Engagement model
Permanent Executive Recruitment
Permanent executive recruitment for businesses making a long-term senior leadership appointment — where the leadership must be owned internally, continuously, by someone accountable for the outcome.
Permanent executive recruitment is the appointment of a long-term senior leader, defined by the outcome the role must deliver rather than by a job description.
A permanent executive appointment is one of the most consequential commercial decisions a business makes. It sets direction, culture, standards and pace for years, and it is expensive to get wrong in ways that rarely show up for eighteen months.
The failure is almost never the search. It is the definition. A business advertises a title, receives candidates who match the title, and appoints someone who was never briefed on what actually had to change.
When a permanent appointment is the right model
Situations, not qualifying criteria. Some of these point elsewhere.
Succession
A founder, owner or long-serving executive is stepping back, and the business needs leadership that can carry the position forward rather than caretake it.
Growth
The business has outgrown its current leadership structure and needs functional seniority it has never had.
Professionalisation
Ownership, a board or an investor expects reporting, governance and discipline the current structure cannot produce.
A new commercial direction
A new market, channel, product line or model requires leadership with a genuinely different background.
Replacement
An executive is leaving, and the appointment is a chance to define the role that is needed now rather than the one that existed.
A genuinely necessary new position
A function has grown to the point where it requires its own leader, and the workload and authority justify a full-time appointment.
What the definition must establish before a search
Why the role exists
The commercial or operational reason the business is making this appointment now, stated in a sentence anyone on the board would recognise.
What it must change
The specific difference expected within the first twelve to twenty-four months.
What the executive owns
The outcomes the appointment is accountable for, not the tasks it performs.
The authority required
Decisions the role can take alone: people, pricing within commercial policy, structure, budget, investment.
The leadership context
Who the role reports to, what it inherits, and what has already been tried.
The commercial or operational mandate
The measurable position the business expects to be in as a result of the appointment.
What a permanent appointment is not
Not a fix for an undefined problem
If nobody can say what the executive must change, a senior appointment tends to formalise the confusion at a higher salary.
Not automatically the most senior title available
A business that needs execution may need a Head of Sales or an Operations Director, not a CRO or a COO.
Not the only answer
Where the requirement is situational or smaller than full-time, an interim or fractional executive may serve the business better and cost less.
Permanent Executive Recruitment by role
Every role below has a page written specifically for this engagement model.
General Management
Leadership of the business itself: direction, accountability and the management team.
- Chief Executive OfficerCarries overall accountability to the board for strategy, organisational performance and enterprise direction.
- Managing DirectorLeads the operational and commercial running of a company or division: P&L, the management team and growth delivery.
Commercial & Revenue
Leadership of revenue, commercial strategy, pricing, partnerships and sales performance.
- Chief Revenue OfficerOwns revenue architecture across sales, marketing and customer revenue, and the systems that make growth predictable.
- Sales DirectorLeads the sales function: target market, pipeline, team, forecasting and conversion.
- Commercial DirectorOwns pricing, contracts, partnerships and commercial strategy — the terms a business trades on, not the sales team leading the trading.
- Head of SalesLeads the sales team's execution of an agreed plan: pipeline, process, activity and performance.
Finance
Financial leadership: capital, governance, control, reporting and planning.
- Chief Financial OfficerLeads the finance function: capital structure, financial governance, strategic finance and board-level financial decision-making.
- Finance DirectorLeads the finance function: control, reporting, planning, cash and commercial finance.
Operations & Technical
Delivery, capacity, quality, technical standards and operational scale.
- Chief Operating OfficerLeads enterprise operations: delivery, process, scale and cross-functional execution.
- Operations DirectorLeads operational delivery: capacity, quality, efficiency and the performance of the teams and processes that produce it.
- Technical DirectorLeads technical and engineering capability: standards, technical strategy, product or process integrity and technical team leadership.
Not sure which engagement model fits?
The role is the same question. The engagement model answers a different one: how long the leadership is needed, how quickly, and how much of it.
| Permanent | Interim | Fractional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The requirement | Ongoing and structural | Time-limited and situational | Ongoing but not full-time |
| Typical trigger | Succession, growth, a leadership gap that must be owned internally | Sudden departure, transformation, integration, turnaround | Founder-led business, small team, earlier stage than the ambition |
| What you are buying | Long-term leadership and continuity | Immediate experience in a defined situation | Senior capability matched to the size of the requirement |
| Tenure | Indefinite | Defined period | Ongoing, reviewed |
| Authority | Full functional authority | Clear authority for the assignment | Genuine leadership authority within agreed days |
| Commercial basis | Success-fee recruitment | Agreed per assignment | Agreed per assignment |
Commercial terms are agreed before anything begins. We do not publish standard executive day rates.
Commercial model
Permanent executive recruitment is a success-fee model: the fee is earned when an appointment is made. The fee is agreed with you in writing for each assignment, against the seniority and difficulty of the role. We do not publish a standard executive search percentage and we do not apply the International Recruitment rate to executive appointments by default.
There is no separate engagement or retained-search fee structure published for this division. Where an assignment requires something other than a straightforward success-fee arrangement, it is discussed and agreed with you first.
Executive recruitment enquiry
Discuss a permanent executive appointment.
Tell us what the role must change. We will come back on the mandate, the level and whether a permanent appointment is genuinely the right answer.
Common questions
The recruitment of a long-term senior leader who owns a function or the business itself. The appointment is defined by the outcome it must deliver and the authority it carries, not by a job description.
Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director, Chief Revenue Officer, Sales Director, Commercial Director, Head of Sales, Chief Financial Officer, Finance Director, Chief Operating Officer, Operations Director and Technical Director.
The brief is commercial rather than administrative. Instead of matching candidates to a specification, the work begins by establishing what the appointment must change, what authority it needs, and whether a permanent appointment is genuinely the right answer.
Yes. Permanent executive recruitment is a success-fee model, agreed in writing for each assignment. We do not publish a standard executive search percentage, and the International Recruitment rate does not automatically apply to executive appointments.
Yes, where the requirement is senior leadership. Where the appointment is principally about entering or developing an overseas market, International Recruitment is usually the better route because the role is defined by the market plan.
Broadly, a CEO carries enterprise direction and accountability to the board or shareholders, while a Managing Director leads the running of the company or division: execution, P&L and the management team. The right title follows the mandate rather than the other way round.
It depends on the role, the market and how clearly the mandate is defined at the start. Definition work carried out properly usually shortens everything that follows. We do not publish average time-to-hire figures.
Yes, and in most assignments that is where the value is. Establishing what the appointment must change is the difference between recruiting a title and recruiting a mandate.
Yes. The Phase 1 architecture covers general management, commercial and revenue, finance, and operations and technical leadership.
Executive Recruitment is senior leadership structure. International Recruitment is commercial and technical recruitment tied to market entry and territory growth. A business appointing a Managing Director uses Executive Recruitment; a manufacturer appointing its first UK Country Manager uses International Recruitment.