IT executive search is a retained, confidential search for the person who will run your technology. CIO, CTO, VP of IT, IT director, head of security, director of infrastructure, and at a managed service provider the COO, service delivery director or vCIO. The leaders who can do those jobs already hold them somewhere else. They don’t answer job posts. And the company doing the hiring often can’t judge their technical depth on its own. Discovered Search runs these searches for IT companies, MSPs and the businesses that depend on them.
IT Leadership Seats We Fill
On the company side, the CIO or CTO, the VP or director of IT, the head of security, and the infrastructure, cloud and network leads who report to them. On the MSP side, we fill the operator seats that decide if the business scales. That means COO and operations leaders, service managers and service delivery directors, and vCIOs who sit across the table from your clients. MSP executive search covers that side in more depth.
Not every seat with “director” in the title needs a retained search. A service manager at a 12-person MSP is often a good fit for our flat monthly fee instead. We say which one you’re looking at further down.
Why IT Leadership Searches Go Wrong
The usual failure is that the person signing the offer can’t tell a strong technology leader from a confident one. A CEO hiring a first CIO, or an MSP owner hiring the COO who’ll take over the service desk, is evaluating someone who knows more about the job than they do. So the decision drifts toward whoever interviews best, and personality is the trait that predicts on-the-job performance least well.
The fix is to decide what the seat has to produce before meeting anyone. Uptime and ticket numbers the service desk has to hit, the projects that have to ship in year one, the budget and the team the hire inherits. Then we measure every candidate against that list, not against the room.
How the Search Runs
Every search runs on the FACT Driven Hiring System, which stands for Framework, Attraction, Candidate evaluation and Training.
1. Framework. We write the scorecard first, in your language. What the seat must deliver in year one, which decisions it owns, and which behaviors matter at your company.
2. Attraction. We map the IT leaders in your market, most of whom aren’t looking, and reach them directly and confidentially. Your current leader doesn’t find out from a job board. How we find candidates covers the mechanics.
3. Candidate evaluation. Structured interviews, scorecards and reference checks, in a fixed order. Integrity first, then attitude, then cognitive ability, then personality. How we screen candidates has the detail, and we settle compensation with the finalist before the offer rather than after it.
4. Training. Onboarding and an early performance plan, so you measure a new CIO or COO against the scorecard from the first quarter. Typical time to fill is 4 to 12 weeks for a quality hire, depending on how hard the seat is.
What IT Executive Search Costs
As Fletcher Wimbush puts it, “HR people are not recruiters. Making a compliance admin focused HR person do recruiting is like making an accountant do sales.” That’s doubly true when the seat is technical. Here’s how the three models compare.
| Model | What you pay | Right when |
|---|---|---|
| Retained executive search | A retainer against one leadership seat, quoted on the search | One CIO, CTO, COO or head of security seat that has to stay confidential and can’t be a mis-hire |
| Fractional recruiting (our flat monthly fee) | $1,500 a month on a six-month commitment, or $2,500 month to month, covering every open role | Service managers, vCIOs and technical leads alongside 2 to 3 other hires a quarter |
| Contingency agency | 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary, per hire. A $120,000 seat at 20 percent is $24,000 | One opportunistic hire every few years |
Six months of fractional recruiting at $1,500 a month is $9,000 and covers every role you open in that time, leadership included. One contingency placement on a $120,000 seat is $24,000 and covers one seat. Fractional engagements run month to month for up to 12 months and carry a 30-day money-back guarantee. Advertising usually costs nothing on top, about $300 a month per role at the very most.
Retained search buys something else: one seat filled correctly and privately. Retained executive search explains when that fee earns itself. Our executive search service covers the process across industries.
When Retained Search Is the Wrong Call
If what you need is three engineers and a help desk lead, that’s a volume problem, and our IT recruiting service at a flat monthly fee handles it for less. If the leadership seat is a service manager at a small MSP, the same fee usually covers it alongside your other openings. If your company has fewer than 50 employees and wants to run hiring itself, the self-serve platform is $1,400 a year. And if you already have a recruiter who fills your seats on time, you don’t need us.
Retained search earns its fee on the seat that decides where your technology goes for the next five years. Bring the seat, whatever scorecard you have, and the last leader who held it. We’ll price the right model against it, including the case where the answer is that you don’t need an agency at all.