Three ways to fill a role, and how to tell which one you need.

Both models work. They are built for different jobs.

A large global search firm — Korn Ferry, Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles and their peers — is built for board and C-suite mandates, multi-country searches, and assignments that need assessment, benchmarking and succession work alongside the recruiting. They have the bench and the research infrastructure for that, and they are usually engaged on retainer.

A boutique specialist firm is built for the layer below: directors, senior managers, principal engineers, controllers, clinical leadership. The person you brief is the person who does the search. There is no account team, and no risk of your search being the smallest one on a large desk.

The honest test is seniority and scope. If you are replacing a CEO across three continents, engage a global firm. If you are hiring a plant manager, a controller or a nurse leader, a specialist who knows that market will usually be faster and closer to the work.

A staffing agency — Robert Half, TEKsystems, Aerotek and similar — is built around volume and speed, often for contract, temporary and contract-to-hire work. They keep large benches of available candidates and can put someone in a seat quickly. For a defined skill set needed for a defined period, that is exactly the right tool.

A search firm recruits for permanent roles by approaching people who are not on any bench, because they are employed and doing well. The output is a small shortlist rather than a stream of available candidates, and the timeline is longer because the candidates have to be found and persuaded rather than dispatched.

The mistake in either direction is expensive. Running a leadership search through a volume channel produces applicants rather than candidates. Running a two-month contract need through a retained search wastes time and money.

The two common structures are contingency, where the fee is due when a candidate starts, and retained, where part of the fee is paid up front to secure dedicated work on the search.

Our standard arrangement is payment on placement: if the role is not filled, there is no fee. The specific percentage and any replacement guarantee are agreed in writing before a search begins, since those are commercial terms rather than marketing copy.

Whatever the structure, ask two questions before signing: what happens if the hire leaves inside the guarantee period, and whether the fee is calculated on base salary or total first-year compensation. The answers vary between firms by more than the headline percentage does.

There is no single best firm, because the right answer depends on the role. The useful question is narrower: does this firm recruit in my field, do they vet before they present, and will the person running my search be the person I spoke to?

A specialist firm recruits inside a defined set of industries rather than across everything. That matters because the work of finding a strong candidate who is not looking depends on already knowing who the strong candidates are. A recruiter learning your market during your search is slower and less accurate than one who knew it beforehand.

DK Global Search is a boutique specialist firm. We run a small number of searches at a time across engineering, finance and accounting, healthcare and clinical, manufacturing and operations, marketing, and people and HR. Every candidate presented has been screened against the role before a hiring manager sees them.