When you’re looking to hire individuals for your company, you can go about it in many ways. You can try and work from within and have your HR Department or hiring manager start a search, promoting employees of merit to higher positions and then recruiting individuals to replace the previous position, or you can just simply hire a recruiting firm at the start.
This can be done in many ways. You could have your HR (Human Resources) department run their own recruiting services, looking for the right candidate through a list of applicants. This can take time, and weigh down the department as they search, especially if it’s a key position.
Or, you can be one of a growing number of companies, and use a search service or recruiting firm to do the work for you. Nearly 6% of companies go this route, according to the most recent staffing data. A number that is double what it had been a year ago.
But how do these services work? Generally, there are two types of recruiters, a contingency recruiter (that only gets paid when the organization hires) and a retained search consultant (payment in advance to conduct a search). In this article, we will be focusing on the latter.
A retained search firm is paid to conduct a search, they have a very exhaustive process. They maintain a massive database of candidates, cultivate contacts in sectors they work frequently in so they know who might be interested in changing companies, and pre-select candidates using advanced assessments for job fit.
You, as the employer, only see the finalists.
But when should you use retained recruitment or a retained search recruiter?
Retained Recruitment will generally involve identifying the most qualified candidate thanks to the searching and interviewing that the consultant does prior to introducing the candidate to you. They will probe each possible hire for the best fit.

Generally, the only time retained recruitment ends in a failed hire, in most cases, is from incompatibility with cultural and personal grounds, not workplace skill and experience. But retained search firms will also apply advanced psychometric tests to profile the candidate and the firm to find the best match.
Because of this, the best possible situations for using a retained recruitment service is when:

• Dealing with salaries about $100,000, and when it is critical to hire not just a qualified individual, but the most qualified available.

• Need for a recruiter to take into account organizational issues critical to your workplace, like culture or other nuances.

• When you require an in-between to help persuade an executive to leave a position for a better opportunity and negotiate the terms of said move.

• When a high degree of confidentiality is desired in the recruitment process.

Utilizing recruitment services can get your company the executives they need to avoid a failed hire, or a poor performance. Both of which could cost your company great deals of money, especially at the executive levels.