If you're hiring in fintech, you've probably already faced the need to find some kind of Chief Officer.

And when that happens, one of the first questions is who should run the search: your internal recruitment team or a specialised recruitment agency?

From our experience, both options can work.

In this article, we'll look at when it makes sense to keep an executive search in-house, when an agency can add more value, and what to consider before you choose.

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What One Bad Executive Hire Actually Cost

Searching in-house can look cheaper at the beginning: there is no agency fee, your team already knows the business, and the process stays internal. But the cost of hiring an executive goes far beyond the cost of finding candidates.

Evotym Founder & CEO Anastasia Zencika recently wrote about one example for CFOtech UK.

A client was working with Evotym on a C-level operations search while also looking independently. They found someone through their own search and decided to hire directly.

The new executive spent around 3 months onboarding. By month 6, it was clear the fit was not working, and the company let the person go. Eventually, the client came back to Evotym and restarted the search.

By then, almost a year had passed since the role first needed to be filled.

Based on our internal data across executive searches, situations like this can cost more than €100,000 once you include management time, recruitment costs, delayed projects and the second search.

This does not mean every C-level role should be outsourced to an agency. The takeaway here is that the decision shouldn't be based on the agency fee alone.

When an In-House Executive Search Works Well

There are plenty of executive roles that an internal recruitment team can manage successfully.

In-house search usually makes sense when the company already understands the market it is hiring from. For example:

• You have hired a similar profile before.
• You know which companies usually produce strong candidates.
• You understand the compensation range.
• You already have relevant people in your network.

And, importantly, there is someone inside the company who knows how to assess whether a candidate is genuinely strong in this role.

If those pieces are already in place, bringing in an agency may add very little. The difficulty starts when one or more of them are missing.

A specialist fintech market can look much wider than it really is.

You may start with everyone carrying the right title on LinkedIn. Then you add experience with a particular licence, product, geography, regulatory environment or business model.

The pool gets smaller very quickly.

If your internal team already knows that pool, keeping the search in-house can work perfectly well. If it has to build that market knowledge from scratch for one critical executive hire, this is where an external agency can become useful.

When a Recruitment Agency Becomes More Useful

One of the biggest differences appears when the company does not yet have a completely clear answer to the question: who exactly should we hire?‍

A company may know what needs to change in the business without knowing which profile will solve it.

You might start by looking for a COO. Once the market is mapped, you may realise that the strongest candidates for the actual problem come from transformation, product or another adjacent background.

Or you may start with one location and discover that the required expertise is far more available elsewhere.

This is one reason executive search usually starts wider than a straightforward recruitment process.

For one Evotym executive search, our Recruitment Partners may review hundreds of potentially relevant profiles before deciding which candidates are genuinely worth presenting to the client.

The point is to understand who is actually available in the market before narrowing the search.

According to our guide to fintech executive search, a typical C-level search takes around 2 to 2.5 months from the first conversation to an offer. During that process, the brief itself can change as the company sees what the market actually looks like.

3 Situations Where an Agency Can Add the Most Value

From our experience, there are 3 situations where bringing in an external recruitment partner becomes particularly useful.

1. You need someone to help the business grow further

Sometimes a company reaches a point where the team that got it this far does not have the experience needed for the next stage – you may need to enter a new market, launch another product or find a new growth direction.

In that case, you usually need someone who has already done something similar elsewhere and can bring that experience into the business.

A specialised recruitment agency can help identify where that expertise exists and which profiles are actually relevant.

2. You're doing something for the first time

This could be applying for a new licence, entering a new regulatory environment, launching a new function or implementing something your current team has never done before.

Here, sourcing is only one part of the challenge. You also need to understand:

• What experience is genuinely necessary?
• Which backgrounds could be relevant?
• What compensation does the market expect?
• How do you assess someone in an area where nobody internally has deep experience?

This is where a recruitment partner can bring useful market knowledge into the search.

3. The expertise doesn't exist internally

Sometimes you need to add a function the company has never had before.

It might be compliance, security, a new commercial function or another specialist area. If nobody in the business has done that job before, assessing candidates becomes harder too.

Finding someone strong is one problem. Understanding what "strong" even looks like for this role is another.

An agency that regularly works with similar profiles can help compare candidates against the wider market and understand what level of experience the role actually requires.

Another Reason to Use an Agency: An Outside View

There is another part of executive hiring that has very little to do with sourcing – hiring teams can change their minds during a search.

Actually, it can be a good thing – meeting candidates can help you understand the role better. But sometimes a hiring manager meets someone they really like as a person and starts moving away from the criteria they originally agreed on.

This is where an external search partner can be useful, because they can ask the right questions and bring the conversation back to what the role actually requires:

• What problem was this executive supposed to solve?
• Which experience did we say was essential?
• Has this candidate actually dealt with something comparable before?
• Do we have enough evidence to make the decision?

This is something Anastasia has specifically highlighted when talking about executive search at Evotym:

"Sometimes a client meets a candidate, really likes them and is ready to move forward. Our job in that situation is also to go back to the original brief and check whether the candidate actually solves the problem the company came to us with".

The right move may be to continue quickly, or to pause and add another case, assessment or reference before making a C-level hire.

That outside perspective can be useful even when the company already has an internal recruitment team.

So, Which Option Is Right for Your Executive Hire?

Before choosing whether to run the executive search internally or bring in an agency, look at three things.

Do you already know this candidate market?

If you have hired similar executives before, know the relevant companies, understand compensation and already have a network in the space, you may have everything you need to run the search internally.

If this is the first time you are entering this talent market, an agency can save you from building that knowledge from scratch.

Can you assess this expertise internally?

Finding a candidate is one thing. Understanding whether they are genuinely strong is another. If someone inside the company has done this work before and knows what to look for, that assessment can stay in-house.

If the whole reason for the hire is that this expertise does not yet exist internally, an external benchmark can be much more useful.

Does your internal team have the capacity to run the search properly?

Executive search requires proactive sourcing, market research, candidate conversations, feedback, follow-ups and coordination with senior decision-makers.

If your internal team has the knowledge and time to do that, keeping the search in-house can work very well.

If not, bringing in an agency may be more efficient than asking an internal recruiter to build a new market and run a complex one-off search alongside their regular hiring.

So, overall, before choosing between the two, ask yourself one more simple question:

Do we already know how to find and recognise the right person for this role?

If the answer is yes, start in-house.

If the answer is no, getting external market expertise early can save a lot of time later.

At Evotym, we run executive searches for fintech companies across Europe and the UK. If you are planning a C-level hire and are not sure which approach makes sense for your role, talk to us. We'll help you understand what the search would actually require before you decide.