What is retained search?
Retained search is a model in which a client engages one recruitment firm exclusively and pays part of the fee before anyone is hired. The professional body for executive search, the AESC, describes its members as working on a retained and exclusive basis.
The fee is usually paid in stages tied to the search: at the start, at the presentation of a shortlist, and at the hire. What changes is not the price so much as what the client is buying.
What does the up-front fee actually buy?
Effort that does not depend on winning a race. A retained firm maps the market for the role, approaches people who are not looking and reports on what it finds, including when the answer is that the brief is unrealistic.
That last part is underrated. A retained search produces information even when it does not produce a hire quickly: who exists, at what level, at what price, and why they would or would not move. In a contingency model, that information stays with the agency.
How is retained search different from contingency recruitment?
By who carries the risk. In contingency recruitment the agency is paid only if a hire happens, so the client risks nothing at the start and gets no guarantee of effort. In retained search the client commits money and the firm commits time and exclusivity.
Neither is better in general. Contingency suits roles with an accessible candidate market. Retained suits roles where the right people have to be found and persuaded, and where a confidential replacement cannot be advertised.
What does retained search ask of the client?
Discipline on its own side. A retained firm can only move as fast as the client gives feedback, holds interview slots and makes decisions. A search that stalls for three weeks after the shortlist is usually stalled by the client.
It also asks for a real brief. Paying up front for a search against a vague or shifting role is the most expensive way to discover that the role was not defined. Sparagus runs executive and senior searches on this model when the market calls for it.
