76% placement success
Exclusive search: the focused alternative to contingency
Handing one role to four agencies feels like hedging. In practice it guarantees that none of them will do the deep work, because none of them can justify it. Give us exclusivity and your search gets a genuine headhunt.
Why multi-agency briefs underperform
When four agencies work the same role, each one optimises for speed of submission rather than quality of match. The result is a stack of near-miss CVs from the same handful of job boards, a candidate experience that damages your employer brand as the same people are approached repeatedly, and a hiring manager losing hours to screening. Industry placement rates on contingency briefs sit around 32%. Most multi-agency searches simply fail.
What exclusivity unlocks
With a single committed partner, the economics support real research. We headhunt directly into your competitor set, screen rigorously against your actual requirements rather than a keyword list, and present a shortlist built for your business. Our exclusive search success rate is 76%. You get the depth of a retained engagement at a pace that keeps your hiring timeline intact.
Still fast
Exclusivity is not a licence to slow down. Exclusive briefs run on the same research infrastructure as our retained work, with the same four day shortlist target. The difference between our exclusive and retained models is the depth of mapping and the level of dedicated resource, not the urgency.
Best suited to
Mid to senior appointments where quality matters more than volume, and where a fast, focused process beats a scattergun one.
Common questions
Questions we are asked
What do we give up by going exclusive?
Nothing but the illusion of coverage. Multi-agency briefs do not multiply your reach, because every agency fishes in the same visible candidate pool. Exclusivity buys you access to the passive market that no agency will invest in reaching on a shared brief.
How long is a typical exclusivity period?
Most exclusive briefs run on a defined period agreed at the outset, commonly four to six weeks. If we have not delivered against the brief in that window, you are free to take the role elsewhere.
Other services
Other ways to engage us
Ready to brief a search?
Send us the role and we will come back within one working day with an initial view of the market.