Executive search, Brisbane
Most roles don't need executive search. Here's how to tell if yours does.
Retained executive search costs 25-33% of the package and you pay it whether or not you hire. Contingent senior recruitment costs 15-18% and you pay on placement. The difference is method, not margin - and for most senior roles below C-suite, the expensive method is buying something you already have.
The three tiers, and what each one is for.
Retained executive search
25-33% of package
Exclusive, paid in stages regardless of outcome, with a research function that maps every person doing the job. For C-suite, board, confidential replacements, and roles where the qualified population is small enough to count. You are buying the map.
Specialist senior recruitment
15-18%, on placement
Contingent, discipline-focused, and the tier most senior appointments are actually filled from. Quality here is decided by who does the assessing, not by the fee model. This is what LINK does.
Volume and temp
12-15%
Commodity hiring at pace, priced accordingly. Fine for what it is, and not what a senior appointment should be run through.
Fee ranges from the RCSA 2025 fee survey and published Australian search firm rate cards, August 2026. Retained boutiques discount to roughly 18-24%.
We are not a search firm, and we will tell you when you need one.
LINK is a specialist recruiter for senior appointments on contingent terms. Our rates start at 15% and are published rather than quoted on request, which puts them below the 17-18% national average. We do not have a research function and we do not claim one.
What we have instead is nine operating businesses. We employ accountants, marketers, bookkeepers, brokers and developers, which means the person assessing your candidate does that job for a living. At senior level that matters more than it does anywhere else: a junior is assessed on credentials anyone can verify, and a senior is assessed on judgement, which only a practitioner can score.
If your role is a CFO, a managing director or a board seat, engage a retained firm. If it is a senior accountant, an advisory lead, a financial controller or a marketing manager, that is our work and it should not cost you a third of the package.
Common questions.
→What does executive search cost in Australia?
Retained executive search is typically 25-33% of the total first-year package, invoiced in stages - commonly a third to start, a third on shortlist, a third on placement - and it is paid whether or not you hire. Boutique firms discount to around 18-24%. Contingent recruitment, where you pay only on a successful placement, averages 17-18% nationally with a range of about 15-25%. The gap is not margin, it is method: a retained fee buys a mapped market, and you are paying for the research whether it produces a hire or not.
→What is the difference between executive search and recruitment?
Contingent recruitment finds you the best available candidate - people who are looking, plus a recruiter's existing network. Executive search maps a market: it identifies everyone doing the job at the level you need, whether or not they want to move, and approaches them directly. The first is a search of who is reachable; the second is a search of who exists. Most roles genuinely do not need the second, which is why most roles are not filled that way.
→When do I actually need retained search?
When the role is genuinely scarce, when confidentiality matters (you are replacing someone who does not know it yet), or when the cost of the wrong hire is measured in years rather than months. C-suite, board, and roles where perhaps thirty people in the country can do the job. If your role has an active candidate market - and most accounting, marketing and technology roles below C-suite do - retained search is buying a market map you did not need.
→Is a ten-day shortlist a good sign?
For a mid-level brief, yes. For a senior appointment, treat it as a warning. A shortlist that fast on a senior role means a database was filtered, not a market approached - the people who were already looking, not the people worth persuading. Senior searches take longer because direct approaches take longer, and a firm that promises otherwise is telling you which of the two it is doing.
→Does LINK do executive search?
No, and we would rather say so. We are specialist recruiters for senior appointments, on contingent terms - rates from 15%, published rather than quoted on request, which sits below the 17-18% national average. What we bring is not a research function: it is that we employ every role we place across nine businesses, so the person assessing your candidate does that job for a living. For C-suite and board appointments where a mapped market is the point, a retained firm is the right call and we will say so.
→Can a contingent recruiter fill a senior role well?
For senior-but-not-C-suite roles, usually yes - and at roughly half the fee. The thing that decides quality at that level is not the fee model, it is who does the assessing. A senior candidate is judged on judgement: what they would do when the numbers do not reconcile, what they would escalate, what they would leave alone. A generalist recruiter cannot score those answers and a practitioner can. That is the question worth asking any firm, retained or contingent.
Senior, and open to the right move?
Most of the people worth placing are not applying for anything. Send Ayu your CV and she will come back when something genuinely fits - whether or not you ever apply for a role through us.