Executive Search · Advisory · Research · Author
I study the lived reality behind hiring and onboarding failure - then translate that evidence into sharper executive search, stronger management practice and more credible integration.
The category of one
Most hiring advice is written from outside the event. My work begins inside the lived experience: what the hiring manager believed, what the recruiter translated, what the candidate inferred, and what each party later said when the relationship failed.
I bridge the double hermeneutic of phenomenology - people interpreting their world while the researcher interprets their meaning - with the commercial accountability of executive search. The result is not abstract theory. It is a sharper way to diagnose mandates, conduct interviews, test Person-Organisation Fit, and engineer the first 90 days.
The three fractures
Recruiters, hiring managers and candidates enter one appointment with different incentives, different information and different definitions of success. When the hire collapses, the system produces three plausible stories and no shared accountability.
Interviews become acts of mutual editing. Organisations minimise dysfunction. Candidates perform certainty. Recruiters smooth contradictions. The offer is accepted, but the Psychological Contract is already being breached.
“Autonomy” can feel like authority to the organisation and abandonment to the new hire. Freedom without sponsorship, access and contextual guidance creates the sink-or-swim void.
How I work
Surface the pre-reflective experience, contradictions and behavioural friction that ordinary interviews miss.
Map the appointment through P-O Fit, Social Exchange and Enjoyment-Performance lenses.
Clarify who owns truth, evidence, decisions, sponsorship and expectation resets.
Design the relational conditions that allow an executive to gain context, trust and traction.
Ways to work together
Mandate clarification, market mapping, direct search, behavioural assessment and integration risk management for leadership and specialist appointments.
Explore executive search →Independent diagnosis of repeated early attrition, failed appointments, psychological contract breaches and stakeholder accountability gaps.
Explore diagnostics →Research-backed keynotes and workshops that turn difficult hiring truths into practical leadership behaviour.
Explore programmes →About Tan Aik Seng
For almost four decades, I have worked where organisational ambition meets human uncertainty: the appointment of leaders, managers, engineers and professionals whose success cannot be reduced to a résumé.
My PhD research examines hiring and onboarding failures across the lived perspectives of hiring managers, recruiters and job seekers. That research gives language to patterns practitioners often feel but cannot yet name.
Research & insights
Hiring failure often produces three sincere explanations and no shared accountability. The problem is not only poor behaviour; it is a system that fragments ownership.
The first breach of trust often happens before employment begins - when each party edits reality to keep the appointment moving.
Experienced leaders need discretion. They also need access, sponsorship and contextual interpretation. Without these, autonomy becomes a sophisticated form of neglect.
Free research-backed diagnostic
The Triadic Accountability Diagnostic is a 21-question health check for CEOs, CHROs, hiring leaders and retained search partners. It exposes weak mandate truth, fragmented accountability and the Day 1 conditions that turn autonomy into abandonment.
Start a serious conversation
I work with CEOs, founders, boards, CHROs, hiring leaders, executive teams and institutions that are prepared to examine the system - not merely replace the person.
For executive search, hiring-system diagnostics, speaking, training, research collaboration or publishing enquiries, send a brief note.