In his recent article Let’s Revolutionize the Standard Recruiting Model Mark Bielecki aptly sums up the frustrations that many of us Contingency Recruiters experience on a regular basis in his very first sentence:

“THERE’S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY TO DO THIS.”

While it’s true that we have the power to select the types of companies we do business with that’s no guarantee that they will be the type of client you’ll want to continue doing business with once all is said and done.

Something strange can happen from the start of the process to the Start Date. Unfortunately, often times the end result is a complete disaster!

A complete lack of communication, untimely feedback, doing a poor job of making a positive impression with candidates during an interview, late paying clients (in some cases non-paying clients), and sometimes just plain unprofessional decision-makers can make a Recruiter think twice about continuing a career in this industry.

Sometimes despite our best efforts to form a true partnership we instead bend over backwards too much for a client and thus find ourselves taken advantage of.

Bielecki is spot on when he addresses the harsh reality that it’s insane for us to continue to give away our precious and valuable time, resources, expertise, and candidates for free without getting a single thing in return from our so-called business partners.

How is that fair? How is a company to thrive and survive under those circumstances?

So, what are we to do in these instances?

Bielecki suggests that “it’s time to retire the contingency recruiting model and replace it with a model that reflects alignment of responsibility and control” and he’s absolutley right.

But how?

I’m not sure what the answer is at the moment, but you can be sure that we’ve already begun thinking about some possible alternatives since I’m becoming more and more convinced that the future of our industry hangs in the balance.