The industry has changed a lot since we were founded over 20 years ago. There was a time when one company signed up one recruiter and let them do the great work they do. Then, everything changed. It became high fashion to send job orders out to 6 or more contingent recruiters thinking it will generate more resumes and it was “may the best recruiter win”. But that only sounds good on paper. What really happens is when recruiters know you have multiple firms working on a deal, they simply grab the low hanging fruit from their database and fire it off to you. Why spend your time and your firm’s money to have a one in six chance of making a placement? It doesn’t make good business, does it? Great recruiting firms want to do great work and great work takes time. We are headhunters and this is what we do, but hunting the top 5% talent takes time and money. We have seen many companies want retained search services instead of the “Spray and pray” resume forwarding they get with a lot of the contingent recruiters. But for some companies, a traditional retainer that is normally used for executive searches is a hard sell to the executive team.