The Nashville Business Journal publishes an annual ranking of the largest recruiting firms in the Nashville area by number of retained permanent placements. In 2026, IQTalent earned the #2 spot.
It's an honor to be recognized alongside Nashville's top firms, and it's also a great opportunity to talk about what makes IQTalent's approach to recruiting distinctive. IQTalent operates on an hourly billing model rather than a traditional retained search fee structure. Understanding how that model works, and where it fits in the broader recruiting landscape, is useful context for any organization evaluating how to bring in outside recruiting support.
Retained, contingency, hourly — three recruiting models built for three completely different hiring problems. Here's how to tell them apart.How Recruiting Engagement Models Work
Three approaches, each built for different hiring needs.
The recruiting industry offers several engagement models, each designed to serve a specific type of hiring challenge well.
Retained search is built for high-stakes, senior-level placements. A client engages a firm to conduct a dedicated search for a specific role, typically at the executive or leadership level. The firm is compensated upfront for the search process, reflecting the depth of research, candidate development, and discretion that these appointments require. Caldwell Partners, IQTalent's parent company, specializes in retained executive search for senior leadership and board-level appointments, and this model is ideally suited to that work.
Contingency recruiting serves organizations that want to engage a firm on a per-placement basis. The firm is compensated when a hire is made, typically as a percentage of the new hire's first-year compensation. This works well for roles where the talent pool is accessible and the timeline allows for a placement-driven approach.
Hourly recruiting is where IQTalent operates. Clients engage IQTalent's consultants on an hourly basis to source, screen, and recruit candidates. There are no placement fees, no fixed search retainers, and no long-term contract requirements for on-demand work. Clients pay for the recruiting work performed, with full visibility into how every hour is spent, and they can scale hours up or down as their hiring needs change.
Each model exists because it solves a real problem well. The question for any hiring team is which approach best matches the challenge in front of them.
What Makes IQTalent's Hourly Model Distinctive
Built for the hiring challenges where flexibility and speed matter most.
IQTalent's hourly model was designed for organizations that need professional recruiting capacity they can scale with their business. A few things make it distinctive:
Scalability. Clients can increase hours during a hiring surge and reduce them when the pipeline is full. A company hiring 15 engineers in 90 days engages IQTalent differently than one filling two roles over six months, and the model accommodates both without requiring a new contract or fee structure for each scenario.
No minimums or maximums. There's no required volume commitment. Clients use the hours they need, when they need them.
Full cost transparency. Every hour is tracked and reported. Clients see exactly where their recruiting investment goes: how many hours were spent sourcing, how many on screening, how many on coordination and candidate management.
Dedicated team option. For organizations that want ongoing, embedded recruiting support, IQTalent offers dedicated team engagements where a set number of consultants work alongside the client's hiring team over a defined period. These engagements are still billed hourly, preserving the same transparency and flexibility, while providing the consistency of having a known team integrated into the client's recruiting workflow.
Direct-hire focus. IQTalent is not a staffing agency. The candidates IQTalent sources and presents are hired directly by the client. IQTalent provides the recruiting expertise and capacity; the client builds their own team.
This combination of hourly billing, scalability, and direct-hire focus is what Chris Murdock, IQTalent's co-founder, describes when he says the model can be hard to categorize: "People have always had an interesting time figuring out where to put us, and that's okay. We built the model around flexibility rather than fitting neatly into a traditional category."
People have always had an interesting time figuring out where to put us, and that's okay. We built the model around flexibility rather than fitting neatly into a traditional category.
Chris Murdock, IQTalent's co-founder
Where IQTalent Fits on the Nashville Business Journal List
An hourly model, recognized alongside Nashville's top retained firms.
The Nashville Business Journal ranks recruiting firms in two categories: retained placements and contingency placements. When IQTalent first appeared on the list, the Nashville Business Journal reviewed the hourly model and classified it under retained placements, since clients compensate IQTalent for work before a hire is made. That classification has held for years, including a #1 ranking in 2020.
The #2 ranking in 2026 reflects the volume and consistency of IQTalent's placement activity in the Nashville market. The Nashville Business Journal uses the retained category to classify IQTalent's hourly engagement model, and the ranking reflects what that model delivers: flexibility in how clients engage and scale their recruiting support.
A firm that gets ranked in the "retained" category while billing hourly? That mismatch says more about the industry's categories than it does about the model.A Full-Spectrum Recruiting Partnership
IQTalent and Caldwell Partners together cover every hiring scenario.
As part of Caldwell Partners, IQTalent is one half of a full-spectrum talent acquisition partnership. Caldwell brings deep expertise in retained executive search for senior leadership, C-suite, and board-level appointments. IQTalent brings flexible, hourly recruiting support for the hiring needs that require speed, volume, compressed timelines, and the ability to adjust scope as the business evolves.
Together, they serve organizations across the full range of recruiting challenges: from a single critical leadership appointment to a 50-person hiring sprint across multiple functions. The models complement each other, and clients benefit from having access to both under one roof.
The Nashville Business Journal ranking is a meaningful recognition of what IQTalent has built in Nashville. For organizations exploring their recruiting options, it's also an invitation to learn more about how an hourly model can work alongside, or as an alternative to, the traditional engagement structures they may already know.
