Why Contingency Recruiting Is Not Helping You Find The Right Talent

The Grading System - The Iceberg & The House For Sale

Every typical contingent recruiter works between 5, 10, 15 jobs at any one time.

Every contingent recruiter, working on a no win no fee basis has got to balance the risk of those jobs that they are working on and has some kind of grading system to help them prioritize and focus on jobs they are most likely to place.

So, an ‘A’ grade job would be a fantastic company, great brand, brilliant location, really sexy job with a really communicative client and it’s an easy to fill, maybe exclusive.

Anything that starts to get a bit harder, more niche, it’s difficult skillset, it’s a challenging location or it’s an unknown company starts to go down the list of priorities.

If there’s competition involved, it tends to move even further down the list because it’s a higher risk to spend time on, less likely to result in a fee.

Usually, without realizing this, Clients make the mistake of thinking that by sharing it out between multiple agencies what they’re doing is duplicating effort.

But actually what they’re doing is diluting the effort that they’re getting from each and every recruiter.

Then, when you realize that:

30% of any given talent pool is active. In much the same way that 30% of the iceberg is above the water.

This 30% are candidates who will apply to an advert, who will reply to a LinkedIn message, who will reply to an email.

So, on a contingent basis, with limited time to risk, you, and every other recruiter typically engages with that visible 30 or 40% of the talent.

The majority of candidates in any given talent pool are not active. They won’t reply to an advert or an email or a LinkedIn message,

Unfortunately, in a contingent process, 60-70% of the talent pool goes unspoken to, because they haven’t responded to initial approaches.

Also unfortunately, it’s often that SAME 30/40% that gets approached

Imagine What Impact This Has...

Imagine you drive past a house and there are multiple for sale signs outside. What does that make you think and what perception do you have of that house?

That’s exactly what happens when you’ve got two, three or four different agencies working on the same assignment.

When you also consider that contingent recruiters have to work fast. Really fucking fast. As soon as they come across a candidate that looks right and is a bit interested, they have to get their cv straight over NOW before anyone lese does, otherwise the competition will get their first and they will get the fee.

How much time does that allow the recruiter to qualify and assess that candidate. How much time is there to make sure that the candidate actually has the right skills for the job and has fully explored and considered the opportunity. Fucking none. No time for that.

When you consider these things, it makes you realize it is NO WONDER the contingent process falls down.

Definition of ‘Contingent’ Means BY CHANCE