What does retained executive search involve at AVID EXEC?
Retained executive search is a dedicated, exclusive engagement for leadership and highly specialized roles. AVID EXEC maps the market, approaches people who are not looking, assesses against thirteen defined attributes, and manages the offer and close directly with the client.
For leadership and highly specialized roles.
For leadership and highly specialized roles
Retained search is the right instrument when the role is senior, scarce, confidential, or all three. The firm is briefed exclusively, the market is mapped rather than searched, and the people who matter are approached individually.
Most retained searches run twelve to sixteen weeks from brief to offer, with a first shortlist inside four to six weeks.
What the engagement includes
The brief, built with everyone who has a view on the role. A written market map. Direct and confidential approach. Assessment against thirteen defined attributes rather than an interview impression. Reference and credential verification. Offer strategy, close and the first ninety days.
How the fee works
Fees are a percentage of first-year compensation, agreed in writing before work starts, reflecting scope and market. Nothing in the process is unbundled — the map, the assessment and the close are the engagement.
Placements carry a guarantee period defined in the engagement letter.
- C-suite and executive leadership
- Vice President and Director level
- Broker of Record and licensed leadership
- Highly specialized technical and finance roles
- Confidential replacement searches
We go further than the résumé. We uncover a candidate's value proposition — how they think, how they behave, what motivates them, what their values are, and where their emotional intelligence sits. Then one step further: how all of that produced a set of proven, consistently demonstrated outcomes, and the ROI they will give their next employer.
- 01
Proven capability
What they have actually delivered, with evidence.
- 02
Self awareness
How accurately they read their own effect on people.
- 03
Acumen
Commercial judgement under incomplete information.
- 04
Motivation
What genuinely drives them, and what does not.
- 05
Potential
The ceiling, not the current altitude.
- 06
Capacity
How much they can carry before quality slips.
- 07
Alignment
Whether their values and the organization's actually meet.
- 08
Nimbleness
How fast they change position when the facts change.
- 09
Future impact
What they would move in the first ninety days.
- 10
Resourcefulness
What they do when the budget or the team is not there.
- 11
Reputation
What the market says when we ask quietly.
- 12
Accountability
Whether they own outcomes when nobody is watching.
- 13
Leadership
Whether people follow them by choice.
Let's talk about this mandate
AVID EXEC · (780) 497-2000 · info@avidexec.com