Business has changed. Recruitment must evolve with it.
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Focused, senior-level counsel when you need a clear strategy session, confidential candidate vetting, or a trusted advisory relationship around an important leadership decision.
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Great candidates are not reached by posting a long job description and waiting for applications. They respond to a clear, credible invitation—one that explains the opportunity, the leadership mandate, the organization’s direction, and why the conversation is worth their time.
This engagement creates the marketing and search strategy behind an effective hiring campaign: candidate messaging, outreach positioning, audience definition, engagement points, and a practical plan for initiating meaningful conversations with top-tier professionals.
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Hands-on recruitment leadership and execution for focused 30- to 100-day initiatives or ongoing six-month engagements. Services are provided on a flat-fee basis, billed twice monthly, and typically require 10–20 hours per week.
Nicole partners with organizations as an embedded Director of Talent or Search Consultant—particularly for specialized positions, C-suite appointments, complex leadership hiring, or situations where a coordinated team approach is preferred over a traditional agency model.
This model creates closer alignment with hiring leaders and boards, integrating the search process with the organization’s vision, priorities, culture, and decision-making process.
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What happens when an organization wants to see what a candidate pipeline could look like—without creating a phantom job, posting an opportunity, or committing to a full retained search?
Prospecting is a focused one- to three-month project. It identifies and engages relevant professionals, confidentially assesses their interest and fit. The result is a curated list of prospects with detailed profiles for your organization to evaluate or contact directly.
The work can be conducted on a purely confidential basis. Your organization retains control of interviews, selection, and offers—while gaining a credible view of the market and a targeted candidate pipeline.
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A complete executive or specialized professional search, personally led by Nicole—from discovery and market strategy through candidate recruitment, assessment, interviews, references, offer acceptance, and transition.
Whether your organization is a rural hospital, water district, family office, or another mission-driven or growth-focused enterprise, the process is built around the realities of your organization: its leadership needs, culture, community, stakeholders, and long-term vision.
Nicole brings a search methodology refined over 20 years and informed by a 98% retention rate.
The work goes beyond credentials and interviews to assess DISC profiles, leadership and communication styles, learning preferences, community-to-candidate alignment, motivation, and the way each finalist is likely to lead, influence, and present within your organization.
The retained model typically averages 18% of the expected first-year salary. Candidate guarantees of up to 18 months are available.
Five ways to engage.
Not every hiring challenge requires the same level of support. Choose the engagement that fits your objective—from targeted advisory and recruitment strategy to hands-on fractional capacity, a professionally developed prospect slate, or a complete founder-led retained search.
Whether you need help making a critical hiring decision, building stronger candidate engagement, accessing a specialized talent market, or completing a high-stakes executive search, each option is designed to provide the right level of expertise, structure, and support.
Focus. Message. Protocol.
Nicole Barbano founded Hunter Ambrose International in San Diego in 2006 and built it into one of the country’s largest healthcare-focused retained-search firms.
Over the next twenty years, the firm completed more than 1,000 placements across 40 states and expanded from healthcare into startups, professional services, Fortune 1000 companies, public utilities and water districts.
In 2026, now based in Kansas City, Hunter Ambrose entered its next chapter: a selective, founder-led search practice combining the discipline of retained search with flexible fractional recruitment and creative, market-specific solutions.
Nicole works directly with every client and personally leads every engagement—bringing the experience and reach of an established national firm to a search model built for what comes next.
Many of our most successful searches began with a “First”.
A search requires more than finding candidates. It requires a clear message, a thoughtful market strategy and a search partner capable of helping both the organization and the candidate see what is possible.
Curious about how to work with Nicole and start a search? Book a discovery meeting below.
More than five million people begin a new job in the United States each month.
At the same time, the major job platforms attract hundreds of millions of visits from people searching, scrolling and applying.
Activity is not alignment. A job posting can produce applicants without reaching the person an organization actually needs.
Successful search—and the high-rapport recruitment required to move an accomplished candidate—depends on three things: focus, message and protocol.
The message explains why the opportunity matters. The method determines how the market will be reached. The protocol creates a disciplined path from initial contact through assessment, selection, offer and acceptance.
Today, that work requires more than a posting or a database.
Digital recruitment marketing, performance metrics, direct outreach and passive-candidate engagement have become disciplines in their own right.
They rarely come together through a volume-based contingency search or an internal recruiting team managing dozens of competing priorities.
It is not the Rolodex. It is the process.
How many searches a firm has conducted in a particular state, county or industry may provide context. It does not determine whether the next search will succeed. Search history is not a standing inventory of available talent—and a database is only as valuable as the strategy used to activate it.
A successful search is measured differently: Did it remain on schedule and within budget? Did the market engage? Were top-tier candidates identified and thoughtfully assessed? Did the process produce a confident decision and a successful appointment?
The challenge is not a lack of hiring activity. In July 2026, the United States had 7.3 million open positions and approximately 6.9 million unemployed people—nearly 400,000 more openings than available workers, even before accounting for differences in skills, geography, compensation and experience.
The market is becoming more complex. AI is reshaping positions and combining responsibilities. Experienced candidates increasingly want choices involving fractional leadership, hybrid work, flexibility and greater professional autonomy. Yesterday’s job description and yesterday’s candidate list cannot solve tomorrow’s hiring problem.
Great search creates a new market around each opportunity. It depends on the message, the method and the protocol: how the position is presented, how the right people are reached and how the process moves qualified candidates from initial interest to a successful outcome.
The search model should fit the hiring challenge.
Recruitment Support Built for the Way You Hire
Organizations should not have to purchase a traditional retained search every time they need experienced recruitment leadership.
Some need additional recruiting capacity. Others need help reaching and assessing a highly specialized talent market. A special district may want to retain control of its public interview and selection process. Another organization may need an ongoing source of trusted referrals—or a complete retained search led from discovery through the candidate’s first day.
Nicole Barbano offers five distinct ways to engage, allowing each organization to choose the right level of strategy, execution, autonomy, and investment.
Founded in 2006, Hunter Ambrose was a national retained executive search firm established by Nicole Barbano. Over two decades, its work has supported organizations making consequential leadership decisions across complex, mission-driven, and growth-oriented environments.
Today, Nicole works directly with executives, boards, and organizational leaders through NicoleBarbano.com—bringing the experience, discretion, and practical search expertise of Hunter Ambrose to a more flexible range of recruitment engagements. Whether the need is strategic counsel, an embedded search partner, confidential prospecting, or a complete retained search, the work is designed to meet the realities of hiring in a rapidly changing business environment.