FAQS

Recruiters are cost effective. The benefits can be weighed against the cost of preparing and executing an advertising campaign, screening, and qualifying candidates, operating without a needed employee for an extended length of time, compared to the relative insurance of getting the right person for the job. The use of recruiters is an investment in improving the quality of your teams. But even beyond that, the risk of not using recruiters is too great. For smaller companies, in which one hiring mistake can have catastrophic effects, using recruiters is sometimes more important than for very large businesses. Hiring an incompetent employee who makes bad decisions can cost a company large sums of money or worse, it’s very existence. More than ever before, top talent is at a premium and can make or break the success of a business. Professional, industry-specific, recruiters deliver the best talent to your door.

All communication (written and verbal) you have with Confio Group is 100% confidential. We never call current employers to verify your employment until we are far along in the process and have your authorization. We advise all candidates that they should always avoid using their employer’s electronic communication systems to communicate about a career search.

Confio Group serves candidates and clients in every state in the U.S. through its affiliate Patch Power Canada Ltd.

Our Strategic 8 step Process includes everything from engagement to placement using multiple electric platforms, especially video. Missing even one of these steps could prove catastrophic and is why working with an industry-specific search firm who has experience in the niche is so critical and valuable.

The best candidates are almost always employed and performing the job duties you are trying to fill. This includes those candidates working for your competitor. Top industry talent must be identified and recruited. The few candidates who are seeking opportunities have no effective way of promoting their availability or protecting their confidentiality. Today’s candidates have more employment choices than ever before, and the likelihood of them knocking on your door are remote. Today’s successful employers are taking a proactive and stragtegic approach to their staffing needs.

Many companies that have Human Resources Departments consider using outside recruiting firms because their existing staff may not have the time or expertise to effectively source top candidates for critical, highly confidential, and difficult to fill positions. Many companies find that traditional recruiting methods (newspaper ads, job postings & referrals) do not consistently provide success in filling time sensitive and critical openings. Because today’s candidates can email their resumes with the click of a button, many HR Departments are inundated with resumes that do not fit the mark. Time is wasted sifting through resumes of job hoppers and candidates that have no relevant experience which, could be better spent talking to qualified candidates. Companies that outsource this important function find they save a lot of time and get better results working with an industry specific search firm. We guarantee that you will gain access to a broader pool of qualified candidates.

It varies. Sometimes the process is very quick, and other times it can take several weeks, even months. It depends on a multitude of factors, including the client involved, the rhythm of communication, the complexity of the search, the timetable for when the position needs to be filled, the number of candidates in the applicant pool, the economy, etc. We do everything in our power to help facilitate the process as quickly as possible.

Like you, companies who choose to work with recruiters to hire critical roles or positions have many options at their disposal when making the decision of which recruiter to provide these services. More importantly, it is equally crucial to decide on how you should pay your recruiter. The three most common fee structures in our industry are Contingency, Retained, and Engaged Contingency. It is important to understand how each works and which you should choose based on the results you want. Confio Group uses the Engaged Contingency Structure. (For Staffing, see below)

A contingency arrangement is more of a vendor based relationship. A company may ask several recruiters to take a shot at filling a position. While the company may assume that having multiple recruiters to find their top talent is an advantage, there are certainly drawbacks for the company which is not necessarily obvious. When a recruiting firm knows they are one of several firms competing in a search, the tendency is to hasten the screening process. The “go as fast as you can” approach erodes quality. Submitting “lots” of candidates as quickly as possible because the first “decent” candidate wins, right? Or at least one of our candidates will have the potential of being the lead runner in the search race. The word decent is in quotation marks because when there is serious time competition to present viable candidates to a client, decent, often becomes the replacement to Great, Top Talent or Best in Class. Some recruiters in a contingency situation may have the attitude, “Well, it’s not a perfect fit, but I might as well submit this candidate to see if he or she gets somebody’s attention.” In this type of scenario, the recruiter may think a candidate is a long shot. Unfortunately, that “long shot” has to be examined and vetted by someone internally at the client’s place of business. But, isn’t that the reason you hired a recruiter? However, on a contingency search, you didn’t actually hire the firm, you merely threw it out there to see what they could find, with no guarantees. Pretty much get what you pay for! Often the best candidate for a position isn’t someone who is always looking, online searching for a job, posted online for someone to find, or even immediately available. The recruiter ought to be given time to do some research, digging, and networking to find the ideal candidate. However, knowing that time is of the essence, with the competitive nature of contingency fee arrangements, there is a tendency to go with candidates that are readily available to present to a company/client. Why do you think most recruiters have Monster, Career Builder, or The Ladders accounts? Speed over quality equals sloppy work which leads to turnover. As we both know, turnover is very expensive. Another drawback to contingency arrangements is that the relationship that is created between the company and the recruiter is not one of a seamless trusting transparent team. In this scenario, recruiters usually are reluctant to disclose the companies they are working for as they are concerned it may attract other recruiters or that a candidate will go directly to the client. This fact in and of itself limits the quality of talent that can ultimately be secured for the company’s needs. As for the company, contingency searches involving multiple recruiters is more demanding from a time perspective for the hiring manager. There are more people to interview, more information to dig out of the candidates, more research to the background, more work histories to review for each candidate, and more to worry about knowing what we explained above. If they are the right people, that’s wonderful. Unfortunately, if multiple candidates are presented that miss the mark, the contingency process can take up valuable time that many clients simply do not have at their disposal.

The company which utilizes a retained search fee arrangement is looking for more of a business relationship with the recruiter on a trusted advisor basis. The recruiter is now hired and paid as an outside extension of a company’s hiring team. With this type of arrangement, recruiters are establishing a dedicated search and process to find the right candidate. The focus is on quality and appropriateness for the position. The best interests of the client are at the forefront, which is where they should be. With a retained search, recruiters are anxious to get the word out about the company that has the positions available. They are protected from predatory competition from other recruiters because they usually have an exclusive working relationship with their clients. It sounds amazing…but the costs are huge! Not only that, but you are paying for work which may or may not be done, and there is a tendency to drag the process out. While the benefit of doing a more thorough job identifying and screening candidates exists, the company has typically spent a lot more money before the candidate even starts.

At Confio Group we are confident in our ability to provide excellent service to our clients through an Engaged Contingency Fee Based Structure. The Engaged Contingency Structure is part contingency (most of the payment comes at the end – good for the company) and part retainer (an upfront engagement fee – good for the recruiting firm). With this type of arrangement, a company pays a recruiter an engagement fee and then pays a contingency fee based on a percentage of the first year’s guaranteed income less the engagement fee. This differs from retainer agreements where there are higher fees, 33-40%, and scheduled payments throughout the search process based on time periods and/or criteria that are met along the way. Our experience shows that most client companies like the Engaged Contingency Fee arrangement because both parties have “skin in the game” and are properly motivated for the right reasons. Both parties are committed to the end result in successfully satisfying the strategic objective. Not to mention, as a huge benefit to you, a whole team, including researchers, recruiters, and marketing professionals, are set to work on your search, not just a single recruiter.

The question remains: why would your company want to pay Confio Group an engagement fee? Here a few reasons we’ve come up with:

• There are many candidates available for a given role, but the best candidates are passively looking and to find them you need someone to identify and market directly to them
• You want a proven strategic process executed by experts in the niche that is responsible for ensuring candidates are the right fit before recommending them
• You have limited time to interview and vet candidates, let alone the time to spend researching candidates or guerilla marketing from your competition
• You want to build a solid relationship, not unlike your legal counsel, tax advisor, insurance agent, etc. that will understand and strategically drive the growth and more importantly, the profitability of your company.
• You want an industry insider, a trusted advisor who will offer you his/her expert opinion and talents in identifying Best in Class talent and will be accountable to you.
• You are willing to pay an expert recruiter for their time and expertise to seek out the best candidates
• The need to hire Best in Class has never been greater, and those candidates do not have their resumes posted on the World Wide Web
• Your company enjoys working on a retainer basis, but you find the fees don’t seem fair with regards to the recruiting firm being paid for results
• You are not used to working with recruiters on a retainer basis and want to try this method to see if it is more effective for your company