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SignalsBusiness development

Know when a leader leaves a target account and the seat needs filling

Your account list checked for senior departures in your discipline: who left, when, and how it was detected, any backfill role already advertised, and the leader's manager or the HR lead with a verified work email and a staged note. Accounts where nothing was found are listed as checked, not as unchanged.

use when
a head of function may have left one of your target accounts, and you want the backfill conversation before the search is briefed out
starts from
A list

The prompt

Paste it into Claude Code or the Claude desktop app with Hyreflow connected. The first line tells your agent to use Hyreflow, so it reads the play, asks before it spends anything, and hands the work back to you.

paste this into Claude
Use hyreflow and check my target accounts for senior people in my discipline
who have left, so I can get into the backfill conversation.

The accounts are in <ACCOUNT_LIST_FILE_OR_PASTED_NAMES>. I recruit
<FUNCTION>, and the titles that count are <SENIOR_TITLES>. Look back <DAYS>
days.

- Leaders I already know there: <NAMED_LEADERS_WITH_LINKEDIN_URLS>. Check
  each one is still at the account.
- Check the news for departures, and check each account's open roles for a
  senior role in my function that looks like a backfill.
- Show me how each departure was detected, with the date and the source.
  List accounts where you found nothing as checked, not as unchanged.
- Do not contact the person who left. Find their manager or the HR lead
  and get a work email. This is business development.
- Draft a short note about the seat and the team, not about the person.

Run three accounts end to end first and tell me what the full list costs
before you do the rest. Stage the notes, do not send anything.

Replace every <PLACEHOLDER> with your own detail. Everything else can stay as written.

What you need first

  • A list of named accounts, ideally with each company's website
  • The function you recruit and the senior titles that count
  • Optional: the leaders you already know at those accounts, with LinkedIn URLs
  • A Hyreflow workspace with credits

Tools it can reach for

The agent picks per step from what your workspace has. Nothing here is required by name.

PredictLeadsSerperLeadMagicLushaAI ArkProspeoEnrichleyhyreflow Agentand more

What happens when you run it

Free steps are marked free. Anything that spends credits is marked, and the agent asks before the first paid run of any size.

  1. 1

    Confirm the accounts and the leaders you know

    free

    Each company is matched to its own website before anything runs, and the agent asks where it is unsure. If you know who leads your function at an account, you name them here with a LinkedIn URL.

  2. 2

    Pull departure news for each account

    credits

    A company signals source tags news events by type, and one type is a person leaving. Those events are read per account inside your window, charged per account asked whatever comes back. A news search adds departures reported in the trade press.

    PredictLeadsSerper
  3. 3

    Check your named leaders are still there

    credits

    For each leader you named, a check compares the person with the employer you expect and returns their current company and title if they have left. Leaders can also be matched to a second provider's records, which is charged, and checked in batches for a change of employer.

    LeadMagicLusha
  4. 4

    Look for the backfill role

    credits

    Each account's openings are read with the date every role was first seen. A head of function role appearing at a company that already had one is a departure signal in its own right, even when nobody announced anything.

    PredictLeads
  5. 5

    Keep senior departures in your discipline

    free

    Junior leavers, board changes and other functions are dropped. Each remaining account shows what was found and how: a news event, a confirmed move, an advertised seat, or more than one of these.

  6. 6

    Find the leader's manager or the HR lead

    credits

    A company-scoped search looks for the seat above the one that emptied, and for the head of HR or talent, sized to the company. The work-email waterfall runs in a set order, stops at the first hit, and the address is deliverability-checked.

    AI ArkProspeoLushaEnrichley
  7. 7

    Draft a note about the seat

    credits

    One short draft per account about the function, the gap and what you know of that market. It does not name the person who left or speculate about why.

    hyreflow Agent
  8. 8

    Stage, do not send

    free

    Drafts sit beside each account and contact in the output. Nothing is loaded into a sequencer or sent unless you ask for that as a separate step.

What a run costs

Credits are spent per company the play actually works, and a lookup that finds nothing usually costs nothing. The two figures are the run where the first provider answers and the run where every lookup walks its full chain.

companiesif the first provider answersif every lookup walks the chain
25$17170 credits$26260 credits
100$69690 credits$1031030 credits
500$3453450 credits$5155150 credits
1,000$6906900 credits$1,00010300 credits

Free before anything is charged

  • Confirm the accounts and the leaders you know
  • Keep senior departures in your discipline
  • Stage, do not send

What moves the number

  • The channel. This play buys work email, because these are people you are approaching about work you want to win. A work address is the cheaper of the two to find.
  • Coverage on people search and work email. The chain stops at the first provider that answers, and only that provider bills.
  • How many companies survive the free filters. Everything dropped before the paid steps costs nothing.
  • The scoring and drafting steps run on the metered agent, charged on what they read and write rather than per company, so they sit outside this table.
  • Providers you connect with your own key. Those calls bill your account, not your credits.

An estimate, not a quote, priced at the volume credit rate. Your agent sizes the run against your own workspace and tells you what it will cost before it spends anything.

A departure is a vacancy before anyone writes the advert

When a head of function resigns, the company has a problem that day and an advert some time later, if there is an advert at all. In between, someone senior decides whether to promote from within, ask a search firm, or wait. That conversation is over by the time the role is public.

The seat is rarely the only one. A leader who goes takes knowledge with them and often people too, and whoever replaces them will reshape the team. One departure at an account you care about can mean a run of hires.

Reaching a new leader before they choose their recruiters works the arrival. This play works the exit, on a list of accounts you chose, and it is honest about how little of it is visible.

What you get back

A table of your accounts. For each detected departure: the person, the role they held, the date, and how it was found, whether a news event, a confirmed move or an advertised seat. Any backfill role comes with its link and the date it was first seen. For those accounts, the leader's manager or the HR lead with a verified work email, and a short draft about the seat. Accounts with nothing detected are listed as checked. Nothing is sent.

Variations worth knowing

Name the leaders up front. The check on a named person is the most direct of the three methods, because it does not wait for anyone to announce anything. An account list with the head of your function named at each is the best input this play can have.

Watch for the successor. If the seat is filled from within, a promotion shows in the same news source. That closes this lead and opens a different one: the promoted person's old seat.

Follow the leader too. Where they land is a lead of its own. If they were a client contact, see follow your client contacts when they move company.

Where this goes wrong

Silence read as stability. Most departures never reach the news, and profiles go stale. An empty result means nothing was found, which is a weaker statement than nothing happened.

An interim is already in the chair. Many companies cover a senior gap with a deputy or an interim straight away. The backfill is still coming, but the urgency you assumed may not be there.

Writing about the person. A note that names who left, or guesses at why, reads as gossip. Write about the function and the team.

The search is already placed. Senior backfills go to retained search quickly. If the signal is weeks old, ask about the team around the seat, not the seat.

No HR lead to find. At a small company the manager above the seat is a founder. The search says so, and does not return a junior administrator as the contact.

Questions

How does it find out that someone has left?

Three ways, and it tells you which one fired. News events that a company signals source has tagged as a person leaving. A direct check on leaders you name, which compares each person with the employer you expect. And the account's own job openings, where a senior role in your function appearing is often the first public sign. None of the three sees everything.

Nothing came back for an account. Does that mean nobody left?

No. Departures are badly under-reported. Companies announce arrivals and stay quiet about exits, a profile can show the old employer long after the person has gone, and many senior seats are refilled without an advert. An account with no signal is listed as checked. It is not evidence that the team is stable.

Why not write to the person who left?

Because they cannot brief the role. The gap belongs to whoever they reported to, and to HR. The person who left is a separate conversation, as a candidate or as a future client wherever they land, with its own channel. Mixing the two in one message helps neither.

What about the team that follows them?

It is worth watching. When a respected head of function moves, some of their people tend to follow, and each of those is another seat at the account. Running the same check again a while later, with the leader's direct reports named, picks that up.

Can I run this automatically every week?

Yes, once you have run it manually and trust the shape of the output. It converts naturally into a scheduled workflow that re-checks the list and leaves the accounts with a detected departure waiting in your workspace. Prove it by hand first, because a scheduled run spends within the limits you set without asking each time. A scheduled run never sends outreach.

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