Which recruiting model fits this opening?

What are you actually buying?

A recruiting model defines the work another party will take on and how it fits your own hiring process. It does not prove that a particular recruiter knows your vacancy. Before comparing prices, decide whether the problem is candidate access, assessment or the capacity to handle recruiting activity inside your business.

A branch manager may need a dependable teller for an established schedule. A finance director may need someone who has owned consolidations rather than only posted intercompany entries. Both are hiring problems, but a broad promise to send candidates does not describe the same service for both seats. Ask what the provider will investigate before recommending anyone.

Write down the part of the process you want help with. If your team can source people but cannot judge their accounting responsibilities, more applications will not fix the difficulty. If your interview process is sound but nobody has time to approach working candidates, direct search may be useful. If the issue is short-term cover, ask about that arrangement directly rather than disguising it as a permanent vacancy.

What does a specialist contingency headhunter do?

The specialist starts with the exact work and searches for people whose background fits it. Contingency describes the commercial model for a permanent placement: a fee depends on a hire under the agreement. It does not mean a guaranteed candidate supply, an automatic exclusivity rule or a promised date for a shortlist.

At Financial Headhunters we discuss the reporting line and the decisions the hire will make before starting outreach. A candidate's current title can help locate a relevant pool, but the questions need to reach beyond it. An accounting manager may own an entire close or supervise a narrow ledger function inside a larger group. A recruiter has to distinguish those backgrounds before the hiring manager spends time on an interview.

Ask how the recruiter tests the responsibilities and what they will tell you about remaining gaps. Ask how confidential information is handled. You should be able to describe the shortlist you want in terms of work and constraints, not simply the number of resumes you want emailed. The agreement then defines the fee and the conditions of a hire.

When does a staffing agency fit?

Staffing can fit a need for coverage or additional capacity, where the assignment and its operating terms are clearly described. Large staffing businesses can offer several service models, including permanent recruitment. Do not assume every service from an agency uses the same billing arrangement or that an agency label tells you who employs a worker.

Robert Half, Adecco, AppleOne, Michael Page and Aerotek are examples of businesses with staffing or recruitment offerings. Their public service pages describe different scopes. This comparison does not claim that any named firm has a particular fee, level of quality or result. Ask the provider about the specific service you are considering, not a category description on another website.

For an accounting backlog, describe which accounts need attention and who will review the work. For branch cover, describe the schedule and access the person would need. A temporary assignment can fail because its scope is unclear even when the person knows the work. Get the duties and operational responsibilities into the engagement terms rather than assuming the word temporary settles them.

What is retained executive search?

Retained executive search is a model in which a client engages a firm to run an agreed executive search, with payment provisions set in that engagement. It is commonly associated with senior leadership appointments. Retained does not, by itself, describe a firm's industry knowledge, candidate judgment or suitability for your opening.

Korn Ferry and Egon Zehnder publicly describe executive search services. Those names identify the model being discussed, not a criticism or a claim that their work is interchangeable. A board considering a senior appointment may want a defined executive-search mandate and its associated process. Ask what deliverables and client decisions the agreement covers.

A retained approach can be reasonable when the appointment has board involvement and the business wants a particular search process. A specialist contingency approach can also be considered for leadership hiring. The question is not which label sounds more serious. It is which scope, accountability and commercial arrangement fit the appointment you need to make. Read the proposed terms and assess the actual people who will conduct the search.

What does RPO mean in practice?

Recruitment process outsourcing gives an external provider responsibility for an agreed part of a client's recruiting process. The scope may be broader than filling an individual vacancy. RPO should be evaluated as an operating arrangement: who does the work, how decisions move and what remains with your internal team.

Randstad's public recruitment-solutions page distinguishes RPO from other recruiting services. That distinction matters when the hiring problem is a continuing flow of openings rather than a single hard-to-fill controller seat. A business may need support for scheduling and process administration even when its managers can identify the skills they require.

Before considering an RPO proposal, map the process you already have. Identify where a request waits, who can approve it and what hiring data the provider would use. Ask how specialist vacancies are handled and whether the arrangement leaves your managers enough room to judge the work. An outsourced process does not remove the employer's responsibility to make a sound hiring decision or to protect sensitive information.

When is hiring in-house the sensible choice?

In-house hiring can work well when your team has the time, candidate access and assessment capability to run the opening. It keeps the conversation close to the business. The tradeoff is the work it puts on people who may already have a close, an audit or a branch schedule to manage.

A capable internal recruiter still needs a clear brief from the hiring manager. If the manager cannot say whether the controller must own debt covenant reporting or support an existing finance leader, the internal search faces the same ambiguity as an external one. A specialist firm cannot repair that ambiguity without a calibration conversation either.

Do not treat the absence of a placement invoice as proof that the process costs nothing. Use your own figures if you want to assess cover expenses or the effect of an open seat. The Cost-of-Vacancy tool keeps those inputs separate from BLS wages and does not invent a business-loss benchmark. An internal search can be the right choice without pretending that staff time and delayed work have disappeared.

What do job boards solve?

A job board can put an opening in front of people who are looking for work or browsing opportunities. It does not conduct the employer's assessment. Posting can be useful, particularly when the opening is clear and your team can review responses, but an application is not evidence that the applicant has done your exact job.

A title may attract people at different levels. An analyst label can describe reporting support or the ownership of a forecast. If your posting does not explain the decisions the hire will make, you may spend interviews discovering that the applicant interpreted the vacancy differently. Better wording helps; it does not turn a broad applicant pool into a specialist shortlist.

Direct search takes a different route by approaching people who may not be applying. It is not a claim that every working candidate is stronger than every applicant. The value is access to relevant backgrounds and an informed conversation about a possible move. You still need to judge fit and give the person an honest account of the opening.

How should you compare candidate reach?

Ask which backgrounds the provider expects to approach and why those people could fit your work. Reach is not a database-size claim. A useful sourcing explanation identifies the responsibilities people hold now and what would make your opening a credible next move, while respecting confidentiality and candidate choice.

For a commercial lending seat, a relationship history in the right market can matter more than a familiar job title. For a fund accountant, experience with partner capital and the relevant system matters differently from corporate ledger work. A provider should be able to explain those distinctions without naming confidential candidates or implying that another employer's staff can simply be transferred.

Ask what is outside the realistic pool as well. A plant accounting role with essential on-site work may not be a workable move for someone who needs a remote arrangement. A branch role with an unpredictable schedule may be unattractive even when the pay discussion is acceptable. Reach only helps when the candidate can seriously consider the job you are offering.

How do you compare charges without inventing a benchmark?

Compare the actual written proposals and what each one covers. Permanent contingency, an executive-search engagement and a staffing assignment are different commercial conversations. A percentage from an unrelated vacancy cannot tell you whether the service and terms fit your opening. This page publishes no model-wide fee figures.

Ask when payment is due and what event triggers it. Identify who will approve an invoice and how an introduction is defined. If your business uses a procurement process, explain it before candidates are contacted. Agreement about the work should not be undermined later by a fee discussion that nobody on the hiring side had authority to settle.

Replacement provisions also belong in the document, not in assumptions about a recruiting category. Financial Headhunters offers the approved replacement policy stated on our fee page, with the applicable period and conditions controlled by the signed agreement. We do not describe competitors' replacement terms or suggest that any provider uses the same wording.

What should the hiring manager keep control of?

The employer should keep responsibility for deciding what the job requires and whether a candidate fits it. A recruiter can challenge an unclear brief and supply context. The provider should not make an unapproved change to the seat simply because a different background is easier to find.

Keep a clear point of decision inside the business. When interviewers disagree, identify the responsibility behind the disagreement. One manager may be judging reporting detail while another expects a future finance leader. Until that difference is resolved, the same candidate can look appropriate to one person and wrong to another.

Share usable feedback with the recruiter or internal hiring team. Saying someone is not senior enough leaves too much to guess. Explain which decision they have not owned or which example failed to answer the question. The next approach should become more precise. Repeating the original brief after every unsuccessful interview wastes both the employer's and the candidate's attention.

How do confidentiality and candidate information affect the choice?

Every model needs a discussion about what can be shared and with whom. A confidential replacement is not handled simply by hiding a company name in a posting. A narrow description of the incumbent's reporting line or location can still reveal the opening to people who know the market.

Ask how the provider obtains permission to introduce a person and who will receive their information. Keep internal circulation limited to people involved in the decision. A candidate who is considering a move may still be responsible for a close or a customer relationship at work, and careless handling can damage the conversation before an interview begins.

The details should be agreed before the search becomes visible. If a business owner wants discretion while a department head wants a public posting, settle that difference first. A recruiting model cannot reconcile contradictory instructions without a clear decision from the client. We discuss those limits rather than promising that nobody will ever infer who is hiring.

What questions distinguish a useful proposal?

Ask what the provider wants to know before starting and what you will receive after qualification. Specific questions about the seat are more useful than a broad claim about talent access. A proposal should connect its work to the decisions your hiring manager needs to make.

For accounting, ask how close ownership is tested and how gaps in system experience are described. For banking operations, ask about the controls the person actually handled rather than only the regulations listed on a resume. For mortgage work, ask whether the person's experience fits the file types and responsibility you are assigning.

Then ask what happens when the brief changes. A business may discover that it needs a different level of ownership after speaking with candidates. That can be a valid change, but it should be explicit. The search scope and commercial terms may need another discussion. A useful provider makes the decision visible instead of quietly presenting a different job as if nothing changed.

How do you make the decision without making it permanent?

Choose the arrangement for the opening in front of you, not for every vacancy your company might have later. The same business can run a routine internal search and use outside help for a specialist appointment. It can also request defined cover without converting every permanent vacancy into an assignment.

Record why the chosen model fits. That gives the hiring manager a way to judge whether the agreed work is happening. If the provider is meant to reach people who are working now, a forwarded application alone does not answer that brief. If the provider is administering a wider recruiting process, assess the responsibilities in that process rather than expecting a specialist search from every task.

Review the arrangement when the need changes. A backlog can become an ongoing ownership problem, and an apparent replacement can become a wider finance appointment. Have that conversation openly. Switching the service scope is a business decision to agree, not a reason to pretend the original request meant something else.

Where can you verify the model descriptions?

Use the providers' own service descriptions to check the general model, and use your signed proposal to check the actual engagement. Public material describes offerings; it does not prove how a particular assignment will be handled. We retrieved the linked source pages for the October 2026 review of this comparison.

Primary sources include Robert Half's hiring-services page, the executive-search service pages of Korn Ferry and Egon Zehnder, and Randstad's recruitment-solutions description. The source links are provided below. No conversion-rate claim or comparison of individual recruiters is inferred from a website design.

Company names are trademarks of their owners. We are not affiliated with them. Their names appear here only to identify examples of publicly described recruiting models. Choose based on your vacancy and the agreed scope, not a claim on this page about another firm's quality, fees, results or people.

Where can you go next?

• Contingency fee terms
• Cost-of-Vacancy tool
• Request a proposal
• How we compare
• Robert Half hiring services
• Korn Ferry executive search
• Egon Zehnder executive search
• Randstad recruitment solutions

Which related hiring decisions are worth comparing?

• Which recruiting service fits your opening?
• Accounting staffing versus a permanent contingency search