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Why is retained search better than contingent? Let’s first break down how you make a search successful:
👉Learning and adopting a client’s culture, brand, and voice.
👉Familiarizing yourself with their product and benefits.
👉Understanding the value they bring to employees and potential hires.
👉Articulating these aspects in a manner consistent the hiring managers, executives, and HR.
👉Gaining specialized knowledge of your industry and skill set.
👉Qualifying hiring requirements on a granular level. Beyond the words in the job description.
👉Partnering with the hiring managers to create candidate personas and ideal hiring profiles.
👉Using those personas to construct a targeted company and skill based sourcing strategy.
👉Vetting candidates per the agreed upon requirements.
👉Communicating the real time candidate market details to the client for any necessary adjustments.
👉Building real, human relationships with candidates to understand their interests and concerns.
👉Understanding the client’s interview process to set appropriate candidate expectations. Ensuring a positive candidate experience.
👉Advising clients when their process sucks.
It’s a lot of work.
It’s so much work that no one in their right mind would do all this without some sort of buy-in from their client.
The other part needed to make a search successful:
👉Not cutting and running at the first sign of a difficult search. (The M.O. for contingent firms who say yes to every potential client willing to sign an agreement.)
Some companies aren’t sure if they really need help. They just want to see candidates. Just in case. So not making a commitment is ideal for them.
We tell those companies no. All the time. It’s not because we don’t want to help. It’s because we save our time for clients who know they need the help.
I can’t write about this topic without mentioning my favorite quote from Mitch Sullivan:
"The difference between contingency and retained recruiting is do you want me to maybe fill it or definitely fill it?”
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