Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Retained versus contingency is not really a debate about which model is better.
It is a question of what kind of search you are running.
A startup hiring an Account Executive from a reasonably broad market has different needs from a founder hiring their first Head of Sales.
The recruitment model should match the risk and difficulty of the hire.
Contingency recruitment can work well when the role is clear, the candidate pool is relatively broad and speed matters.
The agency is normally paid on a successful placement.
That can suit individual contributor sales roles, customer success hires and positions where several credible candidates are likely to exist in the market.
The model is simple and familiar.
The risk appears when several agencies are all asked to work the same narrow role at the same time.
Founders sometimes think giving a vacancy to four or five recruiters creates five times the reach.
For senior searches, it can create the opposite.
The same candidates get approached several times.
Messages are inconsistent.
Nobody has enough ownership to invest deeply in mapping the market.
Candidates can start to wonder why the role appears to be everywhere.
That is not a great first impression for a leadership hire.
Retained or exclusive search is stronger when the role is senior, specialist, confidential or business critical.
Think Head of Sales.
VP Sales.
Country lead.
A confidential replacement.
A first commercial leader entering a new market.
These searches usually need more than advertising and database matching.
They need a clear brief, market mapping, direct outreach, candidate engagement and ongoing calibration with the founder or leadership team.
There is a common idea that retained search is formal and slow.
It should not be.
A good retained search creates focus.
The recruiter has permission to map the market properly, represent the company consistently and bring back evidence when the original brief needs to change.
That can make senior hiring faster because everyone is working from one search strategy rather than several competing versions of the role.
Some companies use an exclusive contingency arrangement or another model that gives one recruiter a defined period to run the search before opening it more widely.
The label matters less than the behaviour.
Is someone accountable for the whole search?
Are they actively mapping the market?
Are they giving you honest feedback?
Are they representing the role consistently?
Do they understand the candidate experience?
Those are the questions that affect the result.
For a standard commercial hire with a healthy talent pool, contingency can work very well.
For a leadership role where the wrong hire could change the direction of the company, a retained or genuinely exclusive search usually deserves serious consideration.
Do not pay for a search model you do not need.
But do not treat a senior commercial appointment like a CV race either.
RecruitHer works with EdTech startups on both hiring strategy and search, so the model can be matched to the role rather than forced onto it.
Contingency recruitment is normally paid on a successful placement. Retained search involves committing to a recruiter to run a dedicated search, usually with fees paid in agreed stages.
It is worth serious consideration for senior, specialist, confidential or business critical roles where market mapping and consistent ownership of the search matter.
It can work well for clearly defined roles with a reasonably broad candidate pool, including many individual contributor sales and Customer Success positions.
Emilia Kruszewska is an EdTech recruiter and headhunter at RecruitHer, working with EdTech companies on commercial and leadership hiring.
