If you’re hiring a VP of Sales, Director of Supply Chain, or any senior leader at your CPG or food and beverage company, you’ve probably come across two recruiting models: retained search and contingency recruiting. On the surface, they both promise to find you great candidates. In practice, they’re very different, and the one you choose can have a big impact on who you hire — and how much it actually costs you.
This guide breaks down the differences, cuts through the noise, and introduces a third model that a lot of food and beverage companies don’t know exists yet.
What Is Retained Search (And How It Works in Food & Beverage)?
Retained search is a recruiting model where a company pays a firm an upfront fee to exclusively conduct a search on their behalf. The recruiter is committed to the search from day one, typically works exclusively on your role, and delivers a curated slate of candidates with thorough vetting.
In the food and beverage world, retained search is the standard approach for senior and executive-level roles — think VP of Marketing, Director of Operations, Chief Supply Chain Officer. The firm you hire digs into your business, builds a profile of the ideal candidate, and runs a full search that includes passive candidates who aren’t on any job board.
The traditional retained model typically costs around 25–33% of the placed candidate’s first-year salary, paid in installments across the engagement.
What Is Contingency Recruiting (And How It Works in Food & Beverage)?
Contingency recruiting flips the payment model. You don’t pay anything until a candidate is successfully placed. Multiple firms can work a role simultaneously, and if no one is hired, no fee is owed.
Sounds great, right? Here’s what that arrangement actually creates: recruiters who have no financial commitment to your search. When a recruiter is working five contingency roles at once and only gets paid for one of them, the incentive is speed and volume, not deep research or candidate quality.
Contingency recruiting can work well for high-volume roles, entry-level positions, or situations where you need to cast a wide net quickly. For manager-level and above roles in CPG or food and beverage, it’s a riskier bet.
Retained vs. Contingency: The Key Differences at a Glance
What’s the difference between retained search and contingency recruiting?
In retained search, a company pays an upfront fee for an exclusive, dedicated search — meaning the recruiter is fully committed to finding the right candidate for that one role. In contingency recruiting, no fee is paid until a placement is made, and recruiters often work multiple competing roles at once with no guarantee of exclusivity or depth.
- Commitment level: Retained = exclusive and dedicated. Contingency = non-exclusive, often shared across multiple clients.
- Candidate quality: Retained searches access passive candidates not actively job hunting. Contingency searches often rely on active candidates who are already in circulation.
- Cost structure: Retained fees are paid upfront (or in installments). Contingency fees are only paid on placement, typically 20–30% of first-year salary.
- Speed vs. thoroughness: Contingency is faster to start. Retained is more thorough by design.
- Risk profile: Contingency feels lower risk financially. But a bad hire or an unfilled role carries its own very real cost.
The Hidden Cost of “Free” Recruiting
Contingency recruiting feels like a low-risk option because you only pay if you hire someone. But there’s a cost that doesn’t show up on any invoice.
When a recruiter has no upfront commitment, they’re incentivized to send you candidates quickly — not necessarily candidates who are the right fit. You might get a stack of resumes that look good on paper, a few phone screens, and then… nothing that sticks.
Meanwhile, your VP role sits open for four months. Your sales team is operating without leadership. A key retailer relationship slips. The cost of not having the right person in the seat is often far larger than any recruiting fee — it just doesn’t come with a line item.
For roles at the manager level and above in CPG or food and beverage, the cost of a bad hire or a long vacancy adds up fast. That’s why serious searches usually call for a committed partner.
When Contingency Recruiting Makes Sense
We’re not saying contingency recruiting is never the right call. There are situations where it works:
- You’re filling a role below the manager level where deep vetting isn’t as critical
- You need to move very fast and are willing to trade depth for speed
- You’re hiring in a market with a large pool of active candidates
- You’re filling multiple positions at the same time and want to spread the net wide
If you’re hiring a production supervisor, an entry-level coordinator, or a large cohort of field sales reps, contingency recruiting can get you there efficiently.
When Retained Search Is the Right Call
Retained search is the right move when the hire matters — and in CPG and food and beverage, most manager-level and above hires really matter.
Consider retained search when:
- You’re hiring a VP, Director, or C-suite executive where the quality of the hire directly impacts business performance
- The role requires specific CPG or F&B industry expertise that isn’t easy to find
- You’ve already tried a contingency search (or DIY recruiting) and it hasn’t produced results
- You need to hire someone who isn’t actively looking — a passive candidate at a competitor or adjacent brand
- The role is confidential and you can’t post it publicly
The best retained searches also give you more than a hire. They give you a real partner who knows your business, your culture, and your goals — and can tell you what the talent market actually looks like for the role you’re trying to fill.
A Third Model Worth Knowing: Fixed-Fee Retained Search
Here’s where things get interesting.
The traditional retained model has one big friction point: the fee is typically tied to the candidate’s salary, which means it scales up with every senior hire. Hire a VP at $200K? Your recruiting fee could be $50,000–$65,000.
At High Altitude Recruiting, we do things differently. We run fully retained executive searches for a flat fee — averaging $10,000 per search, regardless of the candidate’s compensation. No percentage of salary. No fee inflation when you’re hiring senior leaders.
What you get with that flat fee is the same thing you’d expect from a top-tier retained firm:
- Full dedication to your search from day one
- Access to passive candidates who aren’t on any job board
- Detailed 2–4 page candidate self-evaluations covering career progression, aspirations, and key wins
- A real-time portal where you can see exactly where the search stands at every stage — no black box, no “we’ll follow up when we have updates”
We work exclusively with CPG and food and beverage companies, which means we know the talent landscape, the brands, and the functional nuances better than a generalist firm ever could. And at $10K a search, you can run a serious retained search without the sticker shock of a traditional fee.
Questions to Ask Before You Choose a Recruiting Partner
No matter which model you’re considering, these questions will help you vet your options:
- Are you exclusively focused on CPG and food and beverage, or do you recruit across industries? Generalist firms move slower in niche markets.
- How do you charge — percentage of salary, hourly, or flat fee? Understand the total cost before you start.
- Will you have dedicated focus on my search, or are you working multiple competing roles? This is the core question that separates retained from contingency.
- What does your candidate assessment process look like? “We send you resumes” is a very different answer than “we produce written candidate evaluations.”
- How will I get updates during the search? Transparency matters. If the answer is vague, that’s a signal.
- What’s your placement rate and one-year retention rate? Ask for real data.
The Bottom Line
Retained search vs. contingency recruiting isn’t really a debate about cost — it’s a debate about commitment. For critical hires in food and beverage, the model that starts with a committed partner almost always produces better outcomes.
If the traditional retained fee has felt like a barrier, there’s a better option. High Altitude Recruiting runs flat-fee retained searches exclusively for CPG and F&B companies — and we put every step of the process on a portal you can actually see.
Curious what a search with us looks like? Check out our process or get in touch to talk through your search.