SilverOne Recruitment is a small, deliberate boutique. We place senior and leadership permanent hires across twelve professional practices in the United Kingdom. This page explains how we are built, why we cap our engaged workload, and what a retained engagement looks like from intake through onboarding.
Every partner at SilverOne came from a large full-service recruitment firm before founding this one. The pattern was the same in every seat. Consultants were carrying twenty or thirty open briefs at a time. Longlist research got compressed into whatever names were already on the internal database. Passive candidates got the same templated approach message. References came back as forwarded LinkedIn recommendations. Guarantees were fine print no one referred to.
The boutique model exists because none of that is compatible with a real senior search. A retained engagement for a chief financial officer, a general counsel, a chief technology officer or a head of a regulated function needs research that goes past the internal database, approach work done by name and by hand, and references taken by the partner in writing. That takes hours per candidate. It only survives inside a firm that caps its engaged workload.
We cap ours. That is the whole strategic decision behind SilverOne.
The four-phase engagement runs from the intake session to the day-90 onboarding check-in. Nothing about it is opaque. You see the longlist before we approach anyone, you see the shortlist ranked with our written notes, and you see the reference documentation before the offer stage.
A structured intake session with the sponsor and the panel. Role, remit, package band, timeline, deal-breakers, cultural must-haves, board and governance considerations, and the internal politics that shape a shortlist we can actually hire from. Written brief returned inside one business day, sent to you for sign-off before any candidate is contacted.
Mapped universe of every credible candidate for the role. Named, current employer, current package band, likelihood of movement, notes on why they are on the list. Delivered to you for review before any candidate is approached. You can add names, remove names or reshape the brief before outreach opens.
Three to five candidates, ranked with the partner's written notes. Credential verification, professional-body membership, right-to-work paperwork and reference calls underway or complete. Interview coordination handled end to end. Package expectations and notice periods confirmed for every candidate.
Offer structuring, counter-offer management, resignation coaching for the successful candidate. Onboarding check-ins with both sides at day 30 and day 90. Written replacement guarantee kept on file and honoured without argument if invoked.
SilverOne places permanent hires. That is the whole book of work. We do not staff temporary assignments, we do not run interim engagements, we do not offer statement-of-work consulting under a recruitment label, and we do not sell candidate-payroll services. The reason is simple. The retained model, the longlist rigour and the written replacement guarantee only make economic sense when the placement is a permanent seat that the employer expects to keep for years. Everything else is a different business.
Every permanent placement carries a written replacement guarantee. If the hire departs inside the guarantee window for reasons that trace back to the search, we re-run the search at no additional fee. Not a partial credit. Not a discount on the next engagement. A full replacement search on the same original brief.
The window is set on the intake call, in writing, and it varies by seniority. Board-level and general-counsel searches carry longer windows than head-of appointments because the settling period is longer at the top. The guarantee is not a marketing device. It is the reason we can afford to be as selective on longlist research as we are.
Most engagements run on a retained structure. A meaningful portion of the fee is invoiced at intake to fund the longlist research phase. A further portion at shortlist delivery. The final portion at offer acceptance. Board-level and specialist retained searches sometimes run on a fixed-fee schedule instead of a percentage. Both structures are agreed on the first call, in writing, in pounds sterling, with no hidden costs.
A small number of urgent single-hire briefs run on a modified contingent structure where the boutique economics still work. We say so upfront if a brief fits that path.
If any of this fits how you want a senior search done, the shortest path is a first call. Commission a search here, or read the twelve practices we cover across the United Kingdom.