An executive search firm identifies and recruits senior leaders through direct, targeted outreach rather than job advertisements. In Australia, this means reaching beyond who is actively looking and accessing the full talent market, including leaders who are performing well and highly selective about their next move. The process starts with deep alignment on the brief, then moves through market mapping — a comprehensive picture of where the strongest leaders sit across the target market — discreet outreach, rigorous assessment, and a shortlist built on genuine conviction. For founder-led businesses, it also means assessing leadership fit for a high-trust environment where compatibility matters as much as capability.

When the hire is too important to leave to chance. Traditional recruitment depends on who is actively looking. Executive search reaches the people who are not. For senior leadership roles, the strongest candidates are usually well employed and not scanning job boards. If the hire will shape the trajectory of your business, influence culture, or sit close to ownership decisions, a retained executive search process gives you access to a broader, stronger market. It also means your search partner is fully committed to the outcome, with no contingency pressure to move quickly at the expense of quality. This is the work of reaching passive candidates, and it requires a very different approach.

Thirdway is a retained executive search consultancy and executive recruitment agency built exclusively for founder-led businesses making mission-critical hires in Australia. We do not work on contingency, send bulk CVs, or divide our attention across multiple mandates at once. We partner with one client per search, invest in deep alignment before going to market, and stay close through to transition and beyond. The difference is in how seriously we take the decision you are facing and the rigour of the process we have built around it. For founders who have been burned before, that distinction is not a small one.

Advertising attracts people who are looking. The strongest candidates for senior leadership roles are rarely looking. Retained executive search gives you access to a broader, stronger market through direct, discreet outreach to people who would never respond to an ad or a recruiter message. It also means your search partner is fully invested in the outcome from day one. There is no contingency race, no split loyalty, and no incentive to move fast at the cost of rigour. For hires that carry real weight, that level of commitment changes the quality of everything that follows.

Senior leadership and mission-critical hires for founder-led and privately owned businesses, typically between $10 million and $250 million in revenue. This includes CEO recruitment, C-suite and senior executive search, and interim executive roles for time-critical gaps or leadership transitions. We are not industry-specific. Our deepest experience spans infrastructure, energy, sustainability, real estate, data centres, construction, and asset management. But the common thread is always criticality. If the role is senior, the stakes are real, and the business is founder-led, we are built for it.

Fees are structured as a percentage of total first-year remuneration, paid in stages across the engagement. The retained model means you are paying for commitment, a dedicated process, and access to a far stronger candidate market than advertising alone will reach. It is a different investment from contingency recruitment, and it reflects a fundamentally different standard of work. We are transparent about pricing from the first conversation. If it is not the right fit commercially, we will say so early. There are no surprises, and no obligation to proceed until you are confident the engagement is right.

We back our work with a six-month guarantee. If a placed candidate does not succeed within that window, we re-engage the search at no additional professional fee. The guarantee exists not as a safety net but as a direct expression of accountability. Our process is designed to prevent this outcome through deep pre-search alignment, rigorous leadership assessment, and onboarding support through the critical first months. Our track record reflects that commitment. But when the stakes are this high and the decision sits with the founder, accountability has to be real, specific, and unconditional.