Why We Offer a 12-Month Free Replacement Guarantee (When Most Recruiters Stop at 90 Days)

Every client I speak to about a senior hire has the same worry, even if they don’t say it out loud: what happens if this person leaves? You spend months on the search. You pay the fee, wait out a notice period, introduce your new VP or operations director to your team and your clients. Then, before the first year is out, they hand in their notice and you are back where you started, only now with a gap in your leadership and a project pipeline that still needs running.

That fear is the reason we offer a 12-month free replacement guarantee on our searches, and 2 years for senior roles. In this post I want to explain what a typical recruitment guarantee looks like, what ours covers, and why we are comfortable standing behind our placements for that long.

What a typical recruitment guarantee looks like

Most recruiters offer some form of guarantee, but the window is usually short. In a Top Echelon survey of recruiters in its network, 90 days was the most common guarantee period, chosen by 44.9% of respondents. Another 20.3% offered 30 days and 20.0% offered 60 days. Only 2.3% offered a full year.

Retained executive search firms tend to go further. Guides to retained search, such as this one from McKenny Group, describe a 6 to 12 month replacement guarantee as the standard range.

The problem with a 90-day guarantee for a senior engineering or construction leader is simple. Ninety days is barely enough time for a new executive to learn your business. They are still meeting clients, getting to know the team and understanding how decisions really get made. The issues that cause a senior hire to leave, such as a mismatch in values, a clash over authority or a role that turned out to be different from the one described, often don’t surface until well after that window has closed.

So a short guarantee protects you against the least likely problem and leaves you exposed to the most likely one.

What our guarantee is

Our guarantee is straightforward. If the person we place leaves within the guarantee period, we find you a replacement free of charge.

• 12 months as standard on our searches.
• 2 years for senior and high-level roles.
• A free replacement. We run the search again and find you the right person.

I want to be clear about one thing: this is a replacement guarantee. Our commitment is to fill the role with someone who stays, because that is what our clients actually need. A replacement search gets your leadership seat filled again, which is the outcome that matters to your business.

Why we can offer it

A long guarantee is only sensible if the placements hold. Ours do. 96% of AES placements remain in position after 12 months, and 98% of our searches end with a candidate placed. Those numbers are not luck. They come from the way we assess candidates before you ever meet them.

Our process is called RoleDNA™ Mapping. It builds a complete picture of each candidate across eight levels:

1. Job Location Mapping
2. Executive Summary
3. Professional Photo
4. Candidate Introduction
5. Key Competency Responses
6. Behavioral Assessment
7. Verified References
8. Detailed Resume

Three of those levels do most of the work in preventing early exits.

Job Location Mapping checks the practical side of a move before it becomes a problem. Commute, relocation and family circumstances are some of the most common reasons a good hire leaves early, and they are much easier to deal with before an offer than after a start date.

Behavioral assessment shows how a candidate actually works: how they make decisions, how they lead and how they handle pressure. That lets us judge fit with your values and culture, not just with the job description. A technically excellent leader who clashes with how your firm operates is still a bad hire.

Verified references confirm what the resume and interviews tell us. We speak to the people who have worked with the candidate, so you are not relying on a polished interview alone.

When you combine that with candidates’ own written answers to the key competency questions for your role, you get a far clearer view of who will succeed and stay. That is why we can put our name behind a placement for a year, or two years for senior roles, when much of the market stops at 90 days.

What it means for you

We focus on senior leadership in engineering, civil engineering, construction, infrastructure and manufacturing across the US. In these businesses, a single senior hire can shape your project delivery, your client relationships and the people who report to them.

A bad senior hire is expensive. There is the cost of the search itself, the salary paid while the role isn’t working, the time your leadership team spends managing the problem, and the projects, bids and client relationships that suffer while the seat is effectively empty. Then you have to start the whole process again. Getting it right the first time matters, and our approach saves clients $100K+ per hire. I wrote more about the cost side in what engineering executive search really costs, and about early departures in why senior engineers quit in year one.

Our guarantee changes the risk for you in two ways. First, the assessment work makes an early exit much less likely to happen at all. Second, if it does happen within the guarantee period, you are not paying for a second search. We find the replacement, free of charge.

When you compare search firms, look past the fee and ask two questions: how long is your guarantee, and what share of your placements are still in role after 12 months? The answers tell you how confident a firm really is in its own process.

Frequently asked questions

What is an executive search guarantee?

It is a search firm’s commitment to find a replacement if the person it placed leaves within a set period after starting. The length of that period varies widely between firms, from as little as 30 days to a year or more.

How long is the AES guarantee?

12 months as standard, extended to 2 years for senior and high-level roles.

What happens if my placed candidate leaves?

If they leave within the guarantee period, we run the search again and find you a replacement free of charge.

Why can AES offer a longer guarantee than many recruiters?

Because our placements last. Our RoleDNA™ Mapping process uses behavioral assessment, verified references and detailed competency responses to check fit before you meet a candidate, and 96% of our placements remain in position after 12 months.

Talk to us about your next senior hire

If you have a key leadership role to fill and want a hire that lasts, I’d be glad to talk it through. Find out more about how we work on our For Clients page, or contact us here.