Most companies post a job and wait. If the right person does not show up, they post again, maybe adjust the title, and wait some more. At some point, someone suggests bringing in a recruiter. And then the question comes up: what exactly are we paying for?
It is a fair question. Recruiting fees are not small. A search deposit in particular can feel like a significant commitment before anyone has been hired. But understanding what that deposit actually changes about the search can shift the way you think about the cost.
A Job Posting Is Passive. A Search Is Active.
When you post a role, you are waiting for the market to come to you. The people who see it, apply, and make it through your screening are self-selected. They decided to look. They found the posting. They chose to apply.
That process works reasonably well for roles where the right candidate pool is actively looking. It works much less well for senior, specialized, or hard-to-fill positions where the best candidates are already employed and not searching.
A recruiter working a search does the opposite. They go out and find people who are not looking, have conversations with people who did not raise their hand, and follow referral chains until they reach someone worth presenting. That requires time, persistence, and a network built over years of working in specific industries.
A job posting cannot do any of that.
What Changes When a Search Deposit Is Involved
A search deposit is a partial payment made upfront when a search begins. It signals that both parties are serious about the engagement. For the client, it represents a commitment to work exclusively with the recruiter on that role. For the recruiter, it changes the economics of the search in a meaningful way.
When a recruiter is working purely on contingency with no deposit, every hour they spend on your search is a risk. If you hire someone internally, bring in another recruiter, or put the role on hold, they have nothing to show for the work. That reality shapes how contingency searches get prioritized, even when no one says it out loud.
A search deposit removes that uncertainty. The recruiter can invest real time in sourcing passive candidates, building a target list, and making the calls that a purely speculative search does not always get. The search becomes a committed engagement rather than a side bet.
At Steven Cardwell Search & Placement, the deposit is structured as part of the total contingency fee, which ranges from 20 to 25 percent of first-year salary depending on the complexity of the role and the seniority of the position. The deposit is applied against that total when the placement is made. You can read through the full process on the How We Work page.
The Passive Candidate Problem
Here is the part that does not get talked about enough. The candidates who are hardest to find are almost always the ones most worth finding.
A senior engineer who has been at the same company for eight years, is well-regarded internally, and is not looking for anything new will never see your job posting. They are not on job boards. They are not refreshing LinkedIn. They might not even have an updated resume.
Reaching that person requires someone to find them, reach out directly, and make a case for why the conversation is worth their time. That is a skill. It also takes a certain willingness to keep calling when most people would stop.
That kind of sourcing is what a committed search buys. It is not magic. It is work. But it is work that a job posting simply cannot replicate, and it is the reason that the candidates who come through a search are often genuinely different from the ones who came through a posting.
Why Exclusivity Matters More Than It Sounds
One of the conditions that typically comes with a search deposit is exclusivity. The client agrees not to run the search through multiple recruiters simultaneously during the engagement.
This can feel counterintuitive. More recruiters should mean more candidates, right?
In practice, the opposite is often true. When multiple recruiters are working the same role, they all know the search is a race. That tends to push toward speed over fit. Candidates get presented quickly rather than screened thoroughly. The focus shifts to who can send the most resumes fastest rather than who can find the right person.
Exclusivity changes the incentive. It lets the recruiter focus on quality, take time to understand what the client actually needs, and have honest conversations about whether a candidate is the right fit before presenting them.
What You Are Really Paying For
A search deposit is not just a fee. It is an agreement that this search matters to both sides and that both sides are going to act accordingly.
What you get in return is a recruiter who is actively working your role instead of waiting to see what happens. You get access to a candidate pool that your job posting will never reach. You get honest feedback when something about the search needs to change, whether that is the compensation, the requirements, or the timeline. And you get a 90-day guarantee on the placement if the search is successful.
Steven Cardwell Search & Placement works with mid-market companies across Canada and the United States, primarily in engineering, skilled trades, finance, and accounting. If you want to see the types of roles the firm specializes in, the Industries We Serve page is a good starting point.
If Your Last Search Did Not Work, This Is Probably Why
Most companies that come to a recruiter after a failed search tried job boards first. Some tried a recruiter who worked on contingency, sent a few resumes, and then went quiet. The search stalled, the role stayed open, and eventually the situation became urgent enough to try something different.
A search deposit changes what a recruiter can do for you. It is not a guarantee of a hire, but it is the foundation of a search that actually goes after the right people.
If you have a role that has been sitting open and the usual approaches have not worked, get in touch to talk through what a committed search would look like. You can also see current open roles to get a sense of the work the firm is actively doing.
The right candidate is out there. They are just not looking at your job posting.