The role you cannot afford to get wrong.
Calder Talent runs retained search for the seats the next year leans on. The brief and the scorecard are written before anyone is approached, every candidate is measured against the same standard, and the decision closes on evidence.
Some hires are just hires.
This is the other kind.
The first sales leader. The head of engineering. The operator you hand the keys to. Roles where a wrong call costs you a year, and where every week the seat sits open, the business runs on a workaround.
Most searches for these roles fail before anyone is interviewed. The brief was never really agreed, the interviewers are each hiring for a different job, and the decision gets made on momentum in a corridor. The search was fine. The system around it was not.
What a Calder Talent search looks like.
- 01 · The brief, agreed in writing. Before anything else, we sit with the people this hire answers to and write down what the role must change in the business. Not a duties list. If the room cannot agree on the brief, that is a finding, and better found now than at offer stage.
- 02 · The scorecard, before anyone is approached. What good looks like, in writing, on an agreed scale. Every candidate is assessed against it, so the decision stays anchored to the job, whatever each interview felt like on the day.
- 03 · A researched field, approached personally. A small field, mapped and prioritised, approached by the senior practitioner running your search. The people these roles need are rarely applying; they are being convinced, and they can tell when the person calling has read past the title.
- 04 · Evidence at the decision. Structured interviews, scored against the scorecard, with the disagreements surfaced and argued while there is still time to use them. The offer goes out on a decision the room can defend.
- 05 · The close, and the hand-back. We stay through offer, negotiation and acceptance, where searches actually fall apart. Then the machinery stays with you: the brief, the scorecard, the interview loop, yours for every hire after this one.
Retained only. A few at a time.
We never work on contingency. Contingency pays for speed and volume; these roles need judgment and depth, and no one racing four other agencies to a shortlist is giving you either. We take on a small number of searches at a time and work them properly.
Terms are agreed on the call, in writing, before any work starts.
Sometimes the role is a symptom.
When a search shows you the process itself is the problem, the practice behind it is one conversation away. The same discipline that runs your search runs the Talent Audit.
The Talent Audit- Why not contingency? Because you get what the model pays for. Contingency pays on placement speed, so it optimises for the fastest acceptable candidate. Retained pays for the search being run properly, so it can optimise for the right one.
- Who does the work? The senior practitioner you meet on the intro call. The research, the approaches, the interviews, the references: same person, end to end.
- What if you do not think a search is the answer? We say so on the call. Some roles should be promoted into, some briefs are two jobs wearing one title, and some problems are the process, not the vacancy. Telling you that early is part of the job.
- What does it cost? Terms are agreed on the call and confirmed in writing before any work starts. No surprises at the end.
- What happens to everything you build? It stays. The brief, the scorecard and the interview structure are built to be reused by your team without us.
Bring us the role.
Book an intro call →Thirty minutes. No deck, no obligation. You will leave the call knowing whether a search is the right move, whether or not it is with us.