Looking to fill an important position but dreading the hassle of hunting for candidates? Or have you tried and can’t find the right person for the job? An executive recruitment agency or retained recruiters can find qualified professional, managerial or technical candidates for you. Partnering an executive recruitment agency relieves you of the time-consuming distraction of sifting through candidates, while your day job goes begging. It also gives you a contact - a recruiter- that may already have potential candidates for your available position. To find out more on executive recruitment read on….

Executive recruitment facts
Executive recruitment agencies are hired by a company to either target job applications through advertising or find people qualified to fill a vacant position. Often, companies hire executive recruitment agencies only after they’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to fill the position themselves. Executive recruiters usually work on a project-by project basis. The client company pays the executive recruitment agency a percentage, usually between 20% and 35%, of the annual salary of the candidate who accepts the position. While the executive recruiter finds and screens candidates for the job, the client company makes the final decision on which person to hire.

Executive recruitment generally works in one of two ways: contingency or retained. Contingency recruiters usually take an assignment on spec—a client asks them to fill an open position, but will pay them only if they find the candidate who eventually accepts the job. For retained recruiters, the client pays the retained recruiter in three stages; before they start the search, when a qualified candidate shortlist is presented and finally when the chosen individual starts employment.

Retained recruiters pretty much have to guarantee that he or she will fill the client’s position. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the recruiters in the United States work on contingency. The rest are retained or a combination of retained and contingency. However, for specialist or senior executive recruitment in the UK and Europe, most organisations will partner a retained recruiter where advertising either in the media or online is not cost effective.
 
Working on a retainer is generally viewed as the more prestigious billing method, and client companies generally use retained recruiters for senior executive recruitment. Contingency recruiting is the bread and butter of new recruiters and those who place lower-level employees. “The retained recruiters are considered the silk slipper people of the industry for recruiting professional management jobs,” says Paul Hawkinson, editor and publisher of The Fordyce Letter, a newsletter for recruiters, “to the extent that they generally work these higher level openings, of senior executive recruitment, and they’re dealing with CEOs and presidents and CFOs.”

Recruiters tend to specialise in one industry, such as medical devices, consumer products, rail, waste management or legal executive recruitment. Doing so allows them to understand one industry and the players in that industry thoroughly. Other recruiters specialise in interim executive recruitment and executive contracting. Interim executive recruitment provides a temporary provision of management resources and skills. Interim executive recruitment can be seen as the short-term assignment of a proven heavyweight interim executive manager to manage a period of transition, crisis or change within an organisation. In this situation, a permanent role may be unnecessary or impossible to find at short notice. Additionally, there may be nobody internally who is suitable for, or available to take up, the position in question. Utilising executive contracting is one of the more powerful business tools that enable organisations to remain flexible and responsive, which helps achieve stronger results.

If you are looking to recruit abroad it would be most beneficial to choose an executive recruitment agency that has international executive recruitment experience and recommended or referred to by other companies that have used their services.
For other executive recruiter information or executive recruiter news regarding executive recruitment contact the European Confederation of Search Selections Associations they will be able to provide executive recruiter advice and up-to-date executive recruiter news.
Collingwood Search and Selection Ltd are executive recruitment consultants uk who not only recruit director jobs but also specialist roles and at mid-management levels across sales, marketing, operations, supply chain, engineering and manufacturing.