Contingent vs Retained vs Embedded: an honest guide

Every recruitment conversation eventually runs into the same question: which model actually fits what you need? Most firms answer this with vague language about “partnership” and “flexibility.” We're not about the fluff at Missing Link, so here's our two cents.

Contingent search

You only pay when a hire is made. There's no upfront commitment, and often no exclusivity, meaning more than one firm (or your own team) could be working the same role at once.

Best for: single role searches, individual contributor hires, and situations where speed and flexibility matter more than exclusivity. Think Founding Engineers, Staff Engineers, Forward Deployed Engineers, Research Engineers, and Open Source developers — roles that are hard to fill but don't need a fully dedicated search team like a traditional executive search.

The honest trade-off: because there's no exclusivity, a contingent search sometimes gets less senior attention than a retained one. If the role is truly business-critical, it's worth knowing before you choose this model and discussing what a retained search could look like.

Retained search

A retained search is a full commitment from day one. You pay a portion upfront, the firm goes exclusive on the mandate, and the process is built around depth: full market mapping, structured assessment, and weekly reporting.

Exclusivity changes the dynamic on both sides because everyone is committed to making it work. Candidates feel that too. Telling a VP-level candidate that it is a retained search and feedback and momentum are guaranteed gets a different response than being one of a few agencies pinging them about the same role.

Best for: Board, C-level, VP, Partner, and Head of hires — CTO, VP Engineering, Chief of Staff, or COO — where the cost of getting it wrong is high and visible.

The honest trade-off: retained can work out marginally slower and more expensive than contingent, by design. You're not paying for speed. You're paying for a market map done properly, and a process that turns over every stone to find the best candidate, not just the fastest one to surface.

Embedded search

An embedded partner works inside your business for a defined term, effectively acting as an in-house recruiter without the overhead of hiring one permanently. You'll not only get support on an end-to-end recruitment process but also on your process design, job ads, employer branding, and more.

Best for: companies scaling fast after a raise, with multiple concurrent hires and no dedicated in-house recruiter yet. This is common across seed–Series A startups, AI research teams, applied AI teams, and developer tooling teams growing quickly.

The honest trade-off: embedded only works if there's enough volume to justify it. If you have one or two roles, contingent or retained will usually be cheaper and simpler.

So which one do you actually need?

A rough rule of thumb: if you have an IC role where there's more volume than less, go contingent. If you have one critical leadership hire or a very niche and necessary IC hire where a mistake is expensive, go retained. If you have several open roles at once and no internal recruiting capacity, go embedded.

If you're still not sure, that's a normal place to start from. Tell us the roles you're trying to fill, where you are at, how you like to work, and we'll tell you honestly which model fits, even if that means recommending something other than what you asked for.