Executive Recruiters
KORE1 places the senior leaders other firms can’t reach. CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, CFOs, VPs of Engineering, and the directors who run the teams underneath them. Retained or engaged, confidential when it has to be, and backed by recruiters who’ve filled the same seat dozens of times before.
Last updated: June 7, 2026
Executive recruiters find, vet, and place the senior leaders companies can’t reach through job postings, people like CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, CFOs, and VPs of Engineering. KORE1 has run executive search since 2005, our recruiters average more than 15 years on the desk, and 92% of the leaders we place are still in the role a year later.
A bad VP of Engineering costs more than a year of salary. They cost you the four strong engineers who quit under them, the roadmap that slips two quarters, and a board that starts asking different questions on the next call. Senior hires carry that kind of leverage. Which is exactly why you don’t go fishing for them on a job board.
Here’s the part most people underestimate. The leaders you actually want are employed right now. They’re performing, they’re paid well, and they are not refreshing a careers page at eleven at night. You don’t reach those people with a posting. You reach them through a recruiter who already knows them, or knows the two or three people who’d vouch for them. That’s the network, and it’s the part of recruiting that no shortcut replaces. At this level it’s most of the job.
We’ve been running senior searches for two decades. Executive placements at KORE1 are almost always a direct hire engagement, and they sit on top of the same vertical benches that power our IT staffing, engineering, and accounting and finance practices. Same recruiters, deeper relationships, a longer leash. The 92% one-year retention figure is the number we’re proudest of, because a miss at the executive level is expensive and it’s public.
The Leaders We Recruit
We run search across the leadership layer, not one slice of it. A founder replacing a technical co-founder needs something very different from a public company swapping out a CFO, and we’ve sat on both sides of that table.
- Technology leadership. CIOs and CTOs, VPs and Directors of Engineering, Heads of Data and AI. The people who own the architecture and the people who build it.
- Security leadership, which has become its own search entirely. CISOs, VPs of Security, and InfoSec directors. These usually run confidential because the seat is sensitive and the candidate pool is small.
- Finance leadership. CFOs, VPs of Finance, and controllers who can close the books and tell the board what the numbers actually mean.
- Engineering and operations leaders on the hardware and industrial side. Directors of Engineering, plant and operations managers, quality leaders.
- Fractional and interim executives, for companies that need the seniority now but can’t justify a full-time hire yet. We staff those too.
How Our Executive Search Works
We start with what the role actually has to fix. Not the job description. The reason the seat is open and what has to be true in twelve months for this to count as a good hire. Half of executive searches go sideways because nobody agreed on that part before sourcing started.
Then we map the market. Who’s doing this job well right now, where, and what would it take to move them. A lot of that map is people who would never answer a recruiter they don’t know. We’ve spent twenty years earning those answered calls.
Vetting goes deeper than a resume read. We talk through real decisions. The reorg they ran, the system they killed, the hire they regret and what they learned from it. References we actually chase down, including the back-channel ones that don’t show up on the sheet.
And we keep it quiet when quiet matters. Replacing a sitting executive without tipping off the team, the market, or the person in the chair is something we do often. More on that below.
Still in Seat at 12 Months
Years Average Recruiter Experience
Years Running Senior Search
Executive Search by Leadership Function
| Leadership Function | Titles We Recruit | How We Run It |
|---|---|---|
| Technology | CIO, CTO, VP Engineering, Head of AI | Retained or engaged |
| Security | CISO, VP Security, Director of InfoSec | Confidential, usually retained |
| Finance | CFO, VP Finance, Controller | Engaged |
| Engineering / Ops | Director of Engineering, Plant Manager, VP Ops | Engaged |
| Fractional / Interim | Fractional CTO, Fractional CFO, Interim CIO | Flexible, often contract |
Retained means you commit to the search and we commit our senior bench to it, usually for the hardest roles where the pool is thin and discretion is non-negotiable. Engaged sits in the middle. You put a small amount down so the search has real priority, and the balance is due on placement. For the right role we’ll also run a straight contingency search. We’ll tell you on the first call which structure fits your situation instead of selling you the one that pays us best.
Treat a senior search as workforce strategy rather than a transaction, because the math is not in your favor. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the number of top-executive roles to keep growing through the early 2030s, while the bench of people who can genuinely run a function at that level isn’t expanding anywhere near the same pace. That gap is the whole reason a real search firm exists, and it’s why the candidates you want already have two other conversations going the week you finally call them.
What You Get That You Won’t Get From a Job Board
We aren’t the right fit for every hire. When the seat is senior and a miss would hurt, here’s what working with us looks like.
Recruiters, Not Forwarders
Our team averages 15-plus years on the desk and most have placed your exact role before. They screen on judgment, not keywords.
A Network You Can’t Buy
The best leaders aren’t applying anywhere. We reach them through relationships built over twenty years, not a database license.
Retained or Engaged
We structure the fee around your search, not our preference. Confidential and hard-to-fill roles get our senior bench on retainer.
Confidential by Default
Need to replace someone still in the chair? We run the whole search off-market so the news breaks on your timeline, not a leak’s.
Common Questions About Executive Recruiters
What does an executive recruiter actually do?
An executive recruiter finds, vets, and places senior leaders, the VP, director, and C-suite roles that rarely get posted publicly. The work is mostly relationships and judgment. We map who’s doing the job well today, reach the ones who aren’t looking, pressure-test them against what your role really needs, and manage the offer so a strong candidate doesn’t walk over a fixable misunderstanding. A good recruiter is also honest with you about the search that isn’t working, which is the part that earns the next engagement.
How much do executive recruiters charge?
Most executive placements run as a percentage of the hire’s first-year base, commonly in the 20% to 35% range, or as a flat retained fee for confidential and hard-to-fill searches. Retained search splits that fee into stages so the firm is paid to actually run the process, not just to win a race to your inbox. We don’t charge an upfront retainer for standard contingency searches, and we walk through both structures on the intake call before you commit to anything. The right number depends on the role, the urgency, and how thin the candidate pool is.
How is an executive recruiter different from a regular staffing agency?
Depth versus volume, mostly. A volume staffing shop is built to move a lot of resumes quickly across a lot of openings. Executive search runs the opposite way, fewer roles, far more time per role, and a heavy lean on passive candidates who’d never respond to a posting. The screening is different too. We’re assessing whether someone can lead a function and survive a board, not whether they match a list of required skills. KORE1 runs both desks under one roof, which is why a company scaling an entire department can put the high-volume staffing team and the executive search team on the same account at the same time, instead of paying two firms that never talk to each other.
How long does an executive search take?
Plan on 6 to 12 weeks for most senior searches, with a shortlist in front of you inside the first month. A VP of Engineering in a deep talent market can move faster. A CISO with a specific compliance background, in a city with three qualified people who are all currently employed and content, takes longer and there’s no honest way around it. We give you a realistic timeline for your specific search at the start rather than a number that sounds good on a sales call.
What’s the difference between retained and contingency search?
Retained means you pay the firm in stages to run a dedicated search, whether or not it ends in a hire, which buys you priority and senior attention. Contingency means the firm only gets paid if you hire their candidate, so it’s lower commitment and the firm spreads its effort across many clients. Retained fits confidential, board-level, and genuinely scarce roles. Contingency can work fine for a strong director-level search in a healthy market. We run both, and we’ll recommend the one that fits, not the one with the bigger check attached.
Can you replace an executive who’s still in the role?
This is one of the most common assignments we take, and discretion is the entire point. A confidential search lets you line up a successor before the current executive is told, so the transition stays clean and the news breaks on your schedule instead of a rumor’s. We never put your company name in outreach without permission, we keep the search walled off from your own org chart, and we tell candidates how sensitive it is on the first call. Handled right, the team finds out when you’re ready for them to, not from a stray notification.
What executive roles does KORE1 recruit for?
Technology, security, finance, and engineering leadership, plus fractional and interim seats. That includes CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, CFOs, controllers, and VPs and Directors across engineering and operations. Because our executive desk shares a bench with our broader IT, engineering, and finance practices, we can also build out the team beneath a leader once they’re hired, which is usually the next thing a new executive needs anyway.
Ready to Hire Your Next Leader?
Start with a short, confidential call. Tell us what the seat has to fix and what’s gone wrong with senior hiring before, and we’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right firm for it. No retainer to talk.