Contingent Vs Retained Recruitment Coaching, Thursday March 30th @ Noon Eastern

I'm more than excited to catch up Thursday March 30th at Noon eastern to go through contingent vs retained searches.

There has been a fascinating amount of debate on this topic. Some people act like retained means you're automatically better than a contingent recruiter when I argue being one or the other is severely limiting in today's marketplace, full of variety, option, and customer customization.

What I believe in is always a blended approach, which helps you offer more choices to your customer base, winning more market share instead of limiting yourself arbitrarily.

Regardless of pay grade, level of hire (executive or otherwise), retained and contingent are TWO models that you can leverage any given time, better yet, use them against each other to get what you want out of every client engagement and contract.

I personally believe it is critical to understand BOTH models to find the right solution for your clients and their searches, as no two searches and clients are exactly the same.

In the coaching, I'll be breaking down these concepts:

??Contingent searches actually lead to more flexibility on time and candidate utilization

If you can corner a market, retained is extremely limiting because if forces you to prioritize certain clients' best interests above others, including that of your candidates and of other clients.

This actually has a potentially negative financial impact on your business as you're not allowed to react quickly to rapid market conditions in a self-serving way.

Here's an example:

Right after you sign a retainer, the client goes into a hiring freeze, freezing your search as a byproduct.

Top talent is freaking out and will use other recruiters to move, but since you got paid a portion of the fee, you can't work with their talent who are passively looking to leave bc it's technically going against non-solicitation clauses. This is one in many ways retained searches may cap your financial opportunity.

Here's another example:

You sign-on a retainer thinking the client is sane and had the right intentions. Reality proves otherwise; partly why they signed you is to explicitly stop you from poaching their staff. Either way, you've now married yourself to one year of non-poaching when everyone on that team is desperate to leave, allowing other recruiters to profit.

This isn't even including the hassle of how time consuming retainers are from an admin perspective, especially if you have the pleasure of dealing with a finicky, micromanaging client.

??You can leverage contingent to sell retained and vice versa!

If you want higher fees, you can create a discounted or premium retained approach - I've seen it done both ways. And you can juxtapose it with contingent searches. You can leverage the models against each other.

Again, depending on your business needs and your ideal outcome, you can present options to ideally corner your clients into agreeing to the structure that you preferred to begin with. That's why it's actually critical to leverage options as part of the sale process.

The coaching will cover the SELLS of a retained search and contingent searches - both have their pros and cons that are worth covering.

??Setting expectations and confirming with legal jargon

In general, I think it makes sense to come up with contingency plans (no pun intended) of how searches may go, retained or otherwise.

If a search is canceled, what fee is the client liable for? If a search is put on hold, what should happen? If a search is still ongoing but candidates are just not coming to fruition in 3-6 months, what will the recruiter do? If search parameters shift, how does that impact the search process/fee?

Oftentimes, it's the worst case scenario that will tank your reputation and wallet if you don't handle these issues presciently and clearly. Better to cover the 'what if's" sooner rather than later.

In Conclusion

Recruitment is a creative, malleable, and negotiable business. Leverage that flexibility to come up with win-win scenarios to make sure you're doing the best for yourself, your clients, and your candidates.

Thursday's coaching on March 30th is available here for you to sign-up. See you there soon!