About

We do recruitment
the way it should be done.

Hexford was founded in 2018 to do senior recruitment with substance. We are deliberately small, deliberately specialist, and deliberately honest with both candidates and clients — even when honest is harder than telling people what they want to hear.

Our story

A few principles, held seriously.

Hexford Talent was founded by Sarah Whitfield in 2018, after twelve years in senior recruitment leadership at established firms. The intent was simple: build a senior recruitment business that delivered the substance that bigger agencies promised but rarely produced.

We have grown to three offices and roughly thirty consultants. Every one of our partners has come up through senior recruitment in a specialist discipline; every one is hands-on with active briefs. We are not a holding company, we are not run by a private-equity timer, and we have no intention of becoming either.

The work we do is mostly on the senior end — VPs, Directors, Partners, C-suite — across our four practice areas. We work on a mix of retained, partially-retained, and exclusive contingent engagements. We choose our clients carefully and turn down briefs where we don't think we can deliver something genuinely useful.

Substance over speed

We won't send a CV that hasn't been properly briefed and assessed. We won't run a retained search in three weeks because the client wants it in three weeks. Senior hiring is search work, and we do search work properly.

Honesty as policy

We tell candidates the truth about roles, including the things the client would rather we didn't mention. We tell clients the truth about candidates, the market, and their own brief. The short-term cost of this is occasional; the long-term return is the only reason this firm exists.

Deep, not wide

Four practices. Each led by a partner who has spent their career in the discipline. We will not be the firm you call for a general contingent brief; we will be the firm you call when the substance of the hire matters.

Long over short

We do not chase placements. Our placements come from a network we have spent years building — candidates we placed five years ago who are now hiring, clients who use us again because they have used us before. We optimise for the long relationship, not the immediate fee.

The team