Executive search without the executive-hire price tag

Traditional executive search is built for large organisations with large budgets. A retained search typically costs a third of first-year salary, and an in-house talent function is a fixed overhead most growth-stage businesses cannot justify. Yet the hires that matter most — the first head of finance, the operations lead, the commercial director — are exactly where amateur recruitment does the most damage.

Fractional search closes that gap. It gives growing companies the discipline of senior recruitment without the price tag of either extreme.

What you are actually paying for

The value in executive search is not access to job boards. It is judgement: knowing what good looks like for a given role, being able to assess it in an interview, and structuring a process that does not lose the best candidate to a slow decision. That judgement does not require a full retained engagement to deliver.

A fractional model lets you buy the senior discipline you need for a specific hire, scaled to the seniority of the role rather than a fixed percentage of a large salary band.

Where sector knowledge earns its keep

Generalist recruiters struggle with roles they do not understand. A specialist who has hired for fashion houses, hospitality groups, or oil and gas operations already knows the market, the realistic salary bands, and the warning signs that a CV is stronger than the person behind it. That knowledge shortens the search and raises the quality of the shortlist.

For a growing company making a handful of critical hires a year, fractional, sector-specialist search is usually the most cost-effective option on the table — more rigorous than doing it yourself, and far lighter than a full retained engagement.