Our Retained Search Service

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In today’s “risk averse” market, partnering with the right recruitment agency is arguably equally as important as finding the right candidate. Given that a significant proportion of recruitment agencies work on a contingent (‘success only’) basis, employers can at this point be faced with a bewildering range of recruiters, options and standards. Ultimately, this begs the important question: “Should an employer utilise the services of one recruitment firm or numerous”?

Many clients feel that by casting their net far and wide and instructing multiple recruiters on one brief, increases their chances of finding the right candidate. However, this approach can potentially be detrimental and quite damaging to the employer. Certainly, if a recruiter happens to have a candidate on its database that fulfils all of the criteria for the role, then the employer may have the ideal solution; however if this is not the case, the client may face an endless stream of unsuitable candidates from a variety of different sources and dedicate time to sift each of the applications. You then find yourself wasting valuable resources in screening / interviewing unsuitable candidates.

Candidates who have come via a contingent recruiter are typically looking at multiple opportunities at any given time. Then of course you need to factor in the chance that you may lose your chosen individual to another company / competitor and the whole process becomes much more complex and the risk that the vacancy still remains unfilled, becomes much greater. There is then the added risk that you also hire someone who doesn’t quite meet the original criteria, as you may have been led to believe that there are no suitable alternatives in the market at that time, as the issue of getting the role filled becomes more and more critical.

The key benefits of clients working exclusively retained with Probus on a search basis are that only suitable candidates, from both a professional and cultural perspective, are submitted for the role rather than candidates who are merely languishing on a database and have had their CVs sent out to many organisations. If we are indeed instructed on a retained basis, we are able to combine suitable ‘active’ candidates with those that have been proactively sourced from our network, thus offering our clients the choice of the best that is ‘in the market’ ​rather that what is ‘on the market’​.

We don’t dispute that contingent recruitment does work, we operate this method ourselves, however it should be remembered that while this may work once, there are no guarantees that it will again. The safest and most efficient approach is to retain a recruiter as the time invested in finding a solution will invariably have a much more positive long-­term implication: it is proven that the candidates also tend to stay longer and be an asset to the organisation.

Employing the wrong candidate can have both financial and cultural repercussions: the cost of having to replace the individual and the cost to the business through not having anyone in the role, as well as the disruption and instability that the wrong hire can cause internally must be taken into consideration when making a business critical hire.