Document ref: STD-001

The Atlas standard

Every network in this market says its people are vetted. Almost none of them say what vetting means. This is ours, in full, so you can hold us to it.

A glass curtain wall seen straight on, the panels repeating to the edge of the frame. — The Building Envelope, stocksnap. Public domain, CC0.

Why this page exists

A hidden bench can carry a weak leader at no cost, because nobody can see them. Atlas publishes every leader by name, so the weakest page here is the one you will find, screenshot and send to your chairman.

That makes the bar our problem rather than yours. It also means we cannot describe it in a word and move on.

01 The verification protocol

A leader is listed when all six are true. Not five.

Stage I

They held the seat

Owned a P&L, a budget or a function, with the title, at a named organisation. A consultant who advised the seat is not the same person as the executive who sat in it, and the difference shows up in month two of an engagement. Advisers are turned down.

Stage II

Ten years senior, two in the market they list in

A leader on Atlas has worked in the market their page is listed in, for at least two of those senior years. They know what the entity has to file, what a family board actually decides, and how long the residence paperwork takes. A global network can put a Singapore CFO on a Dubai page. We do not.

Stage III

Two proofs that resolve

A named mandate, a case study, a board seat, a talk, a publication. Two links that open. They sit on the leader's page and you can click them before you speak to anyone.

Stage IV

Real capacity, starting inside sixty days

One to three days a week, available now or from next quarter, and the page says which. A full-time executive keeping a page warm for their own job search is not a fractional leader.

Stage V

A reference call we make ourselves

One client or one board member, on the phone, asked one question. Would you appoint this person again, for the same seat. There is no exception for a well-known name, because the first exception is the day this page stops being true.

Stage VI

A legal footing to invoice from

A leader employed by somebody else takes the part-time work permit their market requires. A leader who is independent invoices through a licensed entity. Atlas checks which one, records the expiry date, and asks again when it lapses. This is the test that decides who carries the exposure when a regulator asks how the engagement was papered, and the rule it is checked against is the one in the market the leader is listed in.

02 Baseline requirements

The same bar, for the reader who scans rather than reads.

10+ years: Senior experience. Ten years at senior level, two of them worked in the market the leader is listed in. Time in the market counts separately, because the paperwork does.
Held the seat: The title, at a named organisation. CFO, COO, CTO, CMO, CHRO, AI Officer or a board seat, with a P&L, a budget or a function underneath it.
2 proofs: Two links that open. Published on the leader's own page, clickable before you speak to anyone. A proof that does not resolve is not a proof.
1 reference: A call Atlas makes itself. Not a written testimonial and not a supplied contact list. One client or board member, on the phone, with us.
1 to 3 days: Real weekly capacity. Available now or from next quarter, stated on the page, and re-checked every quarter.

03 Continuous monitoring

The standard is not a gate

Passing it once is not the same as holding it. A page that was true in March is a liability in September, and the leader whose page is stale is the one a buyer finds first.

Quarterly availability checkEvery live page is asked to confirm its capacity and its start date. A page that goes quiet stops being live until it answers.
Proofs re-checkedA link that stops resolving is a page that stops being true. Dead proofs come down and the leader is asked for a replacement.
Approval can be revokedThe house holds the switch. A page needs both published by the leader and approved by Atlas, and the second half can be withdrawn.

04 What takes a page down

Five things. A company can report any of them at the contact page, and so can a leader about their own page.

The page stops being true. A mandate that did not happen, a title that was not held, a proof that was written rather than earned. The page comes down the day it is established, not at the end of an exchange of emails.
The permit or the licence lapses. Stage VI is checked and dated, and a footing that has expired is no footing. The page goes back to unapproved until the leader produces the current one.
A company reports conduct and the account holds up. Atlas calls the company, calls the leader, and asks both. If the account holds up the page comes down. A leader is told what was said and gets to answer it first.
An introduction is taken around Atlas. A leader who takes an Atlas introduction and papers it elsewhere keeps the client and loses the register. This is the one removal that is about us, and it is written here rather than buried in terms nobody reads.
The leader asks. A page comes down on request, same day, no conversation required. The address stops resolving and nothing of the leader's is kept beyond what the law requires.

Removal is not a silence either. The leader is told which of the five it was, on the day, and by a person. A page that comes down for a lapsed permit goes back up when the permit does.

Who we turn down

Advisers and consultants who have not run the function.
AI Officers without a system in production. A certification and a strategy deck is the easiest listing in this category to fake and the fastest way to ruin it.
Anyone whose two proofs do not resolve, or whose reference does not answer.
Full-time executives looking for a shop window.
Agencies and firms. Atlas lists people, and a person is who you appoint.

Turned down is not a silence. You get a reply and the reason, and you can come back when the reason has changed.

What we do not claim

We do not publish how many leaders are on Atlas. A count is the wrong number to compete on and it tells you nothing about the one person you are about to appoint. Open a category and read the names. That is the number that matters.

We also do not vet for outcome. Passing these six tests means a leader has done the job before, under their own name, and someone who worked with them said so on a call. It does not guarantee the engagement works. That is what the ninety-day replacement is for.

What it costs to get on this page

The largest fractional network in the world is joined by typing an email address into a footer. Its own help pages say so: no profile, no approval, anyone can join. What it calls a network is a mailing list, and what it calls vetting happens once per role, by hand, on whoever answers the email that week.

That is a reasonable business. It is not a register. A buyer reading it cannot tell who cleared a bar, because there is no bar to clear, and the count of members moves depending on which page you are reading.

Atlas turns people down. Six tests, published above, the same for a name everyone knows and a name nobody does. A reference call the house makes itself. A legal footing checked and dated, which is the test the rest of the field does not run at all. That is slower and it is the entire point: a page here means somebody checked.

If you clear the bar

Listing is free and stays free. You get your own address, you keep it, and companies pay us rather than you. Every introduction reaches you, answered inside five working days either way, and no fee is ever taken from what you bill.

Claim your page