Contents · 6 sections+
Three models exist for placing a senior leader. Most boards and CHROs have worked with one or two of them. Few have seen all three explained side by side with the incentive structure made explicit.
Here is what each model actually means.
I.Contingency Search
The recruiter is paid only if they place a candidate. No fee until offer acceptance. Sounds low-risk. It is not.
The incentive is speed and volume, not fit. A contingency recruiter submitting ten CVs is not doing ten times the work — they are reducing the threshold for submission to near zero. Every candidate sent is a lottery ticket. The slate looks broad; the vetting is shallow.
Contingency works for mid-market roles where the cost of a wrong hire is recoverable. For succession-grade technical leadership — CTO, CISO, VP Engineering — the economics flip. A bad hire at this level costs 3–5× salary in disruption, delayed roadmap, and replacement. The contingency model was never designed to absorb that risk.
II.Retained Search
The client pays a fee in three instalments: on mandate signature, on shortlist delivery, on placement. The recruiter is engaged exclusively.
Retained search was built for senior roles. It works — if the firm doing it stays accountable through the process. The weakness is delegation. At large retained firms, the partner who sells the mandate is rarely the one who works it. A researcher sources. An associate briefs. A principal presents. The accountability diffuses across a team the client never met.
The economics incentivise throughput. A retained firm with 40 open mandates needs to process them. Yours is one of 40.
III.Engaged Search
An engaged mandate is retained in structure — committed fee, two instalments, exclusive relationship — but partner-led in execution. The same person who assesses your brief, maps the market, approaches candidates, and presents the shortlist is the same person who negotiated their own firm's existence on this model.
The distinction matters because the failure mode of retained search is not the fee structure. It is the handoff. Engaged search eliminates the handoff.
At Sercxi, every mandate is engaged. No junior researchers. No internal delegation. The founder works every brief to completion — 250+ mandates, 100% completion rate.
IV.Why the Model Matters at Board Level
A CISO hire at a DIFC-licensed FinTech. A CTO appointment at a hyperscaler building out Singapore infrastructure. A Head of AI at a Series C navigating MAS regulation and a 18-month AI transformation timeline.
These are not roles where the margin of error is wide. The candidate who accepts must be the right fit for the role, the leadership team, the regulatory environment, and the next 24 months of the business plan — not just the job description.
Contingency cannot deliver that. Retained often does not. Engaged is designed to.
V.The Three-Way Comparison
| Contingency | Retained | Engaged | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fee structure | Success only | 3 instalments | 2 instalments |
| Exclusivity | Rarely | Yes | Yes |
| Execution | Any available recruiter | Team-delegated | Partner-led |
| Accountability | Speed | Throughput | Completion |
| Risk alignment | Low | Medium | High |
| Right for | Mid-market volume | Large firm mandates | Succession-grade technical |
VI.What to Ask Before You Brief
Three questions that separate a genuine engaged practice from a retained firm that uses the word engaged as positioning:
1. Who specifically will work this mandate day-to-day — and what else are they working on simultaneously? 2. What is your completion rate on mandates at this seniority level? 3. What happens if the first shortlist does not produce a hire?
The answers tell you more than the fee structure.
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Sercxi takes engaged mandates only. If the role is succession-grade and the corridor is Singapore, Amsterdam, or Dubai, brief us at /contact.