Our approach
A method you can examine before you commit.
Search is often sold as an art. Most of it is process — and process can be described, questioned and improved. Here is ours.
The process
How a mandate runs.
Understand the mandate
Not just the job description. The team the person joins, the technology, the reason the role exists, and what “good” looks like twelve months in. We establish the constraints honestly at the start — budget, location, timeline — because a mandate built on unrealistic assumptions fails slowly and expensively.
Map the market
Where this talent sits today, what it costs, and which organisations are realistic sources. Sometimes this analysis changes the brief. That is a good outcome, and it happens before anyone's time has been wasted.
Search and engage
Structured sourcing across our network, our database and the open market, supported by AI-assisted research. The outreach itself is human and direct. Senior candidates don't respond to automated sequences, and we don't send them.
Assess and shortlist
Screening against the criteria agreed at the outset. Each shortlisted candidate is presented with a written assessment explaining why they are on the list and where the risks are. We present fewer candidates and argue for each one.
Manage the process
Interview coordination, structured feedback in both directions, offer structuring and negotiation. Most offers that fall through fail in the gap between final interview and signature, so this is where we stay closest.
Support the landing
Contact through notice period and into the first months. Counter-offers, cold feet and poor onboarding are the three common causes of early attrition, and all three are manageable if someone is paying attention.
Technology
Where technology helps, and where it doesn't.
Every recruitment firm now claims to be AI-powered. Here is specifically what we use it for, and what we don't.
Where we use it
- Market and talent mapping at a scale manual research can't reach
- Initial candidate identification across large, unstructured talent pools
- Resume parsing and preliminary matching against structured criteria
- Compensation and skills-availability analysis
- Drafting and refining role documentation
Where we don't
- Assessment decisions
- Shortlist judgement
- Candidate outreach and conversations
- Reference and motivation evaluation
- Any communication a candidate receives from us
Why the distinction matters
Automated screening is efficient and unreliable at the edges — and in specialist hiring, the edges are where the best candidates usually are. The engineer with an unconventional background, the leader whose title doesn't match their scope, the strong performer at a company nobody has heard of.
Software optimises for the obvious match. Our value is in the ones it filters out.
Commercials
How we structure engagements.
Retained search
For leadership and business-critical appointments. Staged fee, exclusive mandate, agreed deliverables at each stage including a documented market map.
Exclusive contingent
For specialist roles where we're the sole partner. Fee on successful placement, with the depth of a retained process because exclusivity justifies the investment.
Contingent
For roles run in parallel with other partners. Fee on successful placement.
Contract staffing
Monthly rate card covering the deployed professional, statutory compliance and payroll administration.
RPO / embedded
Retainer or per-FTE model, structured to the hiring plan.
Advisory
Project fee or monthly retainer, scoped to defined deliverables.
Let's talk about the team you're building.
Tell us the role, the constraint and the timeline. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right firm for it — and if we're not, we'll say so.