Retained Recruitment: What are you scared of?

A couple of weeks ago I had a Twitter discussion with a well known NZ recruitment industry figure Jonathan Rice about selling retained versus contingent recruitment. Jonathan made the point that, “[many recruiters] provide an excellent service but are too scared to ask for some money up front, probably missing a trick somewhere there!”

It was immediately obvious to me then that many recruiters’ supposed inabilities to sell retained assignments is simply then a question of Mindset.

When I started my recruitment career almost 15 years ago, I was fortunate to work for a consulting company that only worked on retainers. In fact, it was some years before I even learned what a contingent assignment was. My mindset was therefore that you ONLY sold and worked on a retainer. Therefore that was the only solution we proposed to clients and the only one they bought.

Many years later, this is the mindset that we have within the Mindset Group and it allows us to deliver quality retained sourcing and selection assignments to our clients.

Conversely, a recruiter who has the mindset that their clients will NEVER work on a retainer is doomed to live in contingency land forever. Consultants that have come to work for Mindset have learned that their previous contingent clients WILL pay retainers. They just have to sell the concept, demonstrate the value and ask for one!

The founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano, once said “those who think that they are going to lose have already lost”. This has never been truer than in selling retained recruitment.