If you need a home run and have only one “up-to-bat” left, do you want to put Barry Bonds at the plate or an unknown, untested rookie? It seems obvious, doesn’t it?
We chronically encounter GOVT contractors with mission-critical staffing vacancies who fall into faulty thinking when choosing a strategy. The most common is what I refer to as “The Leaky Bucket Strategy.”
The Leaky Bucket Strategy – Many Federal Contractors have a strategy based on hoping that putting enough leaky buckets together will lead to a successful fill of the holey bucket. So they engage an ever-increasing number of usually smaller, less-experienced GOVT staffing firms to do what they have been unable to do. Let me just say that “hope is not a strategy” and having a dozen firms “trying” to fill your positions in JV or contingency role is not a winning strategy.
CONTINGENCY VS. RETAINED SEARCH
Recruiting industry guru and thought leader, Jonathan Bartos, shares enlightening statistics regarding the relative success of different types of relationships with recruiting or staffing firms:
- Non-exclusive contingency recruiting relationships where you work with several or more firms to fill a position result in success in one of eight searches – 12.5% Success Rate
- Exclusive contingency relationships where you contract with only one firm yield a better success rate of one in two searches – 50% Success Rate
- Engaged or Retained relationships have the best result – 90% Success Rate
LIMITED CANDIDATE POOL AND ELITE CANDIDATE MARKET
Furthermore, when the mission-critical vacancy has to do with the physician market – a market in which less than 4% of the talent pool is EVER open to new opportunities – retained or engaged search is the silver bullet. Let me explain…
- Physicians belong to an elite talent market and want to feel targeted and special. Getting calls from several different companies for the same role gives them the impression that you are desperate and that you must be hawking a less-than-ideal position (this is the feedback we get from physicians).
- Given the limited available pool we have learned that if you don’t land an available candidate on the first attempt, subsequent attempts have a poor conversion rate. In this context, you usually only get one chance to hit the ball. In this elite sales environment, you don’t want an inexperienced recruiter making such an important pitch to possibly the only candidate available for your location within your target salary parameters in a given window of time.
“Some companies have learned that one strategy to combat the low fill rates of most contingency firms is to simply hire more of them for the same search. This is the kiss of death when there is a limited talent pool” (“Sales Talent,” – Chris Carlson)
MARKET DEPTH
Most JV partners and most recruiting firms will indeed accept your mission-critical assignments on a contingency basis. Most would not engage in a retained agreement with you because they are not confident they can fill your vacancy. They simply do not have the market depth and expertise to ensure success.
KurzSolutions has more than a decade of experience in the GOVT staffing space. Most of the candidates we provide our clients are providers we have known for years and who have worked for us at another MTF. We are not hoping for success, we guarantee it. Fills at more than 90 Military Treatment Facilities in all branches of the military substantiates our expertise.
Barry Bonds or an untried rookie? You make the choice
Call me today at 505-379-3306
