Use retained for the hire that can’t go wrong, contingency for a single role where you want help without commitment, embedded for a team build with a deadline, and contract when the work has an end date. Most of our clients use more than one.
Retained search is paid a third at the start and two thirds when the candidate accepts. In return you get a much higher commitment to fill from us, a detailed market map of who could do the job, salary guidance for the role and a weekly calibration meeting while the search runs. We’ve filled every retained search we’ve taken on. It fits leadership hires, roles that have been open for months and any role where the cost of the empty desk is bigger than the fee.
Contingency means no fee until a candidate accepts your offer. It works when the hiring manager works the role with us: a conversation at the start, feedback within a couple of days and a decision maker who can say yes. When clients do that we fill 94% of contingency roles. When the role goes to four agencies and feedback takes two weeks, nobody fills it, and the engineers who did interview take the next offer.
Embedded hiring puts a dedicated team on your hiring for a set period, working alongside your own people with weekly alignment meetings. It fits a new site, a new region or a team build where you need ten or twelve niche hires in months, not years. Pricing is scoped to the program, so you know the cost before it starts.
Contract staffing puts engineers on site for the length of a project, on W2 or 1099, with onboarding, timesheets and invoicing handled by us. It fits capital projects, migrations, shutdowns and weekend support cover. Contract is also where a lot of our clients start, because a six month DCS migration doesn’t justify a permanent hire and the contractor who does it well often gets offered one anyway.
The wrong model costs more than the fee. A business critical lead role on contingency across three agencies will be worked by nobody. A junior panel builder on retained is paying for a search the role doesn’t need. Tell us the role and the timing and we’ll tell you which one fits, including when the answer is that you don’t need us.
