Company Updates

5 reasons why retained recruitment just makes sense

September 1, 2021
Josh Greatrix

Josh Greatrix

Josh Greatrix is Divisional Manager for our Management & Central Operations team. He specialises in recruiting for a range of permanent project management, mid to senior-level management, asset manager roles in the Facilities Management sector.

You need a vacancy filling fast. So what do you do?

Call as many recruiters as you can to get them to fill the role, obviously. After all, you want as many people on the case as possible. And a bit of competition never goes amiss, right?

But what if you’ve been hurting your chances by doing this? What if asking numerous different companies to compete for your work isn’t conducive to getting the best results?

Well of course I’d say that – it’s in our best interest to ask you to work with us on a retained basis, isn’t it? Well yes, but the thing is, it’s in your best interest too.

Here are 5 reasons why working with recruiters on a contingent basis isn’t as smart as you think:

Retained recruitment interview

Retained recruitment means full attention

When you have a retainer with a recruitment company, you instantly become their top priority, every time. No matter what else comes in, you’ll be getting our full attention. While it may seem like a recruiter will work harder or faster for you if there is competition, the opposite is actually true. If they are working on a contingent basis, they are less likely to give you their best work. 

Why would they, when there’s no guarantee they’ll get paid? When a consultant is working on a retained basis, they’re going to put their time and energy into doing the best job they can for you.

Attention to detail

A retained partnership means attention to detail. They key benefit to a retainer is time. You become our partner, so we’ll be able to take the time to learn about you. Well get to know your workplace culture. We’ll be able to spend time listening to your goals for the business and the role. We’ll work with you to help craft the perfect job description and advert. We’ll use our market expertise and knowledge of your company to turn that ad into the most attractive offer.  The better we understand the role and your organisation, the more closely we can align a candidate to your needs.

Head-hunting

Contingency puts pressure on your recruitment partners. And not the good kind of pressure. When we work on a retained basis we can dedicate more time to the search. And more time means we can better utilise all our tools and networks on your behalf. Rather than a quick keyword search of the database, we can put our time and effort into headhunting the perfect candidate. When we’re working on the vacancy exclusively, we can tap into the passive market, knowing we won’t be wasting their time. 

contingent recruiter interviewing

Support throughout the process

And it’s not just time during the search that we can dedicate. When have a retainer with the client, we are able to do full shortlisting and screening of candidates. We can send you recorded pre-interviews with each candidate. We can assess skills, set up aptitude tests and check references all on your behalf. That can reduce the amount of time you're involved in the process, limiting it to the interviews and final decision.

Getting your time back

When you’re working on a contingent basis, you have to brief the role to each recruiter. You have to receive updates from each of them. You have to sift through all the CVs they send and make a shortlist from them. You have to arrange interviews with different recruiters for the candidate on your shortlist. You have to update each recruiter when you’ve made your decision. More of your time gets sucked into the recruitment process. Or you can have one, meaningful conversation with your exclusive recruitment partner, get great service and get back to your job, leaving the rest to us. Working with multiple recruiters is far more time consuming for you than working with one.

So, could retained be the answer for you?

I get the logic behind hedging your bets with more than one recruiter, I do. But it’s not in your best interest. You’ll get better and quicker results by forming a retained partnership with a company you trust to do their homework. Someone who will work as an extension of your in-house team, to give you the best quality service.

Why not give it a go and see the difference for yourself?