Tuesday, December 10, 2013

What are Contingent, Retained, RPO Recruiting?

20 QUESTIONS ABOUT WENTWORTH RECRUITING
#5: What’s the difference between contingent and retained?  What is RPO?  What is on-site recruiting?

In 1984, a division of Xerox invited us to set up a temporary recruiting function in their offices.  In 28 weeks, we filled 28 off-brand assembly language programmers.  With that, we gave birth to on-site contract recruiting in Southern California.

“Contingency” means you only pay if you hire someone from the vendor.  Seems like a good idea, doesn’t it?  Take a look at this: TABLE COMPARING RECRUITING BUSINESS MODELS and you may not think so any more.  It’s a brutal and imprecise sales (not service) business, with lots of at-bats required to get a hit.  The best recruiters get out into a saner environment. 

“Retained” means you pay up front, often in three payments.  Virtually no one offers contingency to help fill positions above $125,000/year in salary, so most vendors who are qualified to help with senior jobs are retained.  A few, like Wentworth, charge hourly, providing a better alignment of interests and, thus, better results.

“Hourly” means you pay hourly, as you do for a lawyer or accountant.  If the recruiter’s work is measured, so you can know if they are worth their rates or not.  Wentworth charges hourly.  We set goals for each project, report weekly as to progress against the goals and offer a no-penalty, any-time ability for the client to cancel.  Our clients can make choices to control the cost of our services.  We supervise our work with a very senior Wentworth manager to make sure our clients are delighted.

“ RPO” (recruitment process outsourcing) is just a fancy name for the more complete version of on-site contract recruiting.  The vendor does it all except make the hiring decision, typically on-site.

Obviously, having spent 30+ years refing how we do our work, we think hourly combined with measuring the work, from your site, from our offices or a combination, provides the best outcome for you.  This client thinks so, too:

“You are the best recruiters that I've worked with in the approximately 25 years that I've had any contact with recruiters.”

We offer our clients a unique, innovative and science-based approach to recruiting.  We deliver candidates carefully screened against 50 criteria and we deliver the precise information you need to make successful, sustainable hiring decisions.  

Our service is managed by a PhD psychologist and/or former Vice Presidents of Human Resources.
  
John Wentworth  |  310 732 2301  |  johnwentworth@wentco.com  |  www.wentco.com

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