In the field of recruitment agencies that match prospective employees up with employers, there are generally two main types of recruitment from the viewpoint of employers – contingency recruitment and retained recruitment. With contingency recruitment, the agency usually gets paid a fee on successful placement, whereas retained recruitment involves a company paying upfront or scheduled fees to the recruitment agency, where the recruitment agency works exclusively to fill a position.
There are many benefits recruitment agencies bring to the table and this article is going to be looking at the key benefits of a retained recruitment deal between agency and employer.
#1 – Retained Recruitment Leads To Greater Commitment
Due to the nature of the retained recruitment deal, where a recruitment agency is exclusively charged with finding an ideal candidate to fill a position and they have been paid a scheduled or upfront fee, as an employer, you’ll receive a stronger commitment. With contingency recruitment, where multiple recruitment agencies are working to find a placement, it can be easy for the agency to simply “walk away” if things become too tricky.
#2 – Increases Your Chances of Finding the Right Applicant
With contingency recruitment, some recruiters might be tempted to send you candidates that only somewhat fit the profile of what you’re looking for, just so they can get paid. Retained recruitment leads to a recruitment agency is more laser-focused on searching for the right candidate, as they feel a greater responsibility to do so. As an employer needing to fill a vacant position, you won’t want to have your time wasted by recruiters sending you candidates that don’t adequately fit the brief, so retained recruitment is your best option to save time and headaches.
#3 – Maintain the Integrity of Your Brand
Retained recruitment has an additional benefit, in that it can help maintain the integrity of your brand and ensure your company is always represented in a positive light. If you have multiple recruitment agencies searching for candidates for your business, you can lose control of how your company is portrayed, whereas the more focused and personal nature of retained recruitment means the agency will have your business and your brand’s best interests at heart. The recruitment firm can really sell your brand to potential candidates and the public at large.
#4 – Ensure More Control of Confidentiality and Discretion
When you’re working exclusively with just one recruitment agency, there is far more assurance of maintaining discretion and confidentiality for your business and its processes and clientele. While this can also be possible using multiple recruitment firms, there is more chance of confidential company information being leaked with the “more hands on deck” approach to recruitment.
#5 – Retained Recruitment Is More Stress-Free
One of the major goals of hiring a recruitment agency to find your potential candidates to fill a job role is to take the pressure off yourself and your staff and free up your time. Otherwise, you may as well handle all the recruitment yourself. When you are dealing with multiple recruitment agencies on a regular basis, you’ll find more of your time being taken up, which defeats the purpose of hiring agencies in the first place. Dealing with just one recruitment agency on an exclusive basis makes for a more stress-free coalition.
#6 – Save Time and Money
Retained recruitment can achieve both of these desired outcomes. The recruitment agency is paid a fee for the task of finding you the right candidate, so you won’t have to spend time doing the recruitment process yourself, or wasting money on placing countless job ads online. Any way you can save time for your business and its employees, that invariably ends up being saving for your business as well. Retained recruitment makes financial sense.
#7 – Build a Mutually Beneficial Relationship
As you work exclusively with a quality recruitment agency, you’ll develop relationships with the agency in general and the people who work there. This can lead to even more productivity and efficiency whenever you have a vacant position that needs to be filled, or filled quickly. A successful business is all about building positive relationships that have mutual benefits for each party.
#8 – More Exclusive In Every Sense of the Word
One complicated scenario you can avoid altogether with retained recruitment is where a potential candidate is approached by two or more recruitment agencies for the same job role. This can lead to the employer looking somewhat desperate to fill a position, and that’s not the image any employer wants to portray. Retained recruitment is exclusive in every way and helps to avoid any complicated or even embarrassing scenarios.
In Conclusion
Retained recruitment has many positives going for it, so rather than spreading the word about your vacant position through multiple recruitment agencies, consider going exclusive and reap the benefits.