When you need top executive talent, you want them to be the very best. You want your new hire to be able to hit the ground running and begin guiding your company like a seasoned professional. And you want them to stick around for the long-term!

That can be a tall order for anyone in the food manufacturing and grocery retail industry. If you’ve made the first step towards working with a recruiter, you might be wondering what kind of a recruiter you should work with. Retained or contingent?

We wanted to share some of the differences between these unique relationships and demonstrate how retaining Curtis Food Recruiters can not only give you and your company the market advantage but can provide peace of mind you can’t get anywhere else!

Retained Recruiting Vs. Contingent Recruiting

To understand what is best for you and your company, it is best to juxtapose the main identifying factors between the contingent and retained recruiting models.

Characteristics of Contingent Recruiting:

• No up-front fees.
• The placement fee is often lower than a retained search fee.
• You only pay a recruiter if they successfully place a candidate in your business.
• Contingent firms will often expedite the hiring process – working to fill the position as the highest priority.
• Contingent search firms have access to a large quantity of candidates actively seeking new employment.

Characteristics of Retained Recruiting:

• Retained recruiters work with their clients from the very beginning of the candidate search. As partners, the client and recruiter develop a recruiting strategy, and process to follow throughout every step of the recruiting project.
• The client benefits from their recruiter’s long-term advocacy within the talent community.
• Often, retained recruiters will work exclusively with their client, offering an unmatched level of service and detail.
• Retained recruiters can afford to have a highly specialized niche industry to which they recruit, such as the food manufacturing and grocery retail industries. They understand the pain points and nuances of their clients better than anybody else.
• Retained recruiters can expedite the hiring process by thoroughly vetting their candidates, saving time by offering quality over quantity.
• Because the client and their recruiter are considered partners, many recruiters will often share their recruiting technology, subscriptions, and sourcing tools with their clients.

Why Only the Best Executive Talent Works With Retained Recruiters

Many candidates who work with contingency firms are often overwhelmed with phone calls from multiple recruiters. Additionally, it is unlikely the candidate will get to meet their recruiter’s client right away. Because of this, answering a call from a contingent recruiter can present the unsavory prospect of more time spent following unpromising leads. 

The best candidates, on the other hand, are extremely discerning when it comes to handing out their resumes. Since confidentiality is key to a higher level of executive recruiting, they won’t want their resume’s distributed without permission. This is why contingency firms simply aren’t in the same orbit as these high-quality candidates.

As your retained recruiter, you’ll have access to a better pool of talent: our trusted network of proven executives with the perfect mission-driven experience, skills, leadership style, and cultural competencies to match your company.

In the same way, retaining Curtis Food makes us your dedicated recruiter, our talent only works with us for a higher, more intimate level of service and professionalism.

When Diversity is a Priority: Choose Retained Recruiting

In order to understand how retained recruiters are able to offer more diverse options, one must understand how executive outreach into underrepresented communities is made.

Diverse executives have heard it all before. They’ve heard about how employers are eager to work with more diverse talent. Employers are after diverse candidates’ ability to provide a different perspective, add more innovative ideas, and round out the talents of their peers, creating a more unified, resilient, and creative leadership team. 

But putting all that into practice is another story altogether. Hiring diverse candidates is one thing. But creating a business culture that nurtures diversity and fosters equity is something entirely different. The problem is, from the outside looking in, it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between the two. 

Because we are retained recruiters, the diverse executives we work with count on us to know our clients through and through. Moreover, they depend on us to be truthful about your organization and their real potential to truly make an impact and succeed.

The very best diverse executives work with retained recruiters for two important reasons:

1. They can expect more candid, inside information from a retained recruiter because of our deeper, closer relationship with clients.
2. Retained recruiters can provide a more thorough and transparent track record of lifting up diverse and underrepresented talent.

When we begin working together on a project, our candidates have access to the fine details of your organization. And with our historical record of success in representing diverse talent, we can truly demonstrate how your opportunity is right for them.

Retained Recruiters Take the Pressure Out of “No Win, No Fee” Recruiting

One thing everyone can agree on – when you need to make a decision about anything, it’s best to have clarity and space to make the right decision. That becomes even more true when you ratchet the stakes higher. And for any company, there may not be any stakes higher than who they hire for executive leadership. 

You may have a fabulous relationship with a contingent recruiter. But there is just no getting around the “no win, no fee” element of contingent recruiting. Simply, if your recruiter doesn’t get their candidate hired, they don’t get paid. 

Retained recruiting eliminates all that in one fell swoop. No pressure. No competition. No confusion or worry that your recruiter is sending you the actual best candidates. And, most importantly, there’s no rush to make an incredibly important decision that requires ultimate clarity and confidence.

Your retained recruiter’s shortlist of candidates comes garnished with all of those luxuries and more: the guarantee that in the highly unlikely case that something should go awry, your partner will be right there for you in a snap. 

The Unique Guarantee of a Retained Recruiter 

What is a guarantee, really?

If you buy a new tv, and the tv doesn’t work, your purchase guarantee means you get a new tv. That is nice and all, but you still have to box up the tv, take it back to the store, and exchange it for another tv (presuming they have your model in stock). In the end, you get the tv you paid for, but not after an unnecessary headache and hassle. 

That is not the case for retained recruiters!

Think of the guarantee of a retained recruiter as the anti-hassle. The key is in two very important components to the relationship you strike in a retained agreement:

1) Accountability is key

Contingent recruiters are simply not held to the same degree of accountability as a retained recruiter. That is because the relationship between a contingent recruiter and their talent is often transactional and informal. There just isn’t the same level of intimacy and trust as the relationship between retained recruiters and their talent.

We are able to proudly call ourselves retained recruiters because when it comes to our talent, the buck stops with us. It’s our reputation and trusting relationship that’s on the line. 

2) Insurance you can count on

The strength and depth of any relationship is rarely put to a full test when everyone’s happy and things are going well. It’s when the unlikely and unexpected occurs you’ll be glad you had the security and resolve of a retained recruiter in your corner. That is why working with a retained recruiter is like buying an insurance policy for your hiring strategy, but better. Your retained recruiter can act with speed and accuracy to provide a seamless solution that is just as good, if not better than your first choice.

That is insurance you can count on to support your hiring strategy.

Why Choose A Retained Recruiter

Working with a recruiter can be a very personal experience. So ultimately, the decision should come down to what’s right for you.

Many employers prefer contingent recruiting because they aren’t looking for a deep, long-lasting relationship with their recruiter. They may prefer a more transactional model in which the recruiter is motivated to work very quickly to complete a project with a short time-to-fill. 

But we’ve found our partners in the food manufacturing and grocery retail industries are looking for the very best management and executive-level professionals. They depend on Curtis Food to provide a different model: that of a high-touch partner who’ll work closely with them every step of the way through the recruitment process. They’re looking for a trusted, long-term recruiter who can ensure the success of their executive hire.

Our retained relationships have meant the world to our clients and have given them the market advantage in sourcing and hiring the very top talent for their company.

We’re excited to talk with you about how we can provide this unique service for your company and how, as your retained recruiters, we can provide a market advantage like nobody else. 

Contact our team at Curtis Food today. We can’t wait to hear from you!