Executive Recruitment Costs Explained

The Executive Recruitment Pricing Model

In Australia, the cost of executive recruitment services ranges from 16 to 25% of the total salary package.

When you engage an executive recruitment business, you agree to pay this fee in exchange for their services in managing the entire recruitment process for you.

Executive recruitment services should always be a ‘retained’ arrangement which means fees are invoiced at two or three milestone points in the process.

Milestone one: Commencement of the project

Milestone two: Presentation of the longlist

Milestone three: Successful appointment of the executive hire. 

Unpacking the executive recruitment process: What to expect

Ultimately you should expect the best possible outcome: A high-quality executive hire.

But recruitment is about more than the outcome, it’s about an effective, robust process.

When you work with a quality executive recruiter, you can have confidence that you’re investing in a measurable, accountable process that stands up to scrutiny.

Typically, executive recruitment processes tend to take an average of 4 weeks and includes the following stages:

Beyond The Job Description: Needs Analysis And Role Assessment

Recruitment Marketing

A successful recruitment project requires compelling recruitment marketing. To attract the best talent, it’s critical that your recruitment process includes effective marketing of your offering. A quality recruiter will discuss how to best position your role to the talent market and will develop compelling and engaging recruitment content.

Talent search and mapping: Comprehensive and proactive

A quality recruiter will look beyond applications and tap into passive talent ie people who aren’t actively looking on job boards. By engaging a recruiter to handle your recruitment process, you’re instantly giving yourself access to a much wider range of talent than you’d reach on your own.

Candidate Experience And Engagement: Critical To Your Employer Brand

This is one of the main areas that recruitment can go wrong. Creating a positive candidate experience is absolutely essential to managing and protecting your employer brand. Best practice candidate experience includes responding to all enquiries and applications in a timely and professional manner and providing timely feedback after every single interview.

Candidate Screening And Longlist Creation

The first stage in the shortlisting process is to screen candidates against the requirements of your role as well as the individual attributes uncovered during the analysis and assessment stage.

Candidate Interviewing

Using the information uncovered during the first stage, your recruitment partner will conduct face to face interviews using a range of modern interview questions to uncover the best insights including behavioural, scenario-based and technical questioning.

Candidate Shortlisting

Following an extensive talent search, screening and interviewing, you will receive a recommended shortlist of the best available talent. The candidate shortlist report will include candidate CVs and a comprehensive report on each candidate which assesses ‘fit’ and the alignment of each prospective employee’s values, attitudes and goals - with those of your business.

Interview Question Design

Your executive recruitment partner will work with you to design interview questions to uncover the most useful insights to inform your hiring decisions. This includes questions which centre around the key skills and attributes which will have increasing value in the future of work.

Interview Facilitation And Feedback

This includes facilitating conversations between your hiring team and the shortlisted candidates; consolidating feedback from the hiring team; communicating feedback to/from both parties; carefully managing timelines; coordinating and understanding the intrinsic and extrinsic factors which impact outcomes and decision making.

Candidate Testing

Depending on the nature of the role and your organisation’s needs, your recruitment partner may recommend candidates undertake testing as part of the recruitment process. Most can facilitate a range of contemporary testing techniques through third party testing providers.

Interview Question Design: Uncover The Most Useful Insights With Top-notch Questions

No matter how experienced you are at interviewing, a well designed interview is essential. The interview is your opportunity to uncover the most useful insights about each candidate. While interviews should be approached as a conversation rather than a ‘test’, you are essentially extracting data on which to make a hiring decision. Your recruitment partner can assist you with designing an effective interview.

Reference And Right To Work Checking

It is best practice to undertake 2 professional reference checks for your preferred candidate, usually at the employment offer stage. While you’ll no doubt be excited about having found your ideal candidate, your recruitment partner will manage this final stage of due diligence for you. Your recruiter can also conduct right to work checks for candidates who are not Australian/New Zealand citizens.

Feedback To The Unsuccessful Candidate Pool 

This is a critically important and often overlooked part of an effective recruitment process. Once you’ve found the perfect candidate, you’ll want to get back to your BAU, while a quality recruitment partner will take the time to acknowledge the investment of time and effort that the unsuccessful candidates put into the recruitment process. 



Providing individual, detailed feedback to every candidate you have met is not only the right thing to do, it ensures each person has a professional, transparent and positive experience of your organisation and employer brand. 

Onboarding Support

Your recruitment partner will support you and your new employee during the first few months - to ensure a smooth onboarding process.

Get The Most Out Of Your Recruitment Partnership

It’s easy to see why engaging a recruitment business to support your executive hiring is a smart move.

Unless you have dedicated in house resources to manage every aspect of the recruitment process in a professional, timely and efficient way; working with a recruiter is an ideal solution.

Finding needles in haystacks is what we do best. We use traditional and algorithmic-search techniques, video recruitment, and behavioural economics to find you the best talent in the market.