David Kant on Why Retained Search (Part 2)

Reason #2 for why a “retained search” is the way to go when looking to hire your next executive.

Retained Search = Custom Search

A good retained search firm will “take your order” and thoroughly understand your company’s needs for the open position. Rather than just ask for the job description and do a keyword search in their candidate database, a good firm will do a customized search in identifying & recruiting talent in the market specifically vetted against what you are looking for.

If you have certain industry talent in mind you’d like to recruit from your competitors or simply need someone with a very specific background, a retained search specializes as an HR detective in finding the needle in the haystack.

For example, I once had a client looking for someone with a master’s in journalism, a master’s in biology, and 15 years of Magazine Editor experience. Needless to say, this was a custom assignment with a result of 50 candidates in the country who were qualified, 20 of whom were presented to the client for consideration.

Another example was a client needing someone with real estate and finance experience, simple enough. But they also needed to be bilingual in Japanese to communicate what the US operation was doing back to the investors and parent company in Japan. About 10 candidates were presented and the position was filled.

I also had a search looking for a senior sales executive in the satellite communications industry and was essentially limited to 4-5 competitors to recruit from. About 8 candidates were presented and the position was filled.

There are many more examples of searches like this that simply put would not be possible to fill without a custom retained search.

Next video: Reason #3 to Prefer the Retained Search Model to the Contingency Search Model