A search firm,
built backwards.
We started with the recruiter, not the firm. Then we built the firm to make the recruiter dangerous.
What Engaged Headhunters is.
Engaged Headhunters is a boutique executive search firm. We run engaged, contingent, and staffing engagements across healthcare leadership, technology, finance, manufacturing, construction, aviation, and the niches our headhunters open over time.
The model is built around the headhunter. Every search is run by a senior recruiter with a decade in the niche, not a junior associate handed the file after the pitch. The firm provides the platform underneath: ProHireHQ for sourcing scale, inbound lead-flow, contracts, billing, and marketing.
The thesis is the manifesto. The service is engaged search. The network is for recruiters.
Built around the platform,
not the personality.
Senior partners run engagements. Operations partners carry back-office. ProHireHQ runs underneath every search. The outcomes are repeatable across operators because the system is the product, not any single person.
Engaged Headhunters has placed senior leadership candidates since 2009. Across that period the firm has run more than three hundred engagements across home health, hospice, hospital systems, behavioral health, technology, finance, manufacturing, construction, aviation, and adjacent industries.
The firm runs on ProHireHQ ↗, the applicant-tracking, AI sourcing, and automation platform built and operated in production by the firm's leadership across the last six years. Voice AI screening, autonomous candidate sourcing, credential verification, contract management, and payroll-and-back-office workflows all run through ProHireHQ. The platform is what makes the network scalable: senior recruiters operate on a common toolset with a common operating playbook, and outcomes are repeatable across operators rather than dependent on any single person.
Senior partners run client engagements end-to-end. Operations partners carry the back-office. The founder operates the network as the platform's principal architect and stays close to the searches he chooses to run himself. But the firm is engineered so that the recruiter on your search is a senior partner with a decade in the niche, not the founder by default.
FOUNDED 2009 · HQ VIRGINIA BEACH · BUILT ON PROHIREHQ · RUN BY THE SENIOR PARTNERS ON THE NETWORK
James Pemberton
Senior recruiting since 2009 across healthcare, technology, finance, and adjacent industries. Built ProHireHQ in production over the last six years rather than as a SaaS demo. Runs a small number of senior search engagements personally; the rest of the firm's work runs through the senior-partner network on the platform.
Jewels Grace
Twenty years inside the rooms where senior hiring decisions get made. Coaches the network on the language and systems that produce outcomes: the precision-over-predictive frame that separates senior search from staffing volume. Co-leads the firm's training programs and operator development. jewelsgrace.com ↗
How to work with us.
Hiring company, senior recruiter, or candidate. Each path is built differently.
For Companies
Engaged search, contingent search, staffing. The senior headhunter runs your search end-to-end.
For Recruiters
Two tiers. 60/40 or 70/30 in your direction. Network open to senior recruiters with a niche. Senior partners read every application.
For Candidates
Submit confidentially. Free to candidates. The headhunter on your niche reads every file.
Three ways to engage from here.
You're hiring senior leadership.
Book a 30-minute scoping call. A senior partner runs every intro and routes you to the headhunter on your niche. Book the call →
You're a senior recruiter with a niche.
Mutually confidential conversation about the network, the splits, and the kind of operator we want on it. Senior partners read every application; the founder reviews the final cohort decisions. Apply to the network →
You want the philosophical version first.
The manifesto is the long-form thesis behind the firm: why the agency is the wrong unit of work and the headhunter is. Read the manifesto →