An exclusive, milestone-funded engagement where one senior team works your search deeply until it is filled. Built for hard, scarce, or confidential hires, not the easy ones.
Retained search is an exclusive recruiting engagement where you commit one firm to a single critical role and fund the work in milestones rather than paying only on placement. It is for employers filling hard, senior, scarce, or confidential positions, from directors and senior managers to deep specialists, where a contingency scramble will not reach the people who are not looking. You buy depth, dedication, and accountability.
Because we are the only firm on the search, we map the whole market and approach passive candidates instead of recycling active applicants. Contingency rewards speed, retained rewards the right hire.
You fund the work in stages tied to real deliverables: engagement, a vetted shortlist, and placement. Each payment reflects work completed, which keeps the search resourced and the timeline honest.
You work directly with the people running the search, not a junior associate or a 200-recruiter machine. Every placement carries a replacement guarantee, so our accountability does not end at the offer.
Use contingency for volume or mid-level roles where speed matters and many agencies can compete to submit names. Use retained when the role is senior, scarce, or confidential and the best people are not applying. Retained gives you exclusivity, deep market mapping, a committed team, and milestone accountability. Contingency gives you a fast, low-commitment net. The harder and more critical the hire, the more retained earns its fee. See our contingency recruiting page for the pay-on-hire alternative.
No. Retained search is a model, not a title band. We run retained engagements for directors, senior managers, and hard-to-find specialists whenever the role is critical, the talent is scarce, or the search must stay confidential. Executive search is the use of this model reserved for CEO, C-suite, VP, and board seats. Retained is the right call any time a contingency scramble would not reach the right person.
The fee is split across stages rather than paid only on placement. Typically a portion at engagement to fund market mapping and outreach, a portion when we present a vetted shortlist, and the balance at placement. Each payment is tied to a concrete deliverable, so you see progress at every stage and the search stays fully resourced from day one.
Every retained placement carries a replacement guarantee. If a hire leaves or does not work out within the guarantee window, we run the search again to find a replacement. The retainer funds the depth of the original search, and the guarantee backs the outcome.
Tell us about the role and we will scope a retained engagement built around it.