What is executive search?
And when it is the right instrument.
Executive search is a specialised recruitment service for senior and board-level roles. Rather than advertising a vacancy and waiting for applications, a search firm maps the people already doing the job elsewhere, approaches them directly and in confidence, and assesses them against criteria agreed before the search opens.
How executive search works
The premise is straightforward. The people best suited to a senior role are usually employed, performing well, and paying attention to their current employer rather than to job boards. Reaching them takes a direct approach from someone who can explain the opportunity credibly and keep the conversation private while it develops.
A search runs in five stages, and the order matters more than any single step.
- Agree the brief. What the role has to carry, who it answers to, and what would count as the wrong appointment. Most searches that go wrong went wrong here, before anyone was contacted.
- Map the market. Identify the organisations where this work is already being done well, and the people doing it. The map is a list of who exists, which is a different question from who is ready.
- Approach directly and in confidence. First contact comes from the search firm, so the hiring company stays out of view until it chooses otherwise.
- Assess against the agreed criteria. Structured interviews, references taken properly, and a written case for every name that reaches the shortlist.
- Support the offer. Negotiation, the notice period, and the first months in the seat. An accepted offer is a milestone; the appointment is won or lost in what follows it.
Marquee runs that sequence to a published standard: a shortlist of four to five evaluated candidates in about eight days from the signed brief, and a closed offer in about fourteen. Four in five of those shortlists end in a hire, and nine in ten offers taken to candidates are accepted.
Retained, contingency and the difference between them
How a search firm is engaged changes what it can commit to. Two models dominate, and the distinction matters most on the roles that are hardest to fill.
| Retained | Contingency | |
|---|---|---|
| Fee timing | Paid in stages through the search | Paid on placement |
| Exclusivity | Single firm, agreed in advance | Often several firms at once |
| Typical use | Board and C-suite, confidential or scarce roles | Senior roles with a deeper candidate pool |
| Firm behaviour | Works the full market, including people who take months to move | Favours candidates who can be placed quickly |
| Client risk | Commits spend before a hire exists | Pays only for a result, and competes for the firm’s attention |
The trade is a real one. A retained mandate buys a firm the room to work a market thoroughly and to bring forward someone who needs three months of persuading. Contingency keeps the client’s risk low and suits roles where the pool is deep enough that speed beats coverage.
Marquee works on a contingency basis today. Retained is where the model is heading, and we would rather say that plainly than describe an engagement structure we have yet to run.
Why confidentiality carries so much weight
Two kinds of secrecy run through a senior search, and they protect different people.
- The candidate’s. A sitting managing director exploring a move risks their standing at home the moment word travels. Most will take a first call only where discretion is assured.
- The client’s. A company replacing an incumbent, entering a new market, or preparing a transaction often needs the vacancy itself kept quiet. Advertising it announces the plan.
This is the practical reason a search firm exists as an intermediary. It can hold a conversation that neither party could start directly, and it carries the reputational cost of getting that wrong.
Executive search and recruitment are different jobs
The two are often treated as the same service at different price points. They differ in where the candidates come from, which decides almost everything else.
| Executive search | Recruitment | |
|---|---|---|
| Candidate pool | People already in the job elsewhere | People who applied or are on file |
| First contact | The firm approaches the candidate | The candidate approaches the role |
| Typical seniority | Board, C-suite, scarce specialist | Mid-level through senior |
| Assessment | Structured against criteria set before the search | Screened against the job description |
| What is sold | Judgement and reach | Throughput and speed |
Both are legitimate. A role with two hundred qualified applicants wants a good recruitment process. A role where the strongest five people in the market are each happy where they are wants a search.
When executive search is the right instrument
Search earns its fee under a specific set of conditions.
- The strongest candidates are employed and would need persuading to move.
- The role is scarce enough that the qualified population is countable.
- The appointment carries consequence, so a mis-hire costs a year of momentum alongside the salary.
- The vacancy itself is sensitive, because an incumbent is still in post or the strategy behind it is unannounced.
- The hiring team needs the reasoning behind each name, rather than the names alone.
Where the conditions are absent, search is an expensive way to do something simpler. A role with a deep applicant pool and an open, well-understood brief is usually better served by advertising it well. We turn those away, and it costs us revenue to do so.
What a shortlist should contain
A shortlist is where a search firm shows its work, and it is the easiest place to judge one. Four to six names is the usual range. Fewer suggests the market was read thinly; more suggests the brief was too loose to choose against.
Each name should arrive with enough attached to compare like against like.
- The assessment against the criteria agreed at the brief, written down, including where the person falls short.
- Current compensation and notice period, so an offer can be shaped before it is made.
- Why this person would move, which is the question that decides whether an approach converts.
- References taken by the firm rather than supplied by the candidate.
A covering note with four names and a paragraph each is the market standard, and it leaves the reasoning with whoever built the list. Asking for the reasoning in writing is a reasonable request, and how a firm responds tells you most of what you need to know about how the search will run.
What an executive search costs
Fees are conventionally a percentage of the appointed candidate’s first-year total compensation, commonly between a quarter and a third, and higher where the brief is unusually scarce or confidential. On a retained mandate that fee is split into stages; on contingency it falls due when the candidate starts.
The figure worth weighing it against is the cost of appointing the wrong person: severance, a vacant seat, the work that stalls behind it, and a second search twelve months later. Most firms attach a replacement term for this reason. Marquee carries three months on every placement.
Will AI replace executive search?
Parts of it, and the parts that were already mechanical. Market mapping, shortlisting against stated criteria and first-pass profile matching are all faster with the tooling available now, and any firm still doing them by hand is charging clients for its own inefficiency.
What resists automation is the part clients actually buy: persuading someone content in their job to take a call, reading how a person will behave in a specific culture under pressure, and holding a negotiation together when a counter-offer lands. Those are judgement calls made in conversation, and they remain the work.
Frequently asked questions
Executive search approaches people already doing the job elsewhere; recruitment selects from people who apply. That single difference sets the seniority, the method and the fee. Search suits roles where the strongest candidates are employed and would need persuading. Recruitment suits roles with a deep, reachable applicant pool.
Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles, Russell Reynolds Associates, Egon Zehnder and Korn Ferry. Together they handle a large share of the world’s board and chief executive appointments. Their scale suits listed-company mandates; smaller firms often compete on sector depth, speed and partner attention.
Conventionally a quarter to a third of the appointed candidate’s first-year total compensation. Retained mandates split that across stages of the search. Contingency fees fall due when the candidate starts. Scarcity, confidentiality and geography all push the figure up.
Between eight and sixteen weeks is the industry norm, measured from signed brief to accepted offer. Marquee reaches an agreed shortlist in about eight days and a closed offer in about fourteen. The gain comes from starting sooner rather than from compressing the evaluation.
An exclusive engagement where the fee is paid in stages through the search rather than on placement. It gives the firm the room to work a whole market, including candidates who take months to move, and it is the usual structure for board, chief executive and confidential mandates.
Few guarantee a hire, and most guarantee the hire instead. The standard protection is a replacement term: where the appointed person leaves inside an agreed window, the firm runs the search again at its own cost. Marquee carries three months.
The mapping and matching, largely. The judgement and the persuasion have held so far. Tooling has made research and first-pass shortlisting far quicker. Reading how someone will perform in a particular culture, and holding an offer together against a counter-offer, stay human work.
