Frequently Asked Questions

Put simply, retained search means you appoint us to take ownership of the hire, rather than asking several recruiters to work on it speculatively.

Contingency recruitment absolutely has its place. But when recruiters are working without commitment and potentially competing against several other agencies, there can be a 50/50 chance at best that any one of them will ultimately make the placement. Naturally, that affects how much time and resource can realistically be committed to every vacancy.

Retained search is different.

You secure dedicated time, research and expertise from Disrupt Search, with one team accountable for delivering the right person. We help scope the role in advance, properly understand the business, the role, the market and what success actually looks like before we approach anyone.

It means less noise, fewer irrelevant CVs and a far more focused search.

You’re not paying us to send you CVs. You’re engaging us to run a search.

A considerable amount of the work happens before you ever meet a candidate. We define the brief and success criteria, map the market, identify and approach relevant people, assess them against the role and your business, manage the conversations and only then build the shortlist.

The initial payment allows us to commit the time and resource needed to do that properly.

It also creates accountability on both sides. You’ve committed to us and we’ve committed to delivering the search.

Retained doesn’t mean all the risk suddenly sits with you.

If you’re genuinely unhappy with the shortlist, we’ll work with you to understand why and go back to market. If we haven’t delivered what we agreed, we’ll put it right.

There is also our 100%  guarantee.

If the person we place leaves within their first 3,6 or 12 months, we’ll replace them in accordance with our agreed terms.

That’s considerably longer than the typical probation period because we’re interested in whether someone genuinely works in your business, not simply whether they make it through the front door.

Every search is different, but speed and momentum matter.

We’ll agree the search timetable with you at the outset, including briefing, market mapping, shortlist, interviews and decision-making.

Typically, we aim to move from the initial briefing to a high-quality shortlist within around 2–3 weeks.

There is one important condition: this works best when both sides keep things moving.

We’ll commit to the search. We’ll ask you to commit to timely feedback, interviews and decisions. Senior candidates don’t tend to hang around indefinitely, so a good process needs momentum from everyone involved.

Great. The objective is to find the right person, not argue about where they came from.

If somebody applies directly, comes through your network or is already known to the business during the search, simply introduce them into the process.

We’ll assess them alongside everyone we’ve identified using the same criteria and Fitability® methodology.

If you decide to appoint them directly without putting them through our process, that’s absolutely your choice. As we’ll already have committed significant time and resource to the search, the retainer paid up to that point would be non-refundable.

Ultimately, the important thing is that you find the right person for the business.

Then we haven’t done our job properly.

We’d first want to understand exactly what’s missing. We’d take your detailed feedback, revisit the brief and success profile where necessary, and go back into the market to find the right people.

We’re confident in the process because the work we do at the beginning of every search is specifically designed to prevent this happening. But we’re also prepared to stand behind what we promise.

If, having reviewed everything together, you genuinely believe we haven’t delivered against the brief we agreed at the outset, we’ll refund the fees you’ve paid us.

Retained search should give you greater certainty, not greater risk. That’s why we’re prepared to put our money where our mouth is.

Our retained fee is split across the assignment rather than paid entirely upfront.

A third is invoiced when we’re appointed and begin the search, with the remaining fee invoiced in line with the agreed search stages and terms.

That means our interests remain aligned throughout the process, from the initial brief right through to the successful appointment.

Then our 100% guarantee gives you additional reassurance once your new hire starts.