Hiring cyber security talent

One discipline, two markets, short shortlists. This page sets out how we engage, what we need from you, and what we will tell you that other agencies might not.

Engagement models

CONTINGENCY: You pay on a successful start, nothing before. Suits defined mid-level roles where speed matters and the market has supply.
RETAINED SEARCH: A staged, mapped, exclusive search. The right model for leadership, scarce-skill and confidential mandates.
RECRUITMENT PROCESS OUTSOURCING: We become your cyber hiring function for a period — sourcing, screening and pipeline management end to end.
CONTRACT & TEMPORARY: Day-rate specialists for incident response surge, migration programmes or cover during a permanent search.
MANAGED SERVICE: Preferred-supplier arrangements for organisations hiring security staff continuously.
PAYROLL & EMPLOYER OF RECORD: Engagement and payroll administration where you want the person but not the entity overhead.

What a good brief contains

The single biggest determinant of a search going well is the briefing conversation, and the job description is rarely the useful part of it. What we actually need to know:

What this person owns in their first quarter. More clarifying than any responsibilities list, and it settles what the role really is — see how differently the same title behaves across our security analyst and SOC analyst pages.
Your stack and tooling. Which SIEM, which cloud, which EDR. Candidates ask, and vague answers read as an immature function.
The team as it stands. Who they work with, who they report to, what has been tried before.
Your actual budget range. Not the advertised one. We cannot protect a process from a mismatch we do not know about.
Your interview process and timeline. How many stages, who is involved, and how fast you can move. Slow processes lose strong cyber candidates — this is the most common way a good search fails.
On-site expectations, precisely. Days per week, negotiable or not. Ambiguity here produces placements that unravel in month two.

What we will tell you

That a role is not fillable as written, if it is not. That your salary band is below market for the skills listed. That your five-stage interview process is why you lost the last two candidates. That a target and a skills reality are in conflict.

None of this is difficult to say in a briefing conversation and all of it is expensive to discover in week six. We would rather be the agency that declined a brief than the one that ran a search it knew would fail.

Disciplines we cover

Common questions

How do your fees work?

Contingency placements are charged as a percentage of first-year package, payable on start. Retained search is staged across the mandate. Contract placement is a margin on the day rate, disclosed to both sides. We quote in writing before any work starts.

Do you charge to take a brief?

No. Briefing conversations and market feedback are free, including the conversation where we tell you a role is not fillable as written.

What is your replacement guarantee?

Permanent placements carry a rebate period agreed in writing at engagement. We would rather agree the terms of a failure up front than negotiate it after one.

How many candidates will you send?

Few. Three to five for most roles, each with a written note on fit and risk. A long shortlist means we have not done the filtering you are paying for.

Will you work exclusively?

On retained and leadership mandates, yes, and it is a condition. On contingency roles we work alongside others, though a shortlist arriving from four agencies at once usually means the brief needs work rather than more agencies.

Can you handle employment equity requirements?

Yes, and we work to targets you set. Where a target and a skills reality genuinely conflict, we raise it at briefing rather than quietly missing it.

Start with a briefing conversation

No fee, no commitment. Usually thirty minutes is enough to tell you whether we are the right firm for the role.

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