For Employers
Senior placements,
quietly engineered.
Vertex partners with founders, boards, and chief people officers on the senior hires that shape the next decade of their business. Every search is run with discipline, intelligence, and the discretion the brief requires.
Avg. time to shortlist
21 days
Retained engagements
94%
12-month retention
96%
Active mandates
47
[ A ] Engagement
Three ways to engage Vertex.
Retained Search
Executive · Board-grade
A dedicated, exclusive engagement for first-line and second-line hires. The bulk of our work; the format we are best at.
- Exclusive — Vertex does not compete with itself
- Three-stage fee, taken across the search cadence
- Replacement guarantee at twelve months
Mapping Engagement
Pre-search · Strategic
A fixed-fee engagement to map a market — competitive, candidate, or compensation — without committing to a search. Often a precursor to a retained engagement.
- Fixed fee, paid on delivery
- Written report and live presentation
- No exclusivity required
Embedded
Volume · 90-day
A senior consultant embedded on-site or virtually for ninety days, delivering volume against an agreed brief. Most often used by Series B–C scaleups during a senior leadership build-out.
- Day-rate basis
- Embedded with the client team
- Specifically scoped — not open-ended
[ 03 ] How we work
A six-stage search cadence.
Designed to compress a senior placement to ten or twelve weeks. Not by cutting corners — by refusing to let any one of the six stages slip when the inevitable pressure arrives.
Diagnostic
A working session — not a briefing. We spend two hours with the hiring authority and the most relevant peer to interrogate the brief itself, and produce a one-page statement of the problem the hire is being asked to solve.
Long-list
Within fourteen days of engagement, we deliver a calibrated 36-name long-list. We commit to this internally — a long-list later than fourteen days is, in our experience, a search drifting into six months.
Calibration
A structured calibration session against four to five long-list candidates. The brief is refined; the shortlist criteria are written down. The calendar bends around the search, never the reverse.
Shortlist
Six to eight qualified candidates, each presented with a written assessment, structured commentary against the calibrated brief, and an honest read on the candidate's motivation and likely ceiling.
Offer
We start drafting the offer at first-shortlist stage, not at finalist stage. The compensation envelope is pre-cleared with the board, the contract is drafted, and the start date is pre-negotiated against notice periods.
Integration
A 90-day-plus-one integration cadence — structured listening, a written observation document, a deliberate week-eight win. We support every senior placement through their first six months in role.
[ B ] Sectors
Six sectors. Each led by a partner.
[ C ] Why Vertex
Four operating commitments.
01
Exclusivity over volume
We accept a limited number of mandates per quarter. Each consultant carries no more than four active searches at any time. The quality of our shortlists is a function of our refusal to dilute it.
02
Confidentiality without exception
Every search is run with the discretion the brief requires. Where appropriate, we conduct entirely confidential mandates — including from the candidate market.
03
Honest counsel
We tell clients when their brief is unrealistic. We tell candidates when a role is not for them. The relationship is the asset; the placement is a consequence.
04
Intelligence as edge
Our proprietary candidate intelligence engine — built in-house — augments our consultants' judgment with structured, real-time market data. The technology serves the relationship, never the reverse.
[ 07 ] Intelligence layer
Consultant judgment, intelligently augmented.
Every Vertex search is supported by a candidate intelligence engine we built in-house. It does not run our consultants — it sharpens them.
Anonymised market intelligence
Every interaction with the candidate market — every refused brief, every accepted introduction — is captured anonymously. Across 14,000+ data points, we model where senior talent is moving, why, and at what compensation band.
Calibrated shortlist scoring
Each shortlist candidate is scored across twelve dimensions — capability, motivation, capacity, and risk. The score augments consultant judgment; it does not replace it.
Lifecycle integration
When a candidate submits a CV through the website, the AI engine processes it within sixty seconds — extracting structured data, mapping it against active mandates, and routing the introduction to the relevant practice partner.
Built in-house. Not licensed.
The intelligence layer is proprietary. We have not licensed third-party recruitment AI; we have built our own engine, on our own data, accountable to our own consultants.
Candidate records
184,212
Active mandates
47
Companies tracked
8,400+
Compensation data points
102k
[ 04 ] By the numbers
Discipline, measured.
01
Senior placements
Across executive and senior IC, since 2026
02
Avg. time to shortlist
From engagement to first qualified introduction
03
Retained engagement rate
Clients retaining Vertex for a subsequent search
04
12-month retention
Of our placements remain in role at twelve months
[ 06 ] In their words
The relationship is the asset.
Vertex placed our Chief Technology Officer in eleven weeks against a brief three other firms had told us was impossible. The shortlist was disciplined, every candidate was board-grade, and the post-placement integration support was the differentiator.
HLHenrik Larsson
Founder & CEO · Series C Fintech
01/06
[ D ] Engage
A discreet
conversation, first.
Tell us about the brief — even at the early stage. We will respond personally, in confidence, within one working day.
Direct
+44 (0) 20 7946 0188Partners' Desk
partners@vertextalent.co.uk