Why we stopped charging anything upfront

An upfront fee is paid before a client has any evidence the search will work. It protects the agency's cash flow, not the client's outcome. We'd rather be paid for a result than for starting.

The upfront-third model exists for a reasonable historical reason — agencies need to cover the real cost of research and outreach before a placement lands, and a search can run for months before it closes. But reasonable-for-the-agency and aligned-with-the-client are different things, and most of the industry has quietly let those two goals drift apart without revisiting the structure.

Now nothing is invoiced until your hire has started, and the remainder is spread across the 90-day guarantee window that follows. If the hire doesn't work out inside that window, we run the search again at no extra cost — which means our incentive is the same as yours: a hire that actually sticks.

Concretely: 40% is invoiced on the new hire's start date, 30% at the 30-day mark of the guarantee, and the final 30% once the 90-day guarantee period completes without the hire leaving or being let go. Every milestone is tied to something the client can independently verify — a start date, a date on the calendar, a person still in the seat.

It means we can't afford to run a search casually, because we don't get paid for effort — only for a result that holds up. That's a harder way to run an agency. We think it's the right one.

It also means we say no to searches more often than we used to. If a client's comp band is meaningfully off market, or the scope of a role is genuinely undefined, or a client's process is slow enough that strong candidates predictably walk, we'll say so before we start — because under this structure, a search that doesn't close isn't just a missed opportunity, it's real unpaid work. That pressure has made us more selective about what we take on, and more direct with clients about what needs to change before we start.

We made this change gradually across 2025 and it's now standard for every new engagement. The effect on how clients engage with us has been measurable.

Moving to this structure forced a discipline we didn't fully anticipate. Early on, we turned down a search from a company whose comp band was roughly 20% under what we knew the market for that scope actually required — not because we didn't want the business, but because under a structure where we only get paid on a result, taking that search on as written would have meant real unpaid work for a search we already knew wouldn't close.

That conversation, told plainly, became a useful one: the client revised the band, and the search filled inside our usual timeline once it reflected the market. That's the structural benefit that's easy to miss when you're only looking at the fee timing — it changes the incentive to have the honest conversation early, rather than taking the engagement and hoping the market cooperates.

If you're comparing agencies, the fee structure is one of the more honest signals available to you about how an agency thinks about risk. An agency paid entirely upfront has no financial exposure to whether the search actually works — their revenue is locked in the moment they start. An agency with nothing at risk beyond effort has less reason to be disciplined about who they submit and how carefully they vet a shortlist.