Retained and engaged search

Which searches arewaiting on you?

You cannot answer that without asking someone, and neither can your partners. One status field is being asked to describe four unrelated things at once, so it describes none of them. We build the layer that tells them apart, inside the platform you already run.

Apply for your free strategy call

Built inside Clockwork, Invenias, Bullhorn or whichever you already run

Nothing to do with sourcing, screening or candidate quality

One system at a time, proven before we build the next

For retained or engaged firms of roughly 3 to 30 consultants. Not contingency staffing, not RPO, not in-house talent acquisition.

Where the work stops moving in executive search:

Day 0The slate goes to a distribution list rather than a named decision owner, with no date attached.

Day 9Nothing has come back. The search still reads active, so research keeps spending hours the client has paused.

Day 90Two candidates have taken other calls, and nobody can say whether the client read the profiles or evaluated them.

What we build first, and why

Four things that decideyour month.

Four statuses per mandate, not one

Market covered, candidates engaged, client current, fee clean.

Every platform in this trade offers one search status field, and a single field cannot describe a search. So active means the research is running, the client is deciding, the candidates are waiting, and nothing at all is happening.

The practical test is the Monday question: which of these searches are waiting on us and which are waiting on the client. Most firms cannot answer it without asking three people, which is why research carries on across searches that cannot move.

Three live searchesone status field

What the platform reports

VP FinanceOpen 62 daysActive

CTO, Series BOpen 41 daysActive

Head of LegalOpen 88 daysActive

Three searches, one word. It is answering four separate questions at once, so it answers none of them.

What is actually true

Slate is out, market coveredWaiting on the client, nine daysThem

Two candidates still engagedThird went quiet after the second callUs

Placed, not yet invoicedPurchase order never arrivedFee

Market, candidates, client, commercial. Four questions, four answers, and a partner who can finally say which searches are waiting on the firm and which are waiting on the client.

The feedback window is a date, not a hope

Agreed at kickoff, recorded, and enforced by the system rather than by the partner.

Nobody attaches a deadline to a slate because attaching one feels like pressure. So the slate goes out on a Thursday and two weeks later somebody asks the researcher for an update.

Agreed in the kickoff, written to the record, and counted from. When it passes, the mandate changes state, outbound work on that search pauses, and the escalation goes to the partner who owns the relationship rather than the coordinator who cannot fix it.

After the quote goes outhow it is wired

The sequence

Quote delivered, clock starts
day 0

Checking it arrived and reading right
day 2

The specific thing that usually stalls it
day 5

A decision, or a reason there is not one
day 10

Stops the second they reply

And when they do reply

“Too expensive”Goes to options, not to a discountBranch

“Not right now”Parked, and picked up on the date they gaveBranch

“Need to speak to someone”Handed to a person with the history attachedYou

Three different problems. One “just following up” message answers none of them.

Presented candidates stop hearing nothing

An honest holding contact, and no invented timeline.

A passive candidate who agreed to be presented is spending political capital to be in your process. Silence reads as a decision, and by the time the client comes back they are already in a second conversation.

They get a contact that names the stage honestly. Nothing is claimed on the client's behalf, because you do not have a date to give, and pretending you do is how a firm loses a candidate twice.

The return windowhow it runs

Triggered by the work, not by a memory

Job completedThe clock starts here, automaticallyDone

Inside the windowThe point where coming back is obviousReach out

Past the windowDrifting, and worth a different messageRecover

Why it stops without this

Nobody decides to lose a returning customer. The interval passes while the team is busy, the moment to ask goes with it, and six weeks becomes ten, then twelve, then never. The window is a date on a record, so it does not depend on anyone noticing.

The fee has an owner before it is earned

Fee basis, split, purchase order and billing entity recorded at signature.

The invoice waits on somebody reconstructing terms from an email thread. Wrong billing entity, missing purchase order, disputed start date, and a guarantee period running quietly in the background with nobody watching it.

Recorded when the mandate is signed rather than reconstructed when it is billed. Placement triggers the invoice checklist. Guarantee dates go on a watchlist, so attrition risk is visible before it becomes a phone call.

Your list, 8amcontrol

Overdue

Quote sent, no replyPast the follow-up windowChase

Consultation unconfirmedTomorrow morningConfirm

Failed, and why

Reminder could not sendNumber on file is a landlineFix

Waiting on a person

Price exception needs sign-offOutside the rule we agreedYou

The build order

Seven systems forexecutive search.

We install one at a time, pointed at your platform and your stages, and prove it moved before starting the next. Each one has its own page: what it is, the problem it solves, how it works step by step, how it gets built, and how to measure it.

Tier 1Foundational
Search status that reflects reality
Four statuses per mandate instead of one: market covered, candidates engaged, client current, commercially clean.
Why here in the order. The four statuses. Fastest visible change and it reframes every conversation that follows.
After it goes live. A partner can answer the Monday question off one screen, and research stops running on searches the client has effectively paused.
The whole system in detail
Kickoff discipline and the feedback window
The kickoff produces a named client decision owner and an agreed feedback window, recorded rather than remembered.
Why here in the order. Kickoff discipline, because it prevents System 3's problem at the only point where prevention is possible.
After it goes live. The deadline exists before it is needed, which is the only time it can be agreed without friction.
The whole system in detail
Tier 2Growth
Client feedback recovery
When the window passes the search changes state, outbound pauses, candidates get an honest holding contact, and the partner is escalated to.
Why here in the order. The largest recoverable pool in the firm.
After it goes live. The largest recoverable pool in the firm stops being invisible until somebody notices it.
The whole system in detail
Business development pipeline and mandate conversion
Proposal work is qualified before partner hours go into it, and the pipeline becomes legible to somebody other than the partner who owns it.
Why here in the order. Business development visibility, which is the most resisted and should come after trust is established.
After it goes live. Unpaid partner time stops going into opportunities that were never going to sign.
The whole system in detail
Tier 3Flagship
The complete search system
Kickoff through placement as one connected path, with an owner and a next action at every handoff.
Why here in the order. The flagship, once the pieces are proven.
After it goes live. A search cannot sit between two stages with nobody holding it.
The whole system in detail
Fee collection, guarantee and client retention
Placement triggers an invoice checklist. Guarantee dates go on a watchlist. Collection has a named owner.
Why here in the order. Commercial close, and it depends on the mandate terms System 5 starts recording properly.
After it goes live. Fees earned get collected the first time, and a guarantee departure stops arriving as a surprise.
The whole system in detail
The partner's morning brief
One short list each morning: which searches are waiting on us, which on the client, what is overdue, what failed and why.
Why here in the order. Only meaningful once there are systems to report on.
After it goes live. The partner stops being the reporting layer.
The whole system in detail

A profitable search becomes unpaid replacement work that consumes the team.

What should happen

Guarantee dates tracked, and attrition risk visible before it becomes a call.

17%

of retained searches are cancelled by the client, on 100,000 projects. A further 7% are terminated.

Roughly one retained search in four does not end in a placement, and the larger part of that is the client stopping rather than the market failing.

Which means the thing most likely to cost you a completed search is not a sourcing problem, and no amount of better sourcing addresses it. It is what happens between a slate going out and a decision coming back.

There is one more finding in the same dataset, and it is the reason this page exists. Clockwork split the projects by whether the client engaged during the search, measured by client log-ins to their platform. Searches with engagement recorded came in six percentage points above the average placement rate and slightly under the average duration. Searches with none came in below average on both.

Not our number. Executive Search Performance Benchmark Report, Clockwork Recruiting, updated November 2024, on a starting set of more than 100,000 anonymised search projects run between 2020 and 2023, filtered to retained work: non-retained projects removed, projects closed with no contract removed, projects active under three days removed, and closings beyond 400 days removed as outliers. Average days to placement 117, average placement rate 76%, client cancellations 17%, terminations 7%.Two things you should know before you use it. First, Clockwork sells executive search software, and the engagement finding is a finding about their own product being used, so treat it as correlation from an interested party rather than as physics. Second, and more usefully: the figures quoted almost everywhere else, 123 days and a 71% placement rate, are the 2018 edition of this same report. Hunt Scanlon and most of the consultancies citing it have not updated. If you are benchmarking your firm against 123 and 71, you are benchmarking against a number from before the pandemic.

Worth doing if

Only start this if youactually want:

An answerable Monday

Which searches are waiting on us, which on the client, off one screen, before the meeting.

Research that stops when the client does

Hours stop going into searches that cannot move until somebody else acts.

Candidates who stay warm

Presented candidates hear something honest instead of hearing nothing for nine days.

A feedback window that exists

Agreed at kickoff, on the record, and counted from, rather than raised awkwardly at day fourteen.

Escalation to the right person

The partner who owns the relationship, not the coordinator who cannot fix it.

A pipeline somebody else can read

Business development stops living exclusively in one person's head.

Fees collected the first time

Billing entity, purchase order and fee basis captured at signature rather than hunted at invoice.

Guarantee exposure you can see

Attrition risk surfaces on a watchlist before it becomes unpaid replacement work.

A firm that survives a departure

Relationship context lives in the system rather than in the consultant who just resigned.

Plainly

We are a build service,not software.

Nothing to log into and nothing to license. We design, build, test and own the systems, and they run inside the platform, inbox and phone system you already pay for.

This is for you if

You run retained or engaged search. A signed mandate, a fee that is not contingent on somebody else's outcome, and a slate you stand behind.
There are between three and thirty of you. Enough that the partner cannot personally hold every search, not so many that there is an internal technology function.
You already run a platform, or you know you should. Clockwork, Invenias, Thrive, Loxo, Bullhorn, Crelate, PCRecruiter, or a very well organised inbox and a spreadsheet.
You can already name the searches that are drifting. Every principal can. What is missing is the thing that names them before you do.
One person can change how the firm works. Usually the managing partner, sometimes a COO hired to fix exactly this.

This is not for you if

You are contingency or high-volume staffing. Different economics, different cadence, and most of the above does not apply.
You are an RPO provider. You sell process. We would be selling you your own product.
Your stated problem is finding candidates. We do not source, screen, assess or rank anybody, and we will not pretend to.
You are a solo operator. You are the process. A calendar link would fix more of your week than we would.

Before you take anyone’s word for it

The numbers you are quoted,traced to who published them.

Before you apply

What we get askedon the first call.

Are you a sourcing tool or an AI candidate matcher?

No, and we will not become one for you. We do not source, screen, rank or assess candidates, and we make no claim about candidate quality, because that is your expertise and not ours. What we build is the operating layer around the search: what state a mandate is actually in, who owes the next action, what happens when a feedback window passes, and what the partner sees on a Monday morning.

Will you replace Clockwork, Invenias, Thrive or Bullhorn?

No. Those platforms usually do more than the firm is using, and replacing one is a migration that puts your relationship history at risk for no operational gain. We work inside what you run and build only the steps it does not produce on its own. If your platform already does something we were going to build, we use it and there is nothing to charge you for.

We already have a status field. What is different about four?

A single field has to answer four unrelated questions at once, so it answers none of them. Market covered, candidates engaged, client current and commercially clean are independent, and a search can be healthy on three and dead on the fourth. The practical test is whether you can say, without asking anyone, which of your live searches are waiting on you. Most firms cannot, and that is the whole problem in one question.

Is this going to feel like surveillance to our consultants?

It will if it is built badly, and that is the most common way a system like this dies in month three. So consultants are not the unit of measurement here. Searches are. Nothing we build reports on individual activity levels, call counts or hours, because those measure effort rather than progress and consultants are right to resent being managed by them.

What does a build cost?

It depends on what the first system has to do, so we will not put a number on a web page and pretend otherwise. We scope one system at a time and the price is fixed before anything is built. On the fee arithmetic in this trade, a single recovered search covers a build several times over. If we do not think the first one will pay for itself, we will say so on the call instead of quoting you.

Show us the searchthat has beenactive since June.

One call. We look at how your searches are actually tracked, what your platform already handles on its own & whether there is a first system worth building. If there is not, we will say so.

Your live searches, split into the ones waiting on the market and the ones waiting on the client, with the age of each. Almost no firm reports these separately.
What your platform already produces on its own, so we do not quote you for something you are already paying for.
The one stage in your process where searches most often stop, named specifically rather than described.
Whether there is a sensible first system to build, and a straight answer if there is not.
No pricing, no proposal and no second call booked on the call itself.

Fourteen questions, about seven minutes. No price, no purchase, and nobody calls you unless you ask them to.

Which searches arewaiting on you?

Four things that decideyour month.

Four statuses per mandate, not one

The feedback window is a date, not a hope

Presented candidates stop hearing nothing

The fee has an owner before it is earned

Seven systems forexecutive search.

Search status that reflects reality

Kickoff discipline and the feedback window

Client feedback recovery

Business development pipeline and mandate conversion

The complete search system

Fee collection, guarantee and client retention

The partner's morning brief

Every stage, what breaks,and what it costs.

Originate

Engage

Kick off

Research

Present

Decidethe expensive one

Close and collect

Guarantee