Is a more expensive retained search always the better choice?

Not always, but for a genuinely critical role, usually. A bad executive hire costs a lot more than the difference between a retained and contingency fee, in lost time, disrupted teams, and a second search six months later. For a role where getting it wrong is expensive, the extra commitment a retained search represents is usually worth paying for directly.

Why do some firms ask for an upfront retainer instead of getting paid only when someone's hired?

The retainer pays for the work itself, deep vetting, real assessment, dedicated time, not just the outcome. A firm with no upfront commitment has less incentive to turn down an easy but wrong candidate. A firm with a retainer is being paid to get it right, not just to fill the seat.

Does Wired Human charge a percentage of salary like a typical search firm?

Every executive search I run goes through my partnership with Platinum Search Partners, and the exact structure depends on the role. Get in touch and I'll give you a straight answer once I understand what you're hiring for.

How much does it cost to hire an executive search firm?

Retained executive search firms typically charge 25 to 35 percent of the placed executive's first-year total compensation, often collected in installments starting with an upfront retainer. Contingency firms charge closer to 25 percent, but only when someone's actually hired, nothing upfront. Neither number is fixed. Both depend heavily on the role, the industry, and the firm.

Here's what that difference in structure actually means for how a search gets run, and why it matters more than the percentage itself.

What "retained" and "contingency" actually mean

A plain definition first, since these terms get thrown around without explanation more often than they should. Retained search means the firm gets paid to run the search itself, usually a third of the fee upfront, more at defined milestones, the rest on placement. Contingency search means the firm only gets paid if their candidate is the one who's hired, nothing if the search doesn't result in a hire through them.

That structural difference changes the incentives more than people expect. A contingency firm is often working the same role for multiple clients at once, competing to be first with a placeable candidate. A retained firm is typically working your search exclusively, with real accountability to actually fill it well, not just fast.

Why retained search costs more

Here's what I believe actually justifies the higher retained fee: it's not really a fee for finding candidates. It's a fee for the depth of vetting that happens before a candidate ever gets in front of you. A real retained process includes structured assessment, not just a resume review, direct reference conversations, and a genuine read on how someone handles pressure and leads a team, not just what they've done on paper.

That's slower and more expensive to run than sourcing a handful of resumes and seeing who sticks. It's also why retained searches typically come with a longer replacement guarantee, often six to twelve months, versus 30 to 90 days for a contingency placement. The firm has more skin in the game, so the fee reflects more actual work, not just a bigger number for the same process.

What actually drives the fee within that range

The 25 to 35 percent range isn't random. A few things move a specific search toward the higher or lower end:

How senior and specialized the role is. A CEO or a highly specialized technical executive role usually commands a fee toward the higher end. The candidate pool is smaller and the vetting is more involved.

How urgent the search is. A search that needs to move fast sometimes costs more, not less, because it requires more dedicated attention from the firm to compress a normally slower process.

Industry and geography. Some industries and some markets simply have thinner executive talent pools, which makes a search more labor-intensive regardless of how senior the role technically is.

What this has to do with leadership recruiting

Most of what I do day to day is screening: building leadership fit and pressure-response into a hiring process a client already has, not running a full external search. But when a role genuinely needs full executive search and placement, every one of those searches runs through my partnership with Platinum Search Partners, where I also work as an Executive Search Consultant. That's real retained-search depth: structured assessment tools, direct reference work, and founder-level executive experience behind the process, not a generic search bolted onto a screening service.

The goal isn't just landing a name in the role. It's making sure whoever joins actually gets trained, developed, and genuinely invested in as a leader once they're there, which is a different mindset than a firm that considers the job done at placement.

Where to start

If you're trying to decide whether a role needs full search or just better screening of the candidates you already have, that's exactly the right question to bring to the first conversation, not something to guess at from a fee schedule. Tell me about the role and what's gone wrong with leadership hires before, if anything has.