Recruiter's Workshop: Thoughts about Contingency Searches

There are only a few conditions under which I would consider accepting a contingency search today. Frankly, contingency searches are to me the equivalent of neanderthals living in our modern world. Evolution has passed them by yet they are still strangely, perversely here.

Anyone who has been a third party recruiter has probably been exposed to the world of contingency searches. For those of you who are not in recruiting or HR, a contingency search is a model for working with outside, or third party firms, that promises a placement fee provided that the hiring company extends an offer and it's accepted to one of the third party's candidates.

The idea of a contingency agreement sounds great in theory. In an ideal world, the recruiter quickly and efficiently identifies the right candidate, the hiring company has an effective and timely hiring process, the candidate gets hired, and the recruiter gets the fee. Unfortunately, we live in a world that's far from ideal. Searches in this market are complex. The ability to search for candidate qualifications with pinpoint accuracy has resulted in highly specialized requirements from companies. Understaffed companies seldom have an effective or timely hiring process. And tight budgets tend to ensure that offers are not extended in a timely fashion.

Contingency Searches A Sucker's Game?
It makes far more sense for third party recruiters to take on fixed fee sourcing projects or full blown retainer searches. Otherwise, you could spend months working on a role and never see one cent for it. Yes, it happens. Yes, it has happened to me. And, yes, it's the reason why lots of recruiters are impatient, cynical, hard-drinking bastards in their off hours. Journalists and police officers have nothing on recruiters.

That being said, under what circumstances would I consider taking on a contingency search? Let me suggest a few situations:

• You know the hiring manager or internal recruiter really well.
• You have worked with the company before and you're a trusted advisor (as opposed to a vendor).
• You set an expectation that it is not your top priority (I'll help if I can).
• You create a strict service level agreement (I'll write another post about this later).
  
• You have a solid community of candidates for this requirement (better yet, it's your specialty).

Those are the only situations that come to mind for me, but I'm just a simple caveman.

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer @ Yahoo! Video

Have you worked on a contingency search recently? Under what circumstances will you or your firm accept a search of this nature? Please tell about it in the comments section.