How Bergman Holt differs from Traditional Executive Search

As you will have seen from our previous Blog, Executive search can be an invaluable and highly cost-effective tool to hire at a senior level.

At Bergman Holt we listened to a range of clients who had used traditional Executive Search firms, they highlighted Four key issues:

• Fee Structure

  • Typically Executive search firms have a three phase charging structure
Retainer fee(one-third of the fee)

    • Short-list fee (one third of fee again) at this stage no candidates seen

    • Candidate hire fee (final stage payment when candidate signs a contract)



Clients wanted to see a more equitable model where they are not charged the majority of the fees prior to seeing any candidates

• % Based pricing

  • Fees are charged on the final agreed package with the candidate, thus if a candidate is paid £30k more than expected, the Search firm will charge an additional £10k (typically fees can be up to one-third of package) for no additional work.

• Transparency

  • Typically there is a long period of silence between the ‘search’ starting and the client seeing a list of candidates (long and short lists), this can be hugely frustrating for clients as they have paid an initial fee and may not get an real updates for a month or so. Clients want to be able to see progress, particularly important when you have internal stakeholders looking to get updates.

• Speed

  • Traditional Search firms can take up to 6-8 weeks to get first candidates to interview and the overall process can take up to 3m followed by the wait for a candidate to serve any notice periods that they need to.

• Only Executive level hires undertaken

  • The organisations have often spent quite a bit of time with the Search firm to ensure that they are effectively represented to senior candidates. When the searches are completed the companies then find themselves having to educate a range of other recruitment firms again as the traditional search firms do not helps at management recruitment.

We spent some time listening and working with our clients to address all of these issues:

Fee Structure:

• BH operate just two stages of payment;

  • A retainer for taking on the work (25% of the overall fee)

  • Candidate signature fee (remaining 75%) paid when a Candidate signs an employment contract with the company

  • Bergman Holt also operates fixed fees, thus Clients always know exactly what they will pay, regardless of Candidate package.

Transparency

• At Bergman Holt we are completely transparent on progress and utilise KanBan boards which clients have full access to understand how many and which candidates are being seen by the Search firm.

Speed

• We understand that when an organisation has made the decision to hire an individual they want to get that person on as quickly as possible. To that end we ensure that each assignment has a dedicated team member solely assigned to the initial stages of the search, this allows us to have first candidates ready to be interviewed within 2-3 weeks fo starting the search. This is only made possible through the use of Kanban boards above.

Broader hiring

• At Bergman Holt we become a partner for all hires for the organisation, thus clients are not constantly looking to educate other recruitment firms or having to deal with different staff in these firms for the roles they have.