Every claim on the radar traces to a source — and the few that only exist as industry folklore, we leave off on purpose. The evidence below, flagged by how strong it is:
The trigger that creates a leadership seat fires weeks to months before the job is posted. That gap is the lead window.
Executive turnover runs ~17% with no CEO change, ~22% under an internal successor, and ~33% when the CEO is hired from outside — each rebuild is a cluster of VP+ searches.
The quarter between a departure (often public via an 8-K or LinkedIn) and a filled role is the off-market window. The public req is the lagging confirmation.
B2B buyers spend only ~17% of the journey meeting suppliers, and most requirements are set before the first vendor conversation. Whoever shaped the thinking earlier already won.
The warm-path ranking rests on four findings about how trust and information move through a network.
Acquaintances in other circles carry the non-redundant information; close ties mostly know what you already know. ~83% of people who found a job through a contact heard it from a weaker tie.
The person who spans the structural hole between two disconnected clusters gets earlier information and controls the framing. That broker is the highest-value introducer.
Relationships nest in layers (~5 / 15 / 50 / 150). An intro is only warm if the target sits in the introducer’s active inner layers — not a dormant contact. (150 is a heuristic, not a constant.)
A connector matters to the extent they reach other well-connected people — not by raw count. The same math that ranks web pages ranks introducers.
"Can I help?" asks the recipient to do the work. An unconditional give inverts that — and the effect is measurable.
In Regan’s experiment, an unsolicited gift nearly doubled later compliance — and whether the person was liked no longer mattered. The gift created the obligation on its own.
A give deposits a socially-enforced debt that stabilizes a relationship before trust exists. The five-minute favor (high value to them, low cost to you) is the practical form.
Responding to a fresh signal within five minutes versus thirty raised the odds of contact ~100× and of qualifying ~21×. On a hot trigger, the first firm in usually wins.
Familiarity grows with repeated exposure but saturates if overdone — and varied exposures beat identical repeats. To keep a relationship alive over a year, space touches ~monthly and change the substance each time.
And the eventual winner was the first vendor engaged ~81% of the time — the economic case for being early, not loud.
Sellers who help create the buying vision — rather than respond to a finished spec — win about three-quarters of the time.
Referred candidates reach hire at ~16% vs ~2% for inbound — and referred relationships retain longer, the signature of transferred trust.
The baseline for cold outreach into a flooded, contested req — the opposite end from a warm, give-first first move.
A radar is only as trustworthy as the claims it won’t make. These get quoted everywhere in our industry — and they don’t survive a source check, so they’re not on this report.