[Part 1] In-House, Agencies, and Beyond: A Guide to Talent Acquisition Solutions in 2022

Part 1: Contingent Search Firms (Traditional Agencies)

Guide to TA solutions in 2022.

If you only need to make a small number of hires for the foreseeable future, it may make the most sense to work with a contingent recruiting agency. They will send you interested candidates immediately, and typically only charge you after their candidate has started and spent a certain number of days on the job. When your primary objective is to secure a small number of hires, the agency hustle and pre-built pipelines of interested candidates may make a contingent search solution work well for you.

However, contingent agencies are not embedded with your internal TA team, meaning that they will neither be as knowledgeable about your company's unique vision, selling points, and nuances, nor will they integrate seamlessly into your systems and tools. Needless to say, this lack of integration will add some additional work for your internal team and can result in the loss of some candidates at the offer stage. Furthermore, contingent agencies generally work with many clients at any given time. While this can give them valuable insight into the market more broadly, they will often share the same candidates with many of their clients, so you end up competing with these other clients to get your offers signed.

It is also worth noting that there is a variable cost associated with the traditional contingent search model – you typically pay the agency a percentage of the candidate's base salary, and this imprecision associated with predicting recruiting costs can make budgeting and finance more difficult. 

Furthermore, because contingent search firms are typically paid a percentage of the hired candidate’s base salary, this model incentivizes them to push for higher compensation. So, in addition to being difficult to predict the variable cost of a contingent solution, it may also lead to overpaying for the candidates themselves.

To learn more about other talent acquisition solutions, continue reading Part 2 of this blog series.