Job Placement · Finance · Staffing Agency Alternative
A finance staffing agency employs the professional and bills you hourly. A finance headhunter or executive search firm places a permanent hire for a percentage of salary, commonly 20 to 25 percent. BEG places permanent finance professionals too, clerk to CFO, on a flat milestone fee fixed before sourcing starts, never an hourly markup and never a fee that rises with the offer.
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Self-Select The Right Model
| Model | Who employs the hire | How you pay | Right when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finance staffing or interim firm | The firm, as the legal employer | Hourly or daily rate for the length of the assignment | A close backlog, a system implementation, or leave coverage with a known end date |
| Finance headhunter or executive search firm | You (the company) | Percentage of first-year salary, commonly 20 to 25 percent, due at or after start | You want nothing payable until a start date and accept a fee that scales with the offer |
| BEG direct-hire placement | You | Flat milestone fee by tier, $4,680 to $40,128, fixed before sourcing starts | The role repeats every cycle and you want the fee known before the first approach |
| DIY in-house recruiting | You | Internal recruiter time and job board costs, no placement fee | You already have finance-literate recruiting capacity and time to spare |
BEG does not employ finance professionals and does not bill by the hour, so interim coverage is not something we sell. Public accounting and technical accounting leadership seats are recruited through the accounting staffing agency alternative page instead.
Why Finance Headhunters Charge What They Charge
A staffing agency's markup, the same hourly cost structure a finance recruitment agency or employment agency runs on, commonly 20 to 75 percent of the pay rate per published staffing markup research, covers the cost of being the legal employer for as long as the assignment runs: payroll taxes, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation, plus overhead, before profit. A headhunter's percentage-of-salary fee covers something different: sourcing, screening and closing a specific person, once, with nothing owed if no one is placed. Neither structure is wrong. They price different work. BEG's milestone fee prices the same sourcing and closing work as a headhunter, at a lower, fixed number instead of a percentage that rises with the offer, paid directly to isolved against the stages set out in isolved's job placement service description.
SHRM's 2025 benchmarking puts average cost-per-hire at $5,475 for nonexecutive roles and $35,879 for executive roles, a useful reminder that internal recruiting is not free either. Median time-to-fill across roles runs close to 45 days, which is the baseline a 23 to 35 day BEG search is beating, not a staffing-agency benchmark specifically.
The CFO Headhunter Question
The BLS financial manager median was $166,570 in May 2025, with a 90th percentile of $323,270, the more realistic band for a sitting CFO, per BLS occupational wage data. A 20 to 25 percent CFO headhunter fee at the all-industry median is $33,314 to $41,643, close to BEG's $33,440 to $40,128 Tier VI fee, not clearly cheaper at that one benchmark. At the 90th percentile, a 20 percent fee is $64,654 and BEG's fee is 52 to 62 percent of that figure. The honest read: at realistic CFO compensation BEG is meaningfully cheaper, and at the low end of the benchmark range it is roughly comparable rather than half the cost.
Experienced financial managers advance into the CFO seat, per BLS, which is why a CFO search often competes for the same small pool a controller or VP finance search is also chasing. Scoping which one you actually need, before pricing a search, is the more valuable part of the first call.
FAQ
No. A staffing agency employs the finance professional and bills your company an hourly rate. BEG places permanent finance professionals your company employs directly, on a flat milestone fee agreed before sourcing starts. Where interim or contract finance coverage is genuinely the right call, we will say so rather than open a permanent search.
The terms describe different searches. A finance headhunter typically places finance and accounting professionals into any industry. A financial services headhunter more often works inside banks, asset managers and insurers, recruiting for roles specific to that industry rather than for the finance function generally. BEG covers the corporate finance function, analysis, planning, treasury and the transactional team, across industries, which is closer to the first meaning.
Benchmarked to the BLS financial manager median of $166,570, a 20 to 25 percent contingency fee is $33,314 to $41,643. BEG's Tier VI fee is $33,440 to $40,128, which lands inside that range rather than clearly under it at the all-industry median. At the financial manager 90th percentile of $323,270, closer to realistic CFO pay, a 20 percent fee is $64,654 and BEG is 52 to 62 percent of that figure, meaningfully cheaper. The honest summary: at typical CFO compensation BEG is cheaper, at the low end of the benchmark it is roughly comparable.
A staffing agency's business is filling hours: it recruits, employs and bills for temporary or contract coverage. An executive search or recruiting firm's business is filling permanent seats for a percentage of the placed salary, commonly 20 to 25 percent, usually due at or shortly after the hire starts. Both differ from BEG, which places permanent finance staff on a fixed milestone fee rather than an hourly rate or a percentage that rises with the offer.
In practice, yes. A finance staffing agency, staffing firm, finance recruitment agency and finance employment agency all describe the same hourly-billed arrangement: the firm employs the professional and bills your company for the length of the assignment. A finance headhunter or executive search firm is a different, permanent-placement model, and BEG is different again. BEG places permanent finance professionals your company employs directly, on a flat milestone fee agreed before sourcing starts.
If a placed finance professional does not work out within 45 days of the start date for a performance-related reason, BEG runs a replacement search at no additional charge, and a repeat search for the same seat is offered at 50 percent off.
No. A month-end close backlog, a system implementation with a defined end date, or maternity and medical leave coverage are legitimate reasons to use a temporary or interim finance firm instead, and that is a different vendor than BEG.
By metro rather than nationally for analytical roles, since OEWS financial analyst medians range roughly $70,000 between the lowest and highest metros in the BLS data. A remote-eligible posting competes against the highest-paying market in the country regardless of your own office location, and a band set against your local metro will lose finalists at offer stage if the role is remote.
An average of 23 to 35 days from discovery call to signed offer, based on isolved placement data, with an 86 percent fill rate on active searches. For context, SHRM's 2025 benchmarking puts general market median time-to-fill at roughly 45 days and average cost-per-hire at $5,475 for nonexecutive roles and $35,879 for executive roles, a nearly sevenfold gap that is useful context for why a flat CFO-tier fee is worth comparing against your own internal recruiting cost.
With a short exercise rather than another round of conversation. A candidate reviews a small broken model or a messy reconciliation and explains what is wrong and what it means for the business. It shows whether they audit before they build and whether they can explain a number to someone outside finance, which predicts performance better than a resume does.
That is usually the first half of the discovery call. The deciding question is who currently owns the board, lender and investor relationships. If your chief executive carries those comfortably, a VP finance running the function underneath is a stable structure. If a fundraise, a sale or a covenant negotiation is coming, it usually is not, and we will say so before quoting a tier.
No. This page covers the corporate finance function: AP and AR clerks, bookkeepers, staff accountants, financial analysts, FP&A and treasury managers, finance managers and VPs of finance. Public accounting seats and technical accounting leadership, including controller and CFO hired specifically for audit or tax-adjacent work, are recruited through the accounting and CPA staffing agency alternative page instead.
Role-specific detail lives on financial analyst placement, VP finance placement and FP&A manager placement, or start from the finance placement hub.
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