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Is Contingency Recruiting on the Slow Road to Extinction? follow this blog post

posted by on April 19, 2006

There was a very interesting discussion on ERE a couple of months back about whether executive recruiters really recruit anymore, which raises a question as to the future of the recruiting business.  Large shifts in how an industry conducts business tend to take place at a glacial pace and are not always readily apparent while in the midst of such a shift.  Are we in such a place right now?

 

To be successful, contingency recruiters must gravitate toward the easiest to fill positions with the easiest to find candidates.  Why?  No Placement, No Pay.. That?s Why. 

 

However, these easier to fill job orders are getting harder to find since client companies are becoming increasingly sophisticated in using other methods to source candidates for these positions.  At the same time, a company?s more difficult to fill positions are often not being worked on, resulting in a longer time to hire.

 

Are we heading for the day when clients will primarily utilize just two external services to source candidates?  One may be a highly efficient, relatively inexpensive resume sourcing service to find more readily available candidates. The other may be an executive recruiter that still does ?real recruiting? (i.e: networking, cold calling) to find the more difficult passive candidates, but gets paid upfront for their services.

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11 comments

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  • 1 point 3 years ago

    I'm going to agree with Charlotte Manning here. I went exactly through this and it was almost 6 months after I really started. Man did I get an earfull of it. My justification was that the resume looked good and had security clearance as need and that is itself a scarcity. But my guys here told me as politely as posible why the talking has to be done. It was really an eye opener. Now I go through a routine of anything between 30 to 45 min with every candidate and my guys again have shown me the diff. My performance increased. One thing that happens when it comes to agency is that they play the number game so much that they forget quality fortunately my guys here are not like that. I've not hit the job board for almost 5 months now I had a good mentor. But I seriously doubt that most recruiters get any mentor like mine. The art is down the line but there will be survivors.......

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    I agree that many of the new recruiters do not have the skills that the older recruiters were taught. Many of them never even contact the candidate on the phone and just use email as a contact method. Also, many of them use job boards exclusively to find candidates. It is a shame but the art of recruiting has been largely lost at the agency level, atleast in San Diego.

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    Progressive firms will have solid internal/corporate recruiters as well as a limited number of contingency firms as vendors. Ideally, the TPRs get the immediate needs, the tough to fills, the purple squirrels, or help on the massive hiring initiatives that strikes a balance with the internal recruiters work load. True TPR firms, those that recruit passive candidates and stay off Monster, will always be needed.

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    From where I sit, I see those "easy to fill" positions as freebies that clients hand you because they:

    1. Do not know the position is easy to fill. 2. Do not have the staff on hand to even devote a few minutes to sourcing on it. 3. Have an excellent relationship with the recruiter and do not mind passing on an easy project every so often. 4. Have a really terrible recruiting team that scares away all candidates.

    I feel that in all of the above mentioned cases, the recruiter really IS providing a very valuable service. This would imply that as long as there are companies which fall into one of the four groups, there will be a job for those "internet recruiters."

    However, as Karen briefly mentioned, the best advantage that a big recruiting shop can have over a company is specialization. While it may be difficult for a smaller company to penetrate markets, a niche recruiter can play on experience and whip out that candidate (and even wonder why on earth they were being paid in the first place--that was such an "easy" search!!)

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    Martin,

    Not making an argument for the end of TPRs; quite the opposite. If anything, going forward TPRs that survive in the new internet age of recruiting will be even more valued by client companies.

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    From corps who already have full-boat near ERP ATS or TMS systems who are building internal recruiting groups functioning like TPR's; and from whence is that talent being found? In the TPR industry.

    This is an old chestnut; as long as ABC corp can't/won't directly recruit from XYZ corp, and vice versa, there will be a need for TPR. As long as smart and connected TPR's know more/faster the things that are really going on (people sure as heck won't talk to their own management / stakeholders), there will always be a need for TPR's. As long as firms meet unusual events and changes, there will be a need for TPR. As long as building major (expensive) recruiting skills and networks for targeted occasional use remains the pattern, there will always be need for TPR's. After all, is it better to rent a car at your destination or ship your own there or buy one on the spot? I think we know the answer to that one.

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    According to Karen -

    TPR's actually have to be forced to contact candidates? WOW! Sounds like a market opporunity for us.

    I must agree with Jeremy but broaden the base. There are the recruiters who don't do their jobs (the ones that are consultants/fast food workers/corporate stiffs when the market is down) and the good ones (most of which participate in ERE, network, cold call etc). The recruiters who don't do their jobs will be eliminated, we all know who they are. The others will thrive.

    By the way - since when is someone considered an executive recruiter as being someone who cold calls? What ever happened to "recruiting executives"? TPR/Contingency recruiters must really do nothing! I am in the wrong business ;)

    Even if the market shifts, you do your job and do it well then you will be fine.

    Mark Newman www.hirevue.com "Adding accountability to your agencies" - what do you think of the new line?

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    No ...IF you are Lou Adler, Craig Silverman, Jason Davis, or Keith Neighbors. Only TPR's that come to mind w/ skillsz!

    ~jer www.o0.typepad.com utopia ftw

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    Karen,

    As companies require more from their TPR's, there will naturally be less TPRs that meet these requirements. Therefore these TPR's will be in more and more demand with the ability to work under their preferred terms which may or may not include contingency work.

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    Keith,

    I completely agree that, if anything, 'real recruiters' will become even more valuable over time and therefore have more pricing power. This may include arrangements where instead of working on positions on a full contingency basis, they may require money upfront to work on positions.

    I do, however, also believe that recruiters that rely heavily on internet tools to locate candidates will have a lot more trouble going forward.

  • 1 point 3 years ago

    Well easy requiremnts will always pop up once in a while but one cannot really live on it. Contingency recruiting will never cease to exist jsut that it will become tougher. There is no real alternative to "real recruiting" if thats the term we want to use. I rather feel that sourcing cheap will be extinct as sooner or later the client is going to be fed up of being bombarded with resumes they cannot use.

    Yes the time to fill a position will Definitely increase and this is why only real recruiters will survive. Because quality won't and can't be sacrificed