By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

The terms that recruiters and search professionals use to describe themselves create confusion. Let me cut through the BS and explain these terms and the real terms for how these people describe themselves.

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I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter and I’ve got a question from someone. What are the differences between a headhunting agency, an employment agency and a recruitment agency? Are they doing the same thing just with different titles? Good question and I’m going to start by saying recruiters, when they describe themselves to one another, use different terms. They refer to contingency recruiters, retained recruiters and there are some people who do retained contingency recruiting.

I’m going to start by answering the differences between those and then go to your terms. Retained. A retained firm is hired by a corporation and paid a certain amount up front to take the search to then present candidates to them with a balanced due at the time of completion of the assignment.

It could be a third up front, a third upon presentation of a short list, a third upon successful completion. A contingency firm is only paid if they are successful in the search and the person remains in the employ of the client for a fixed period of time, usually 90 days. A retained contingency takes a smaller amount up front but some amount up front a little bit more upon presentation of candidates with the balance at the back end upon successful hire.

The money is really how recruiters look at it, how search professionals look at it, not these terms because what’s happened for most people who hear the term is the exact confusion that’s presented to you. Now, headhunters. Headhunters are usually the retained firms but there are contingency firms who use the same term as well.

Why? Because it’s the impression of being elite that they’re going for and in being elite, what they’re trying to do is say that we aggressively pursue people not actively on the market. That’s really what that means. Employment agency used to be the general recruiting firm.

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I’m sorry, the general agency that tried to fill all jobs. Most search professionals do not use that term anymore unless they’re in a general all-purpose agency that fills whatever jobs they get in. And then there’s the recruiting firm.

Recruiting firms tend to be firms that receive resumes, happy to do it, fill jobs with those people. They aggressively search. They do whatever is necessary to fill a position.

You can see where the confusion is. Now, if I were you, listening to this mumbo-jumbo, I would cut to the core and ask the firm that you’re talking to or the recruiter who’s presenting you are you working retains or contingency that’s really where 90 percent of the business is retained or contingency retained indicates a close relationship a contractual relationship with the client I say contractual because they will be paid whether or not that firm hires through them or not contingency only if the job is filled and a lot of firms will use multiple contingency firms to fill positions because they know they don’t have the exclusive effort to fill the job. So, let’s cut to the core.

It’s always about the money. The rest is hocus-pocus designed to create an image and, in this case, also confusion between what’s important, the truth and what isn’t. I’m Jeff Altman.

Hope you found this helpful. My website is TheBigGameHunter.us. Go there. Go exploring.

There’s a lot there to help you. If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching or have a couple of questions for me, you can schedule time through the site and, again, that’s TheBigGameHunter.us. Lastly, if you want to subscribe to my channel on YouTube, you can click the little icon in the lower right, the larger one in the upper left and, by the way, you can watch Job Search TV on Amazon, Amazon Fire TV. Download the app by that name, Job Search TV and you can watch my stuff on your big screen in HD.

Have a great day! Take care!

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