What’s the difference between retained and contingent recruitment?
The simplest answer?
Contingency recruitment: you generally pay when the recruiter successfully fills the role.
Retained search: you commit to one search partner and pay for the search process, normally in agreed stages, rather than only paying for the final CV that gets hired.
Neither model is automatically better.
Despite what some recruiters will tell you.
They solve different problems.
Executive search is typically exclusive and involves deeper identification, assessment and selection work; industry guidance distinguishes that from contingency recruitment, which traditionally focuses more heavily on identifying and presenting candidates against agreed criteria.
When does contingency recruitment make sense?
Quite a lot of the time.
If you’re hiring a reasonably well-understood role and there’s a healthy candidate market, you may not need a full retained search.
For example:
Marketing Executive.
Account Manager.
PPC Manager.
PR Account Executive.
Marketing Manager.
The title isn’t the deciding factor, but if the market is accessible and the business can move quickly, contingency can be a perfectly sensible solution.
The recruiter finds somebody.
You hire them.
The recruiter gets paid.
Simple.
Where can contingency go wrong?
When five agencies all get the same vacancy on Friday afternoon.
Suddenly everybody is racing to LinkedIn.
Candidates get approached four times about the same job.
Recruiters become incentivised to get a CV in first, rather than understand the person best.
The client receives 25 CVs.
Everyone looks very busy.
And somehow nobody is particularly happy. 😂
That’s contingency at its worst.
Good contingency recruitment doesn’t have to work like that.
But the commercial model can encourage speed and volume if it isn’t managed properly.
What changes with retained search?
Commitment.
From both sides.
The client commits to the search partner.
The recruiter commits proper time and resource to the assignment.
That gives you space to:
Interrogate the brief.
Map the market.
Research target companies.
Approach passive candidates properly.
Understand motivations.
Assess people in more depth.
Challenge assumptions.
Manage a longer or more complex process.
And represent the opportunity consistently in the market.
You’re not simply paying for a CV.
You’re paying for the search.
When would I recommend retained search?
Usually when one or more of these apply:
The role is senior.
It’s commercially important.
The market is narrow.
The search is confidential.
You’ve already tried and failed to recruit it.
The strongest candidates are unlikely to be applying.
The brief needs shaping.
The wrong hire would be particularly expensive.
Or you genuinely want somebody to map the market rather than wait for applications.
A Managing Partner, CMO or Marketing Director search is an obvious candidate.
But I’ve also retained roles below that level where the circumstances justified it.
Again:
The job title isn’t the brief.
Does retained search guarantee a better candidate?
No.
And I’d be suspicious of anybody telling you it does.
It gives the recruiter a better process and commercial environment in which to conduct a thorough search.
What they do with that is another question entirely.
A bad recruiter with a retainer is still a bad recruiter.
They’ve just been paid earlier. 😂
Ask how the search will actually work.
Who is doing it?
How will the market be mapped?
How will candidates be assessed?
How often will you receive updates?
What happens if the brief changes?
What’s guaranteed?
What happens if the successful candidate leaves?
Those questions matter more than whether somebody has written “Executive Search” in gold lettering on their website.
What does Essential Resourcing do?
Both.
I’m not interested in forcing every client into retained search because it sounds more premium.
For some roles, senior or specialist contingency recruitment is absolutely fine.
For important leadership searches, retained or exclusive work can produce a much better process.
And occasionally Strategic Interim is the better answer than either.
The first job is working out what you’re actually trying to solve.
Then choose the recruitment model.
Retained or contingency?
A very simple rule of thumb:
If you need somebody to find candidates, contingency may be enough.
If you need somebody to properly search a market and help you make an important hiring decision, retained becomes much more interesting.
If you’re unsure which route your role needs, give me a shout.
I’ll tell you which I’d use.
Even if it’s the cheaper one.
Sense-check your search.