Executive search
for employers
A search firm for leadership roles that are hard to fill and expensive to get wrong. Calibration before sourcing, and a replacement guarantee per your engagement agreement.
Placements.
What is the open seat costing you?
An empty leadership seat is rarely a line item, which is why it tends to get tolerated longer than it should. Name the seat and how long it has been open. The search cost is the engagement fee, credited on placement.
Cost of Vacancy vs. Engagement Fee
Name the open seat. The drivers below are coverage, schedule, and revenue. This tool does not publish a dollar-per-day vacancy figure.
Open for 45 days. We do not publish a dollar-per-day vacancy figure without a named public source. Drivers: Interim travel and locum coverage, plus survey and compliance exposure.
Credited in full against the placement fee. Fees are 15 to 30% of first-year salary, with engagement fees starting at $3,500.
What does an executive search firm actually do?
An executive search firm finds and assesses leaders who are not applying to your job posting. That is the whole distinction. A job board reaches people who are looking. A search firm reaches the people who are doing the job well somewhere else and were not planning to move.
The work has three parts. Calibration, which is agreeing what the role actually owns and what disqualifies a candidate, before anyone is contacted. Research, which is mapping who holds that remit across the relevant market. Then the approach, assessment and the long work of keeping a passive candidate engaged through a process they did not ask to be in.
Most searches that stall were scoped wrong rather than sourced wrong, which is why we do the calibration first and will say so if the role as written describes two different people.
How do you find a headhunter worth hiring?
Ask who will actually do the work, and ask it before anything else. In many firms the person who wins the business is not the person who runs the search. If the answer is vague, you are buying a brand rather than a recruiter.
Four more that sort the field quickly:
- What happens if the placement does not work out? Get the terms in writing at the start of the search rather than at invoice. Ours is a replacement guarantee per your engagement agreement.
- Have they filled this specific role before? Not the function, the role. Recruiting a CFO and recruiting a Controller are different searches with different candidate pools.
- What does the shortlist look like and when? We calibrate first and then deliver a shortlist measured against that plan.
- Will they tell you when you are wrong? A recruiter who agrees with every element of your brief is selling, not advising. The useful ones push back during calibration.
On fee structures, the honest answer is that contingent, retained and engaged price different things and none of them is the scam. We set that out in detail in our guide to executive search fee structures.
When should you hire a headhunter instead of recruiting internally?
When the people you want are not going to apply. If your posting reliably produces candidates you are happy to hire, an internal process is cheaper and you should keep it.
The cases where an outside search earns its cost tend to share one of four shapes. The role is senior enough that the credible pool is small and already employed. The search has to be confidential, because there is an incumbent who does not know yet. Your team does not have the market map and would be starting from a blank page. Or the seat has been open long enough that the cost of the vacancy has overtaken the cost of the search, which is what the calculator above is for.
If none of those describe your situation, say so on the call and we will tell you to run it internally.
What does the executive search process look like?
Five stages, in this order, with the first one doing most of the work.
- Calibration. We agree the outcomes the hire owns in year one, the decisions they make without you, and the two or three things that genuinely disqualify a candidate. Written down and circulated before sourcing starts, so the panel interviews against one standard rather than four private ones.
- Market mapping. Who holds this remit today, where, and what would move them. This is the part a job posting cannot do.
- Approach and assessment. Direct outreach, then structured assessment against the calibration document rather than against a feeling in the room.
- Shortlist. A calibrated shortlist, meaning candidates measured against what you agreed, with the reasoning attached.
- Offer and close. Including the counteroffer conversation, which is easier when you established months earlier what the candidate was actually leaving.
What we commit to in writing
Terms belong in an agreement rather than in marketing copy, so these are the ones we will put in yours.
- A calibrated shortlist measured against the signed search plan.
- A replacement guarantee per your engagement agreement.
- Fees are 15 to 30% of first-year salary, with engagement fees starting at $3,500. The engagement fee is credited in full.
- Candidates never pay us anything. The hiring company pays, always.
Behind that: James Pemberton, a US Navy veteran with a recruiting career that began in 2009.
Which search model fits the role?
Questions we get on the first call
- Do candidates ever pay a fee?
- No. The hiring company pays, always. Someone we represent never pays to be put forward, never pays to interview, and never sees a deduction taken out of their offer. If anyone asks a candidate for money to be considered for a role, they are not a recruiter.
- What happens if the person we hire does not work out?
- We run a replacement search at no additional fee under a replacement guarantee per your engagement agreement. The terms go in the agreement at the start of the search rather than being negotiated after something goes wrong.
- How quickly will we see candidates?
- A calibrated shortlist follows the signed search plan. Calibrated means the candidates were measured against the outcomes and dealbreakers we agreed, with the reasoning attached, rather than being a list of people who were available.
- What does a search cost?
- Fees are 15 to 30% of first-year salary, with engagement fees starting at $3,500. Candidates are not charged.
- Can you run a search confidentially?
- Yes. Confidential search is a standard engagement for us, usually when there is an incumbent who does not know yet or a strategic move that cannot be signalled to the market. Outreach happens without your name attached until a candidate is qualified and under NDA.
- What industries do you actually work in?
- Healthcare, technology, finance and manufacturing are where the practice is deepest. If a search sits outside those and we do not have the market map to do it properly, we will say so rather than take the engagement.
- Who actually runs the search?
- James Pemberton, a US Navy veteran with a recruiting career that began in 2009. The person you speak with on the first call is the person who runs the work.
Role guides worth reading before you write the job description
- Controller vs CFO , for when finance is stretched and you are not sure which seat you need.
- CTO vs VP of Engineering , two roles routinely advertised as one.
- VP of Clinical Operations , scope, and how it shifts between a single site and a system.
- Executive search fee structures , contingent, retained and engaged, and what each one actually buys.
Scale Your Leadership Team
Connect with our search specialists to discover how we can build your executive bench with precision and velocity.
Confidential. The first conversation does not obligate you.