Pursuit Placement

Canadian Recruitment Agency – Retained Searches
These kinds of searches get a retainer (up-front fee) to perform a specific search for a company officer or other senior executive position. Typically, retained searches tend to be for positions that pay upwards of $100,000 and often far more.

Search fees are usually 33% of the annual compensation of the recruited executive. Fee payments are made in thirds, 1/3 of fee paid on initiation of the search, 1/3 paid thirty days later, and the final 1/3 paid thirty days later or upon placement of the candidate. In a retained search the fee is for the time and expertise of the search firm. The firm is employed to conduct the entire recruitment effort from startup until the candidate has started working.

Retained recruiters work for the organizations who are their clients, not for job candidates seeking employment.

Search firms generally commit to off-limits agreements. These agreements prevent a firm from approaching employees of their current clients as candidates for other clients (for instance, if we act as a headhunter and recruit a new Vice President into PCL Construction, we will agree not to recommend PCL’s executives to other companies). Since we are now acting as management consultants working in the best interests of the clients for whom we conduct searches. It would be counterproductive to simultaneously remove talented people from our clients’ companies.

Canadian Recruitment Agency – Contingency Searches

A contingency search by definition means that the search firm will only collect a fee if they find and place a suitable candidate for the position in question.

This type of search may or may not be structured contractually with the client company and it is 100% “back end” loaded. Therefore, regardless of the number of qualified candidates presented, if none are ultimately hired, the search firm in question earns nothing. A strict contingency search means that there is no exclusivity to the arrangement and therefore the client company is free to use other search firms or source other candidates on their own. This arrangement begs the question as to whether the search firm actually has such a “client” given the absence of any stated or written commitments for exclusivity. It also explains why contingency searches are often given less energy by recruiting professionals because of the increased risk of no return on invested energy and resources.

In a contingent search, the search process is usually less structured and less about a precise candidate “fit” and more about getting potentially qualified candidates in front of the client so that the client can make his or her own final assessment. Often candidates in such searches are drawn from a search firm’s existing database or from public job boards. While these methods can certainly uncover good candidates, such approaches leave a vast pool of talented passive candidates untapped. With less time spent on securing a clear job description and the candidate sourcing methods that are often employed in a contingency search, the chance of a candidate/client mismatch is significantly increased. Fees for contingency search usually average around 25%, although this varies widely depending on geographic location being sourced, the industry and specific talent being recruited, and the number of positions being filled.

Canadian Recruitment Agency – Container Search

More and more companies are looking to engage a company and have the benefits of both of the above search models. Enter ‘Container Search’. A Canadian Recruitment Agency ‘Container’ search offers several benefits to both the client company and the search firm in that many of the strengths of the retained search model can be captured while at the same time reducing the financial risks for both parties. In a retingency search, the fee is typically divided into two parts. The first part (“container”) is paid at the beginning of the search and is typically one fourth of the anticipated search fee. The last part (remaining three fourths of the search fee) is paid when the search has been successfully completed. While a client company will not get all the benefits of a retained search using this model, the results are usually more satisfactory than a straight contingency search.

PURSUIT PLACEMENT – Your Canadian Recruitment Agency, offers customized services for specialized search assignments tailored to the needs of individual companies. Please contact us for further information.

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