Mining executive search for the board, the executive team and the leaders who run the operation.

The terms overlap. Headhunter is the informal name for an executive search firm. A mining recruiter usually works on contingency, filling roles below executive level from a database and paid only on placement. A retained executive search firm such as Templeton Global Search is engaged exclusively for senior appointments, researches the market for each appointment and is paid in stages.

Retained executive search is an engagement model in which a client commissions one search firm exclusively, on a staged fee, to run a systematic and confidential search for a senior appointment. It differs from contingency recruitment, where several agencies compete on the same role and are paid only on placement. Templeton Global Search works on a fully retained basis only.

Three levels of leadership: board and C-suite (Chair, Non-Executive Director, CEO, CFO, COO), country and regional leadership (Regional President, Country Manager, General Manager), and project and technical leadership (Programme and Project Directors, senior technical leaders) for greenfield, brownfield and mine-related infrastructure.

Every mandate is run personally by the founder, Paul Templeton, who has worked in talent management since 1998 and in retained executive search in mining since 2007, and has completed two hundred and twenty-eight senior placements across forty-three countries.

Five regional practices: Africa; the Americas; Australasia; Eurasia and the former Soviet Union; and the Middle East and Europe. Paul Templeton's completed mandates span forty-three countries on six continents.

The conversation stays confidential. You deal directly with the founder throughout, and nothing is shared with a client without your consent.

With a direct conversation with the founder, followed by an immersive brief: time invested to understand your business, culture and the precise leadership profile required, beyond the position description. Email paul@templetonglobalsearch.com or use the enquiry form.

Retained fees are typically about one third of the appointee's first-year total compensation, staged across the search rather than paid on placement, with expenses agreed in advance and a written replacement guarantee. Board and non-executive mandates are charged as a fixed fee instead. Contingent fees of 15 to 25 per cent of salary pay for a different service, usually without exclusivity, a researched longlist or a meaningful guarantee.

A well-run retained search presents a qualified shortlist within five to six weeks and completes in three to four months. Notice periods, relocation and family moves govern the second half of that timeline, and remote sites or frontier jurisdictions extend it further.

Ask who personally runs the search, for placements comparable to the role and jurisdiction in the last three years, which companies are off-limits, how candidates are assessed beyond interviews, what the fee and guarantee terms are, and for referees from both a client and a placed candidate. Our guide to choosing a mining executive search firm sets out the seven questions and the red flags in full.

A qualified shortlist within five to six weeks and completion in three to four months. Notice periods and relocation govern the second half of that timeline.

Much of the founder's work has been in remote, complex and emerging operations, where the hard judgement is whether a candidate will succeed in that setting. Candidates are approached directly among people already doing the job in comparable conditions.

Approaches are direct and confidential, with no advertising, so the search stays confidential inside your company as well as outside it.

A written replacement guarantee applies to every retained search.

Yes. Paul Templeton's appointments include a Technical Centre of Excellence team in the United Kingdom for a mining major, and successive senior appointments for one operator in Liberia.