The Benefits of Executive Search vs. Contingency Recruiters for Job Searchers
By: Adele Crane
Tags: Recruitment, Recruitment Process, Sales Recruiters

When its time to start a job search, it is important that you partner with a recruiter to assist you to find the right position.

Stepping into the recruitment arena can be fraught with challenges, and selecting the right partner to find your particular job is a crucial decision.

To provide you with some insight on this often unfamiliar territory, I would like to offer you an insiders view of the type of recruiters out there and how they operate. With this knowledge, you can select a recruitment professional who can assist you in job search and find the notable role you want. It can also give some appreciation for what recruiters do as part of their position.

Recruiters are salespeople looking to generate income from the successful placement of a person in a role. They can earn around 20% of the salary package of the person they place, so the stakes are high, and they look for people that will be easy to place and companies where it is easy to fill roles.

Recruiters need no special training and often are hired due to their industry experience as their firm hopes that will have in-roads into finding suitable roles and candidates. Most of the placements are done on industry experience or previous job title that fits their order. The other common factor is that recruiters have a high turnover of staff themselves. They hire young people with a sense of hunger, and when they discover its no easy job, they move on.

So the first thing you need to do is align yourself with someone who has been around for a little while and show they will be there to assist you in your job search journey.

There are two main types of recruitment — Contingency and Executive Search.

Contingency placements are the majority of the work recruiters do. It is characterised as being given a job order from a company, that will have also been given to other recruitment firms. Its non-exclusive and the race is on to fill the role as quickly as possible. Some candidates will be approached by several companies as their name comes up in database searches. The hiring company may also be looking for a suitable candidate directly. It is a winner-takes-all business environment, and job searches need to act quickly and decisively to remain on the shortlist.

Recruiters will train job seekers on what answers to give hiring company representatives and assist in training them to place them in a winning position. Sounds great as long as you don’t go too far in crossing the lines of real and created experience.

Contingency recruitment is a hard gig for recruiters, and hiring companies can make bad mistakes and decisions as they are hastily pushed for decisions on candidates. For job searchers, you need to be careful that you are not enticed into a role that will only lead to disappointment between yourself and the hiring company, placing you back on the market in a matter of a few short months.

On the hand, there are executive recruiters. This is a more formal business arrangement where the interest of the hiring company and the candidate is of foremost importance. The executive recruiter is hired on a retainer and is the only firm to manage the search process. The recruiter manages all applicants, including ones referred to the company by other employees. The recruiter will be paid an upfront fee to start the search and paid the balance on completion. The fees are about 30% of the successful candidate’s salary package.

The executive recruiter and the company will have a deep and collaborative relationship ensuring the successful candidate will have a good fit with the company, bring the desired skills they are seeking and will enjoy a long association. The executive recruiter is more considered and experienced in hiring top talent.

Retained searches are typically for senior roles in the C-Suite and executive-level personnel; however, there is a trend appearing where business development personnel are securing positions through retained search. Business development personnel have unique skill sets that companies vie to hire, and their value can be equal to that of executive-level personnel.

When selecting your job search partner, consider who will assist you the best. The person with the longer-term view of your career or the person racing to fill a position before someone else wins the race.

If you would like to read more about sales recruitment, go to our Sales Focus Advisory website.