Fractional recruitment agency by the day

A recruitment agency that finds experienced executives for part-time, ongoing leadership roles — usually 1–3 days a week — rather than permanent full-time hires.

It sells days, not heads: you buy part of a senior leader’s week on a day rate, instead of one appointment priced as a share of approximate first-year base salary.

UK retained search runs 25–35% of approximate first-year base salary (Headhunters.co.uk, 2026).

Recruiting a senior leader for part of the week — usually one to three days, ongoing — instead of a full-time permanent hire.

The executive works on a day rate, usually through their own company, and the engagement runs for as long as the stage of the company needs it.

Online the phrase is also used for hiring a part-time recruiter to run your own hiring; that is a fractional recruiter, not what we do.

The vocabulary separates the two.

We don’t rank or list other firms.

The phrase covers two groups: agencies and independent recruiters who find fractional executives for companies — which is what we are — and embedded recruiters who run a company’s own hiring part-time, covered on hiring a fractional recruiter.

To compare the first group, start with our guide to fractional executive search firms and ask every firm, us included, the five questions.

We don’t promise a shortlist by a date.

How long it takes depends on how tightly the brief is scoped, how rare the seat is and how quickly the interviews run.

What shortens it is a brief that already answers the days a week, the outcome the seat is for, the budget and the IR35 position — how the agency works sets out the steps, and every shortlist is 3–5 people through five-stage vetting.

Yes.

In Great Britain a fractional recruitment agency is an employment agency under the Employment Agencies Act 1973 and the Conduct Regulations 2003, which GOV.UK says cover executive search consultants and apply whatever the work-seeker’s employment status.

An agency may not charge a work-seeker for finding them work, so an executive never pays to be put forward.

The Fair Work Agency is the regulator in England, Scotland and Wales.

More in the rules an agency works under.

Largely, yes — the labels overlap.

Both find senior leaders for part-time, ongoing roles rather than permanent hires; in our reading, “search firm” tends to signal a more bespoke search for a more senior seat.

Fractional Quest runs searches for fractional CFOs, CTOs, CMOs, COOs, CPOs, CHROs and CISOs across the UK.

For the firms side by side, see our guide to fractional executive search firms.

Traditional retained search runs a bespoke search for one permanent hire and charges 25–35% of approximate first-year base salary, with £30,000–£40,000 minimum fees at reputable firms (Headhunters.co.uk, 2026), typically paid in three staged instalments (Executive Recruit, 2026).

A fractional search fills part of a week on a day rate.

The executive invoices through their own company, so there is no employer National Insurance — 15% above £5,000 on a permanent salary (HMRC) — no pension and no employment notice.

More in fractional executive search firms compared.

We start from your brief — role, days a week, stage, sector, budget and IR35 position — and search against it; we hold no pre-built bench.

Each candidate goes through the five stages on how we vet, and we return a shortlist of 3–5, each with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.

You interview and decide.

Tell us why it missed and we re-scope the brief with you.

We take briefs from companies of any size.

The fractional model tends to fit scale-ups, founder-led businesses and PE-backed companies — the point where a function needs a senior leader’s judgement but not yet five days of it.

If the seat already has five days of work in it, we will say so, and a full-time hire is the better answer.

It depends on the seat.

Published fractional day rates: CFO £700–£1,400 (FD Capital), CTO £1,000–£1,600, CMO £750–£1,400 and COO £800–£1,400 (Connectd), CISO £1,200–£2,000 (Optima Europe).

London-based companies pay fractional CFOs a 15–20% premium (FD Capital).

At £1,000 a day, two days a week across 46 weeks is £92,000 in day fees — against £202,225 for a full-time CFO on the £176,500 Robert Half 2026 median plus employer NI (our arithmetic).

It depends on how the engagement runs in practice, not on the title.

HMRC looks at who controls how the work is done, whether there is a genuine right of substitution, and mutuality of obligation.

For medium and large clients, the client makes the determination.

HMRC’s guidance: IR35 — find out if it applies.

The executives on a shortlist are independent — not our employees, and not a bench we hold.

IR35 status depends on how each engagement runs in practice, and a medium or large client makes the determination; HMRC’s CEST tool is HMRC’s own check.

We set out the IR35 position on every brief.

Interim is full-time for a fixed period — cover for a departure, a turnaround or a transaction.

The IIM’s 2026 survey puts the average UK interim assignment at 10 months and the average day rate at £907, £1,004 in the private sector (IIM).

Fractional is part-time and ongoing: 1–3 days a week that flexes with the company.

See interim recruitment agencies.

Brief us on the role, stage and cadence and we come back with a shortlist of 3–5, each vetted and with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.

Each seat has its own hub: fractional CFO, fractional CTO and fractional CMO.

No. We take briefs from companies across the UK — London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, Cambridge, Leeds — and for fully remote seats.

London-based companies pay fractional CFOs a 15–20% premium even for remote arrangements (FD Capital, 2026); no source we hold publishes a comparable premium for other roles.

The phrase carries two meanings.

Fractional recruiting in our sense is recruiting fractional executives: finding a part-time CFO, CTO or CMO for a company.

A fractional recruiter is something else — a part-time in-house recruiter or talent lead, embedded for a few days a week to run your hiring.

We do the first, not the second.

We won’t rank ourselves against the others.

Our guide to fractional executive search firms compares UK firms on fee, model and reach, and the five questions above apply to every one of them, us included: what the fee is and when it is due, who vets and how, what comes back, where each number comes from, and who owns the IR35 position.

For a growth-stage company, in our view, the fee structure and the IR35 position matter more than any claim about the size of a candidate pool.

Ask any provider the same questions, whoever they are: what the fee is and when it is due, who vets candidates and how, what comes back and in what form, where each rate figure comes from, and who owns the IR35 position.

The five questions above set these out.

Our answer to the second and third: a shortlist of 3–5, each through five-stage vetting, with day rate or pay, availability and IR35 position set out, for fractional, interim, part-time and permanent executive briefs.

Not in the managed-service sense.

A support agency engages the assistant itself and sells you their time, with cover and replacement handled by the agency.

We recruit: for a fractional PA London-based or remote, brief us and we come back with a shortlist of 3–5, each with day rate or pay, availability and IR35 position set out, and the person you choose contracts with you directly.

See fractional EA and PA for how the role works.

No. We don’t place a fractional web consultant for SMEs or a fractional website consultant; those are project and specialist roles, and we recruit executives.

If the website is one symptom of a wider gap, the right seat is usually a leader who owns the decision: a fractional CTO for the technology, or a fractional CMO for the marketing it has to serve.

Much like any senior hire, with the days and the contract decided up front.

You scope the seat — the outcome it exists for, days a week, stage, sector, budget and how the engagement will run for IR35.

We search against that brief, take each candidate through the five stages on how we vet, and return a shortlist of 3–5, each with day rate, availability and IR35 position set out.

You interview and decide.

Acas’s guidance on how employers should recruit — a fair process, with discrimination and data-protection law applying throughout — holds for a part-time executive as for any hire.

It depends on the hiring you have in front of you.

A fractional recruiter works inside your team part of the week and runs a flow of hires, paid for their time; an agency is briefed on a specific role and paid on the outcome.

For one senior seat, an agency shortlist is the more direct route — ours is 3–5 candidates.

For a hiring plan below the leadership team, an embedded fractional recruiter is, in our view, the better fit — and we don’t supply those.

If the recruiter works through their own company, the off-payroll rules apply to that engagement too (HMRC).

Ask every firm the five questions above, then two more for a technology seat.

First, who assesses the candidate’s technical judgement — the architecture calls, the security trade-offs — rather than the CV alone?

Second, does the firm search the market for your brief or wait for applicants?

For fractional executives, headhunting — approaching people who are not looking — is the part worth asking about, and a firm should be able to show you how it does it.

Our fractional recruitment services cover fractional CTOs, CPOs and CISOs as well as the rest of the C-suite, on fractional, interim and permanent briefs: a shortlist of 3–5, each through five-stage vetting.

In practice, yes.

Fractional executive recruitment — also written fractional leadership recruitment or fractional C-suite recruitment — is finding a senior leader for part of the week, usually one to three days, on a day rate.

The people who do it, fractional executive recruiters, are agencies and search consultants who approach the person the brief needs rather than wait for applications; that approach is what “fractional executives headhunting” describes.

We recruit fractional, interim, part-time and permanent executives through one process: a shortlist of 3–5, each through five-stage vetting, with day rate or pay, availability and IR35 position set out.

We won’t rank ourselves or name rivals, and “best” depends on the seat.

There are four routes: a recruitment agency, which runs a search against your brief; a job board, where companies and executives find each other; a network or marketplace, where members are listed; and personal referral.

For the best platforms for fractional executive jobs, a good test is whether the board shows only roles open now and states a day rate only where the posting does — ours is on this page, with the wider UK board beside it.

For the best firms for placing fractional executives in growth-stage companies, put the five questions above to each one.

The routes are set out in where to find fractional executives.

The labels overlap and none is a protected term.

A fractional executive firm usually means a firm whose own people work as the fractional executive, so you buy fractional executive services from the firm; a fractional agency, or fractional executive agency, usually means one that finds the executive for you.

We are the second: we recruit, and the executive you choose contracts with you directly.

Whichever you are comparing, ask who the executive is, who they contract with and how the IR35 position is set out — the five questions above cover it.

Yes.

A recruitment agency has the same revenue questions as any other business — business development, pricing, team structure, pipeline — and a fractional chief revenue officer works on them one to three days a week.

If you are searching for a fractional CRO for a recruitment agency in London, we shortlist UK-wide, for hybrid or remote engagements, and claim no office or local network.

See hire a fractional CRO for how the role works.

The board on this page carries fractional, part-time and interim executive roles only, from our jobs feed, rather than burying them among permanent listings.

Each card shows the day rate only where the posting states one, and says so when it doesn’t.

We don’t grade roles or candidates.

No. Browsing the board and applying is free.

We don’t score individual rates or compute percentiles.

What we publish is a band for each role with its source — FD Capital for CFOs, Leadership Services for CTOs, Connectd for CMOs and COOs, Optima Europe for CISOs — in the rates section, so you can see where your rate sits against a named benchmark.

Posted roles show a rate only where the posting states one.

Yes — that is the fractional model: part of your week each, for more than one company.

Check each contract for exclusivity and conflict clauses, and keep your IR35 position under review: several clients is one factor that points to self-employment, not a guarantee of it.

No. The board carries roles across the UK, and many are remote or hybrid; each card shows the location the posting gives.

See remote fractional jobs.

When we run a search, the IR35 position is set out on the brief.

Status depends on how the engagement actually runs — HMRC looks at control, substitution and mutuality of obligation — and a medium or large client makes the determination.

Have your own accountant review each contract.

See the IR35 guide.

Start with the board on this page, then the UK-wide fractional jobs board and remote fractional jobs.

Each role hub — CFO, CTO, CMO, COO — carries its own board.

Fractional work also comes through networks and referrals: former colleagues, investors and their portfolio companies.

Yes: the board on this page.

A fractional job board lists current roles from employers and recruiters; ours carries fractional, interim and part-time executive roles from our jobs feed, from the last three months, and shows a day rate only where the posting states one.

Fractional job boards differ in what they list and how they check it, so ask whether closed roles come down, whether the employer is named and whether a rate is stated or only estimated.

Beyond this page there is the UK-wide fractional jobs board and remote fractional jobs.