The hire
A closed search led from context through assessment, offer, and start.
Critical Search
Senior-led search for complex executive, technical, and production roles.
More than twenty years of search judgment, strengthened by a repeatable method for mapping capability, evidence, and the market.
Where I add leverage
A senior partner inside the search, alongside the team.
01A complex role needs the sustained attention of a senior search partner while the internal team carries the broader hiring plan.
02A production or product milestone is creating a new capability requirement and the company wants an external view of the market.
03The role crosses technical, commercial, or operational boundaries and does not fit neatly inside one familiar talent pool.
04The team wants a reusable capability and assessment model, not only a candidate slate.
The method
The Capability Ontology connects the milestone to the market.
I begin by absorbing the context the team already holds.
Together, we connect the business milestone to the work, required capability, evidence, and relevant talent markets. External market evidence can confirm the original brief, expand it into adjacent environments, or help the team refine it early. The ontology makes that learning visible and reusable.
Milestone → Work → Capability →Evidence → Market → Pathway
The work is the standard
Prestige can be evidence. It should not be the verdict.
Every team uses shortcuts under time pressure: referrals, familiar companies, titles, credentials, and years of experience. They can contain useful evidence. But when the proxy becomes the requirement, the search inherits the past and capable people become invisible.
In defense, government, and other trust-sensitive markets, prior company, program, clearance, or customer experience may genuinely matter. The ontology examines what that experience proves: Can this person build, ship, operate, sell, or improve what the business and its customers actually need? Familiar signals can be additive. They are not determinative.
AI helps me examine more evidence, test assumptions, and see patterns across the market. The judgment is mine, and I show my work.
What you receive
The search outcome and the intelligence built along the way.
The capability map
The work the role performs, the capability it requires, the evidence that demonstrates it, and an interview design that tests for it.
A role-adjacency read
Who else touches this capability, where immediate concentration risk appears, and whether part of the need is a transfer the company has not yet made.
The market picture
Where the capability exists, how deep the relevant pool is, what the market is saying, and the honest build-versus-buy answer.
How it runs
Depth on one consequential hiring problem.
Context and capability
Time with the hiring manager, the business milestone, and people closest to the work. The first output is a corrected capability definition, not a longer job description.
Market and search
Direct sourcing against capability and evidence rather than titles alone. Candidates enter the process as they are qualified, while market learning continues to sharpen the brief.
Assessment and close
Structured evaluation against the capability definition, consistent communication, and active partnership through offer and start.
Each engagement begins with a named target timeline based on market depth, stakeholder availability, and the interview process. If the evidence changes the brief or exposes a constraint, you hear it early.
Why Darla Horn
A recruiter's eye.
An operator's perspective.
I built Talent and People capability at JetZero while the company scaled an aircraft program, its workforce, and its manufacturing footprint. That experience taught me that recruiting in a physical company cannot operate separately from the product, production schedule, and capabilities already inside the organization.
Across more than twenty years, I have recruited technical and executive talent, completed more than 100 retained searches, built Talent functions from the beginning, and advised leaders through growth.
I attended electrical trade school, which gave me an enduring respect for hands-on capability and the expertise that disappears when experienced workers leave without transferring what they know.
During the Palantir American Tech Fellowship, I built and tested an early prototype of the Capability Ontology against a real production schedule, connecting workers, capabilities, verified observations, employer demand, and the work the program needed to deliver.
20+years in recruiting and Talent
100+retained searches
1partner from context through close
Where this can lead
One hire can reveal the wider capability risk.
When the question becomes which capabilities the next eighteen months require, the work expands into Workforce Readiness. When an acquisition is involved, it becomes Human Capability Diligence. Neither is a prerequisite. Most engagements begin with one hire that matters.
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