India ID Exchange

How it works — and when you can apply

You can apply to every board seat on this Exchange without paying anything. A membership does not unlock the apply button — it decides when your application is read. Here is the whole process, including the part that costs money.

1. 1

   Apply — free, on any seat

   Create an account, complete the board-readiness assessment and upload your board CV. All three are free and always will be. Then apply: up to 10 seats a day, which is the same ceiling a Foresight member has. It is there to stop one account applying to the entire board at once.

2. 2

   Shortlists go to the board every 15 days

   The Exchange does not forward applications one at a time. Every 15 days the desk collects what has come in against a seat, reads it against the brief, and sends the board a shortlist with each candidate’s CV. Two of those rounds fall inside a seat’s first 30 days.

3. 3

   The first 30 days are read for Foresight members

   Both of those first two shortlists are drawn from Foresight members. This is the first look, and it is the thing a membership actually buys. If the board appoints from either round, the seat closes and its page says so.

   It is measured from the date the seat was posted, which is printed on every seat page and is the same date search engines are given. It is never moved.

4. 4

   From day 30, every other application is read

   If the board has not appointed in those two rounds, the queue opens and every other application joins the next shortlist — in the order it was received. Applying on the first day rather than the thirtieth costs you nothing and puts you earlier in that order.

5. 5

   The company's name comes at shortlisting

   Most mandates on the Exchange are anonymous while they are open: the board is named once you reach a shortlist, for free and paying members alike. The firm carrying the mandate — Gladwin International’s board practice — is named on every seat from the start, so you always know who is accountable for the process.

Questions members ask

When can I apply to a board seat on India ID Exchange?

Immediately. Every seat whose brief is published can be applied to by any registered member, free or paid, from the day it is posted. You need a free account, a completed board-readiness assessment and a board CV on file — none of which costs anything. There is no seat on the Exchange that requires a payment in order to apply.

If anyone can apply, what does a Foresight membership buy?

When your application is read. Applications go to the board every 15 days. For a seat's first 30 days those shortlists are drawn from Foresight members — 2 rounds. If the board appoints from them, the seat closes. If it does not, every other application is read from day 30. Foresight also shows the sitting fee or a labelled benchmark where one is recorded, and whether the board will consider a first-time independent director.

What happens to my application during those 30 days?

It is held in a queue and it is not discarded. The seat page shows the exact date and time your application enters the reading, counting down to the second, and states the reason — Foresight Priority. Nothing is lost by applying on the first day rather than the thirty-first; the queue is ordered by when you applied.

How many seats can I apply to?

Up to 10 a day, and that is the same for free members and Foresight members. It is an anti-spam ceiling, not a commercial one — it exists so that a single new account cannot apply to the whole board in an afternoon.

What if the board appoints someone before my application is read?

The seat closes and its page says so, with the date. That is the real risk of waiting out the window, and it is the honest reason a member takes Foresight — not a locked button, but two rounds of shortlisting that happen before yours.

Are confidential mandates different?

The full brief of a confidential mandate is published like any other; what stays confidential is the company's identity, which is withheld until shortlisting for free and paid members alike. Where the Search Practice has matched your profile to a mandate it will write to you directly, but you apply to it exactly as you would to any seat on the board. The one exception is a seat a company posts itself through the free posting engine: Foresight members have its brief and its application for 24 hours, after which both open to every member.