Retained or Contingency: Choosing the Right Search Model
The commercial model changes who works your role, how deep the market coverage goes, and what you can hold anyone to.
Jack SullivanFounder & CEO7 min read
The choice is usually made on fee structure. It should be made on how scarce the profile is, because that determines whether the work required to fill the role is compatible with being paid only on success.
What contingency is good at
Roles with a deep candidate pool, a well-understood profile and genuine urgency. The recruiter is incentivised toward speed and volume, which is the correct incentive when the constraint is throughput rather than access.
What it is bad at
- Leadership hires where the shortlist is fifteen people in Europe
- Confidential searches that cannot be advertised
- Roles requiring genuine market mapping rather than database work
- Anything where the first shortlist needs to be the right one
What retention actually buys
- 01A named consultant with committed capacity, not best effort.
- 02Full market mapping delivered as a document you keep.
- 03Access to people who are not applying to anything.
- 04A process you can hold to a timeline, because it is contracted.
“You are not paying a retainer for the shortlist. You are paying for the ninety people who were considered and excluded.”
