Pricing
Most search firms do not publish their fees. The reason usually given is that every search is different, which is true, and is not the actual reason.
I publish mine for two reasons. You should be able to know what something costs before you spend an hour finding out. And a published price is one I have to hold to, which is the point.
Scope is negotiable. Timelines are negotiable. Price is not, because a discount here would be unfair to the last client who paid it.
Retained and engaged search for the roles a company cannot afford to get wrong. Three tiers, and the tier is set by the compensation of the role rather than by its title, because titles mean different things at different companies.
33% of first-year cash compensation.
CEO, C-suite, and board-level roles.
Paid in thirds: at signing, on delivery of the slate, and on the candidate's start date. The slate is a written, calibrated set of qualified and interested candidates with assessments, delivered on a date we agree at the start.
30% of first-year cash compensation.
VP and Director roles. Same structure and same deliverables.
25% of first-year cash compensation. A $7,500 engagement fee at the start, credited in full against it.
For a company making its first senior hires, and for any senior role under roughly $200,000 in cash compensation. If you have just raised and one hire matters more than the rest, start here.
A search does not end on a start date. The final third of the fee is paid when the candidate starts, and it is not a completion fee. It is what the following ninety days are paid out of.
Included in every search, at all three tiers:
A capability handoff. A written brief to the hiring manager at start: what this person was hired to do, what the evidence says they are good at, what conditions they will need, and what to watch for. It is the assessment from the search turned into something a manager can actually use, rather than a file that closes.
A thirty-day check-in with each side, separately. Fifteen minutes with the hire and fifteen with the manager. I am the only person who can ask both a candid question, because I am not either one's boss. Most placements that fail were already visible at day thirty and nobody said it out loud.
A ninety-day debrief. Did this work, and what should the process learn. This is also how the replacement guarantee stays honest, because by then we both know whether the problem was the person or the landing.
What this is not: designing your onboarding program. That is a separate engagement and it is priced below. This is about the person I placed.
Three cases, and I would rather say them here than on the call.
The process is the product. If the board has mandated a search and the record of how it was run matters as much as who is hired, retain a firm with a name the board already knows. That is a real need and it is not one I can meet.
You need volume at once. If you have six or eight senior seats to fill this quarter, you need a bench. I run a small number of searches at a time on purpose, because that is the condition under which one person can do this work well.
You need continuity you can point to. A firm keeps running if a partner gets sick. I am one person. For most searches that tradeoff is the reason to hire me. For a few, it is a reason not to.
What you get instead: the person you talk to is the person who calls every candidate on your slate. At a firm the partner who sells the search is not the one running it, and that is the business model rather than a service failure. I spent two years on the operating side of this problem, which means I have had to live inside the consequences of a bad slate rather than only deliver one. And the fee carries the first ninety days after the start date, which is where placements actually fail.
Three engagements for when the problem is larger than one seat.
$30,000. Four to six weeks. Fixed fee.
Your hiring plan mapped against your build plan, a diagnosis of where it is actually breaking, and a written plan for fixing it. Half at signing, half on delivery. It ends on a date, with a document.
This is the one to start with if you are not sure which of your hiring problems is the real one.
Priced per engagement. Two days a week, three-month minimum.
For a function that needs a leader while it finds a permanent one.
This is leadership, not execution. The hiring plan, the weekly review against it, hiring manager calibration, compensation and offer decisions, escalations, and a seat at the leadership table. Your team runs the reqs.
Priced per engagement.
Before or after an industrial acquisition. Where expertise is concentrated, what the succession exposure is, and what has to transfer for the thesis to hold.
First-year cash compensation means base salary, guaranteed bonus, and any signing bonus. It does not include equity, and it does not include discretionary bonus.
There are no minimums. The percentage is the price.
Intake and written scope. Market mapping and sourcing. Outreach, screening, and written assessments. Slate delivery with a recommendation. Interview process design and panel calibration. Offer strategy, compensation benchmarking, and close support. Written weekly updates throughout.
Background checks, assessments, and third-party vendor fees. Candidate travel and relocation. Travel beyond Southern California, billed at cost with your approval in advance.
If a placed candidate leaves or is terminated for cause within ninety days, I run one replacement search at no fee. Expenses only.
Searches are exclusive for the role. Placed candidates and your employees are off-limits for twelve months from placement. Invoices are net fifteen. I contract directly with clients rather than through a third-party or managed vendor.
Twenty years as an executive recruiter, with people and talent leadership roles interwoven throughout. More than one hundred retained searches. Two years inside an aerospace company building the talent function from the inside.
Company leadership. CEO. President.
Recruiting, talent and people. Recruiters at every level. Recruiting leaders. VP Talent. VP People.
Technology, data and AI. Chief Technology Officer. Chief Data Officer. SVP Engineering. Head of Machine Learning. VP Data Science. Staff Data Scientist. Staff Researcher. Founding Engineer. Software Engineering. Computer Vision.
Aerospace and hardware. Hardware Engineering. Mechanical Engineering. Electrical Engineering. Manufacturing Engineering. Aerodynamicists. Flight Sciences. Structures. Avionics. Technicians.
Product, design and marketing. Chief Product Officer. Chief Marketing Officer. Product Management. Design.
Finance. VP Finance. VP Investor Relations.
My deepest bench is in recruiting, talent and people. The broader record spans executive, leadership and technical roles across technology, industrial and corporate functions.
33% is what the large firms charge for executive work. I am not cheaper than they are. I am one person who has sat on the operating side of the problem, and you will be working with me rather than with whoever they assign.
Twenty minutes, no pitch. If you want to know what a role costs in this market, that is a reasonable thing to want to know.
Choose a time