within 48 hours with a specific explanation. We do not send form rejections. We do not go silent. The HR community is smaller than most people think and reputation compounds. We treat every candidate the way we would want to be treated if the roles were reversed.
Never. Our fee is paid entirely by the hiring company.
Yes. Our network is built primarily on HR leaders open to the right conversation, not actively searching.
HR professionals at director level and above. HR Directors, HRBPs at senior level, VP of People, and CHROs.
Yes. We do not share your information with any company without your explicit approval.
Every search starts with a 30-minute conversation. No pitch. No pressure. We listen to your situation and tell you honestly whether we can help.