Executive hiring runs on two invisible assets: unposted roles and trusted relationships.

Whispered combines both into a single solution, where The Swarm helps map and turn relationships into opportunities.

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‍The Challenge

Senior execs don’t get jobs by applying online.
Roles are unposted.
Opportunities are hidden.
And backdoor intros are often the best way in.

“At some point everyone gets punched in the face in their career,” says Founder Andy Mowat. “Recruiters stop calling, roles aren’t posted, and you can’t rely on the same people you used to.”

Andy is a serial entrepreneur and operator, former Carta and Culture Amp GTM executive. At Whispered, he built a growing, crowdsourced database of thousands of unposted, "whispered"  roles with an active network of hundreds of seasoned executives.

He needed a technology and data partner and chose The Swarm to map applicants’ and  members’ networks, revealing who knows who, and how to turn that into intro paths to hiring managers.

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The Solution: Pairing Roles with Relationships

Whispered brought in The Swarm’s relationship data to:

• Qualify applicants: The Swarm passively maps full profiles and work network during the application process, helping select well-networked executives. Whispered also puts an emphasis on attracting and onboarding the most productive and collaborative people.
  
  
• Finding intro paths: For every unposted role, Whispered uses AI to identify the most likely hiring manager and then overlays Swarm data to uncover the warmest intro path from the Whispered network.
  
  
• Alumni engagement: When executives graduate into new roles, they stay connected! Their networks keep generating value for the next wave of members.

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Outcomes

• For every Whispered job opportunity, multiple potential intro paths with an estimated relationship strength score gets surfaced in the Whispered interface.
  
  
• Whispered has turned executive job search from a hidden maze into a structured, collaborative process. 150+ executives are already sharing roles and relationships.
  
  
• Customer feedback highlights the network as the most valuable part of Whispered, often cited on par with access to hidden jobs.

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“People used to think Whispered was about jobs. Today, just as many people join us for the network. It’s become one of our two pillars.”

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And it doesn’t stop here. Whispered and The Swarm are exploring new frontiers for the exec recruiting tech space:

• Automated references: Using work overlaps to identify the most relevant past colleagues for recruiters to ping for references. Contact Whispered here for more info.
  
  
• More signals: Integrating social engagement data and inbox metadata to strengthen relationship mapping and scoring.
  
  

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