Executive Search
Company:
E&G Partners, Founder
Orhan Erkut has more than 10 years of experience in executive search. At E&G Partners, which he founded and where he serves as managing partner, he has turned this experience into a disciplined team and process.
This page outlines Orhan Erkut’s perspective on executive search, his experience, and his way of working with people.
Throughout his career, he has led numerous executive search projects across different sectors and company sizes—especially in family businesses. He has not only helped companies fill a vacant position, but has also accompanied them as they enter a new chapter with the right leader.
Orhan Erkut’s approach to executive search is built on three core principles: strategic, trustworthy, and transformative.
because every search is approached in the context of the company’s long-term direction, ownership structure, and the stage the organisation is currently in.
because the process is built on transparency, confidentiality, and mutual respect—for both the company and the candidates.
because the goal is not just to find an impressive CV, but to transform the way the organisation works by placing a leader who fits the company’s culture and its need for change.
Perspective on Executive Search
There are many different approaches and styles in the field of executive search. What sets Orhan Erkut apart is that he sees this field not merely as “finding a person with the right title,” but as a multi-layered process of reading the company’s decision-making mechanisms and human behaviour.
His background in management consulting and change management gives him a strong advantage in the following areas:
- Understanding what the company really wants to achieve—beyond the written job descriptions,
- Reading the true weight of the leadership role within the organisation and the unspoken expectations around it,
- Addressing family dynamics and shareholder expectations from the right angle in family businesses.
Most searches begin with a title: “We are looking for this position.” Orhan Erkut’s first instinct is not to accept the role as defined. On the contrary, he starts the process by validating the need. The questions he asks encourage rethinking the position: What is really expected from this leader? What challenges is the company facing today? Is the goal growth, restructuring, or institutionalisation? Do the management team and shareholders have differing expectations?
The key contribution at the profiling stage is this:
The company’s corporate culture, decision-making style, future goals, and current challenges are all considered together.
The gaps between the written job description and the leadership style actually needed are identified.
When necessary, the scope and level of the position or the definition of the desired profile are revised.
Orhan Erkut believes that correctly defining the need at the very beginning of the process is the key to finding a leader who will stay with the company and truly add value. For this reason, he invests serious intellectual effort in the profiling and need-validation phase, and he builds all search projects on this foundation.
Profiling and Need Validation
At the heart of this approach lies the ability to read people’s expectations. His management consulting experience leads him not only to look at organisation charts, but also to understand why people are asking for what they are. The requested title and the actual problem the company wants to solve are not always the same.
When a hiring request comes in, Orhan Erkut pays particular attention to clarifying the following areas:
Periods such as growth, restructuring, professionalisation, or changes in ownership structure directly shape the profile of the leader being sought.
Is the company fast-paced, entrepreneurial, and willing to take risks, or is it more controlled, rule-bound, and cautious?
With whom will the new leader work, and into which decision-making mechanisms will they be integrated?
Especially in family businesses, the level of family involvement, intergenerational relationships, and expectations are important.
Here, not only the candidate’s competencies and past performance are assessed, but also their behavioural style, values, and expectations. One of the most critical indicators of long-term fit is whether the company’s and the candidate’s “ways of doing business together” align. To achieve this alignment, Orhan Erkut takes on a role that patiently listens to and reframes expectations on both sides—both within the company and with the candidate.
Sectoral and Functional Insights
Orhan Erkut’s many years of experience across sectors and business functions enable him to generate sector- and function-specific insights that are highly valuable to decision-makers.
These insights are important in two ways:
- Companies want to see what is happening in their sector and which profiles are driving results in similar structures.
- Candidates feel the need to discuss how their current organisations operate, their leadership culture, and their openness to change.
Orhan Erkut brings these two needs together within a framework that carefully protects confidentiality. While fully preserving personal and corporate privacy, he generates high-level insights about the organisations where candidates work and uses them in the reports and conversations he shares with client companies. For example, information such as which organisational setups deliver better results in a specific function, or which leadership approaches work best in which phases, helps the company reassess the role and the profile they are looking for.
The aim is not merely to hand the company a list of candidates, but to provide a framework that helps them think about “the leadership profile that fits this role and this period.”
Approach from the Candidate’s Perspective
The executive search process is also a journey in which candidates experience critical turning points. When working with candidates, Orhan Erkut places great importance on both confidentiality and providing clear, timely feedback.
During interviews, he seeks to understand the candidate’s expectations, life plans, working style, and values. At the same time, he offers a clear picture of the company’s culture and the profile required by the position. If he sees that the two sides are not aligned, he prefers to share this during the conversation itself -without dragging the process out, and with clear reasoning, without putting the candidate on the defensive-.
Two key principles lie behind this attitude:
- Respecting the candidate’s time and expectations, and reducing uncertainty as much as possible,
- Protecting the realistic boundaries of the position and keeping the relationship transparent, as a professional acting on behalf of the company.
This approach reinforces trust from both companies and candidates’ perspectives. Candidates feel they are not treated merely as “a profile being evaluated,” but as professionals whose career journeys are taken seriously. Companies, on the other hand, can make insight-driven decisions, knowing which assessment underpins the process.
Family Businesses and Decision Dynamics
One of Orhan Erkut’s major strengths in the field of executive search is his long-standing work with a large number of family businesses and very different family structures. Running long-term projects with families that have diverse value sets, cultures, and decision-making styles has given him distinct depth in the following areas:
- How families make decisions,
- Under what circumstances do they create space for professional managers and in what way?
- At which points does communication and expectation management become critical?
This accumulated experience makes it easier—especially for C-level and second-generation roles—to understand not only how the sought-after leader should work with the management team, but also how they should build a relationship with the family and the ownership structure. It accelerates the current-state analysis and provides an evidence-based basis for persuasion, supported by examples, to generate solutions that can open the company’s path forward.