Breaking free from contingency: The retained recruitment revolution

For years, contingent recruitment has been the only way that recruiters have operated. No one wants to work in a contingent manner, and no one likes the contingent model, yet everyone does it. But, there is another way.

You may have heard of this wonderful thing called retained recruitment. There are many benefits to retained recruitment. Below I will look at some benefits to the 3 key stakeholders of the recruitment process, the recruiter, the client, and the candidate.

The recruiter

This one is easy, you are getting money from the client before you have done any of the work. You are getting a guaranteed commission from the role. You are a step closer to hitting your target without making any placements. The benefits for the recruiter don’t stop here.

As the client has already paid a fee upfront, they are far more committed to the process. This means that as a recruiter, you will find it easier to book calls with the client and get feedback from them. This makes working the role far easier and increases your chance of finding the best candidate, and the candidate being offered the role.

Because of this, it means that by working retained, you will have a vacancy fill rate far above the industry average of 30%. Retained recruiters have a fill rate between 95% - 100%! Which means that you can work fewer roles and bill more money.

The client

One of the issues recruiters have when selling retained recruitment is that they don’t see why a client would pay money upfront to a recruiter when so many will work contingent. So why would they?

There are a few reasons why clients would want to agree to retained recruitment. Firstly, they have to juggle CVs from multiple recruiters on all of their roles, which can get confusing. By working retained, they will only need to deal with one recruiter, which will reduce the workload and stress on them.

A second point on dealing with multiple recruiters on a contingent basis is duplicate CVs.

When working with multiple recruiters, the chances are, that the client will receive the same CV multiple times. This can make the process tricky if the client doesn’t have an organised system to deal with CV tracking.

The next reason for clients agreeing to retained recruitment is the fact that contingent recruitment quite often doesn’t work. As stated earlier, when working contingent, only 30% of vacancies will be filled. One of the reasons for this is the fact that recruiters will constantly be focusing on the return on their investment. The investment is generally their time. If they aren’t getting quick results, then they will stop working the vacancy and move to the next one. This means that the client is now sat there with vacancies that they think are being worked, but are not.

With contingent recruitment being a fastest finger-first product, recruiters can fall into the trap of sending CVs that aren’t quite at the level the client is looking for. By agreeing to work retained, all of these issues are dealt with.

The candidate

The candidate always seems to be the forgotten party in the negotiation of terms. If you have ever used a recruiter who is working in a contingent capacity, you will understand the frustration that they feel. They can have a lack of communication from the recruiter, so they have no idea if they were successful or if the role is still open.

This lack of communication is due to the fact that some recruiters don’t want to ‘waste’ their time with candidates that they won’t make money from. This leads to candidates having a negative view of the recruiter and client.

When working retained, you will have higher commitment from the client and therefore be able to provide better service to the candidates. This will reflect well on the client as the process has run smoothly and made a great first impression.

When you start to look at retained recruitment, there are far more reasons to start working this way. It has multiple benefits for everyone involved.