Many recruiters who view themselves as consultants will often consent to working on a per-hour basis. We like to call them per-hour recruiter consultants. While this rate may look similar to your attorney’s, it can create great savings in the long run.
When using this approach, expect to pay for any advertising or research costs. Flexibility is an advantage of this approach, since you can hire the recruiter for the entire project or only for the portions where you need their expertise, such as identifying prospects and the initial recruitment call.
Once again, I have a case study that illustrates the effectiveness of hiring a recruiter on a per-hour consulting basis and how you can reduce search costs with per-hour recruiter consulting.
The owner of a company wanted to hire a General Manager. His previous attempt had failed miserably. He wanted help articulating his need advertising the opportunity, identifying and qualifying the right candidates, and coaching to help him ask the right questions.
He also wanted to save as much money as possible. He knew trade paper advertising and Internet job posting would produce a pool of candidates, but he didn’t know how to proceed from there.
I was hired on a per-hour basis to take him through the process. Within 60 days, four candidates were interviewed and one was hired. The new GM has now been on the job for one year and is quite successful.
I calculated the savings that the owner enjoyed. After he paid for the advertising and my actual hours, his savings was 50% of what he would have paid if he had given the search to another recruiting firm.
The work was some of the most profitable I’ve ever done. The hourly rate was profitable, and I placed the runner-up for this position 45 days later with a different client for my full fee.
In my next blog post, I’ll explore targeted per-hour consulting as yet another way to reduce search costs.
(For more information about maximizing the benefits of working with a recruiter, download a copy of Dan Simmons’s e-Book, Hunting the Headhunter: Your Guide to Debunking Myths, Cutting Costs, and Changing the Way You Play the Recruitment Game.)
