Marketing Recruiters and Headhunters: 14 Firms Compared

A client testimonial on 24 Seven's homepage (opens in a new tab), from the creative director of an unnamed fintech company, says the firm supported the business for over two years while its in-house creative agency grew from two people to fifteen. The testimonial concerns creative staff more than marketing roles.

Its marketing specialty page lists roles in brand, digital and product marketing management, paid media, SEO, email and social, and content. Its hiring page (opens in a new tab) says freelancers can often be placed within days and can later be converted to full-time, and that cost depends on the role and experience. 24 Seven also runs Marketers That Matter, a community for marketing leaders, and McKinley Marketing Partners describes itself as a 24 Seven company.

The Minnesota firm says it has made 5,000+ placements across industries and worked with 700+ companies over more than 35 years. None of the testimonials on its permanent search page (opens in a new tab) mentions a marketing role. That page lists marketing roles from coordinator to VP of Marketing, including brand, demand generation and marketing automation, and reported an average of 30 days to a shortlist in October 2026.

Celarity describes its replacement guarantee in two ways. Its guarantee page (opens in a new tab) sets out a sliding fee waiver: the whole fee for a replacement in the first three months of a recruited hire, half in months four to twelve and 10% from one to five years. Executive searches get a full waiver for six months, then the same 50% and 10% steps. The permanent search page's FAQ instead says that if a placement does not work out within the applicable guarantee period, which it describes as up to five years, the firm re-runs the search at no additional cost.

Everforth Creative Circle's case archive (opens in a new tab) includes staffing for the in-house creative agency of an unnamed luxury automotive brand: web designers, traffic managers, digital project coordinators, art directors, account managers and copywriters, scaled up and down with seasonal work. Staffing is one of four services beside embedded studios, consulting and marketing technology.

Its staffing and recruiting page offers freelance, permanent and managed staffing. The marketing roles it lists include brand manager, marketing director, email marketing and marketing automation managers, media planner and SEO specialist.

On the firm's reviews page (opens in a new tab), Carol Gutierrez, president of David Bayer, thanks the team for hiring a Director of Marketing Automation. Other client reviews, without company names, describe an SEO specialist placed with an agency and two strong candidates found for one role.

The Denver-based firm recruits by channel: SEO, paid search, email, content, influencer, video, Amazon and conversion optimization, plus marketing leadership and executive roles. Its homepage reported a 30 to 45 day average time to hire in October 2026, 5 to 10 qualified candidates per role and a 97% offer acceptance rate. The FAQ (opens in a new tab) describes a contingent contract, where candidates may also be shared with other clients, and an exclusive contract paid at the start, after a set number of candidates and at placement. It says agencies typically charge between 15% and 20% of first-year salary. That describes agencies in general; the FAQ does not give its own rate. Its hiring page (opens in a new tab) also offers contract professionals.

McKinley's Direct Marketing Analysis case (opens in a new tab), published in 2014, describes supplying a marketing analysis consultant to an unnamed financial services company to build an advertising effectiveness database. The client extended the project and eventually hired the consultant full-time. The company is part of 24 Seven and says it has more than 29 years of marketing recruiting experience.

Its talent page (opens in a new tab) covers contract, freelance, direct-hire and project-based talent across communications, content, creative services, digital and product marketing, research and analytics, and traditional marketing. Its direct-hire page (opens in a new tab) describes in-person screening for fit, confidential searches and check-ins after placement. Fees and guarantees are not published on the pages read.

Robert Half's marketing and creative staffing page, whose contract and full-time services were formerly The Creative Group, gives four client examples without names, all creative or production work. In one, a recently acquired software company hired a contract project manager for its rebrand; in another, a furniture retailer hired a junior designer within 24 hours. It reports thousands of marketing and creative professionals placed annually.

The page names growth and product marketing managers among the marketing roles and offers contract, full-time and retained executive search through 300+ locations. It says it can often help an employer hire in as little as 48 hours. Fees are not stated.

A manager of recruiting quoted on TorchLight's homepage says the team used the firm for at least five mid-to-senior searches, each ending in a hire. A director of marketing operations calls it the most responsive and effective of the search firms used over 20 years. The testimonials give first names and titles and leave out company names.

TorchLight was founded by Heidi Parsont in 2012 and describes its recruiters as former marketers. Its hiring page (opens in a new tab), read in October 2026, offers contract staffing, with candidates in 48 to 72 hours for most roles, fractional talent, full-time recruiting and executive search. It reports a 98% placement retention rate and a 33-day average time to fill direct hires, without defining either.

A hiring manager at ROI DNA says on 80Twenty's testimonials page (opens in a new tab) that the firm has filled "countless roles, from Client Services to Marketing" over almost two years. Other testimonials come from hiring managers at Softbank, SupplyFrame and Rentlytics.

80Twenty recruits for sales, marketing, creative and customer success, manager to C-suite. Its marketing page lists roles from demand generation, lifecycle and field marketing managers to VP of Marketing and CMO. The client FAQ (opens in a new tab), read in October 2026, says permanent hires, executive searches included, are 100% contingent with no retainer, carry a 100-day free replacement guarantee, and that in most cases candidates start arriving within 24 to 48 hours. The homepage gives 30 to 45 days as the average time to fill. Temporary staff are billed at an hourly rate.

KAS says over 200 companies use it for digital marketing recruitment and that over 90% return. It publishes two marketing case studies without client names: a search for a marketing leader (opens in a new tab) at a defense technology company launching a new consulting service, and an SEO lead for an online travel company (opens in a new tab). Its homepage quotes Kevin Kirby of T-Mobile Business USA on the executive recruiting team's follow-up.

The recruiting FAQ (opens in a new tab) gives the most complete published terms in this list. In October 2026 it said the fee is usually 19% to 22.5% of base compensation. The deposit, usually "a few thousand dollars", can be refunded in full on request within 45 calendar days if the right applicant has not been found. Hires carry a 180-day replacement guarantee, and contracts have no exclusivity clause. It also says prescreened candidates should start arriving within a few business days. The marketing page lists roles from paid ads and SEO specialists to marketing director.

Ariella Shoham, CMO of C8 Health, says on the firm's marketing recruitment page that, after more than a decade of working with Sales Talent, it is "the first and only recruiting firm I turn to" for marketing talent. Troy Thibodeau, CMO of Lightspeed, describes a data-driven, targeted sourcing process.

The Seattle firm recruits sales, customer success and marketing roles; its marketing page lists product, demand generation, digital, content and brand marketing, marketing managers, directors, VPs of Marketing and CMOs. For 2025 it reports an average of 9.63 days to deliver the candidate a client hired and 3.49 candidates interviewed per search. Its recruiters spent an average of 62 hours on each search. The page gives these as averages for its searches in general, with no marketing-only figures. Its homepage (opens in a new tab) offers contingency recruiting and separately describes retained searches for sales roles, so confirm the engagement model for a marketing hire. Fees and guarantees are not stated on the pages read.

Alpha Apex Group's marketing recruitment page reported firm-wide figures in October 2026: 2,000+ placements worldwide and a 43-day average time to fill for full-time hires. The same page says new candidates arrive in the hiring manager's inbox within 72 hours, without stating when that clock starts or which searches it covers. None of these is identified as a marketing figure. A "Trusted by the best" logo wall shows companies such as AWS, Meta, Siemens and Zendesk without saying what work or roles they hired for, and the page names no marketing client or placement.

The page describes candidate profiling and matching for marketing professionals. A separate CMO search page (opens in a new tab) offers retained executive search for chief marketing officers, and the firm also offers RPO, fractional executives and staffing. CMO is the only marketing title named on the pages read. Agree the roles, search model and fee directly.

More than 1,500 searches for senior corporate and marketing communications professionals, by Heyman's own count on its clients page (opens in a new tab), make up its record in this field. The titles it lists as placed include Chief Marketing Officer, VP Marketing and Communications and Director, Marketing. Jennifer Temple, identified there as HPE's chief marketing and communications officer, describes the firm's work from the candidate's side. Its homepage says 54 of the Fortune 100 prefer it when hiring senior communication leaders, and reports a five-year average tenure for placements made in the last ten years.

The New York firm says it focuses exclusively on communications, corporate affairs, marketing, government relations and investor relations. Its marketing practice covers brand, customer communications, analytics, social and digital, influencer and content marketing. Fees are not published on the pages read.

More than 300 CMO searches and over 400 other senior marketing leadership hires are completed, according to MarketPro's executive search page. Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association, and Amelia Manning of Southern New Hampshire University each welcome a hire made through the firm. The page lists organizations under its placement experience, including Home Depot, Colgate-Palmolive, Delta and Medtronic.

The firm says every recruiter on its executive search team is a former marketer and that it delivers marketing talent from senior manager to CMO. Its process maps about 175 leaders, interviews roughly 75 and usually presents six to seven finalists; its methodology page said in October 2026 that it fills key marketing roles in approximately 10 to 12 weeks. The methodology page (opens in a new tab) describes a "performance-based" payment model in place of retained or contingent fees, says more than 98.4% of its candidates stay and adds "We guarantee it", without stating the fee or the guarantee's terms.

MarketerHire's homepage credits its marketers with results at named companies, such as KPMG and Instacart, without saying whether the work was done through MarketerHire. It reports 30,000+ matches and 7,000+ customers across all its roles.

The marketplace matches vetted freelance and fractional marketers, on average within 24 to 48 hours. Its homepage FAQ says engagements are month-to-month with 30 days' notice to cancel and include a two-week satisfaction trial. The FAQ page (opens in a new tab) describes that trial as fully refundable and billed at project kick-off, and says the firm has placed people from its network in full-time roles, without stating a conversion fee.