Most businesses think they’re working with a recruitment partner. In reality, they’re entering an auction they don’t realise they’ve joined.
They’re told the same things each time. That the recruiter specialises in their sector, understands their market, and is there as a partner rather than a supplier. It’s a familiar pitch.
Then the CVs arrive. Often the same ones other companies are seeing. Sometimes for candidates you will have already seen before.
Not because anything is broken. It’s just how the system works.
The model most people are buying into
Contingency recruitment is still the dominant model in most specialist markets. It’s simple on the surface: no hire, no fee. That makes it feel low risk. But the way it actually runs is different.
Recruiters are usually working multiple roles at once, often in the same space, sometimes for competing businesses. Those roles overlap more than most people realise, so candidates don’t sit in a single, dedicated pipeline. They move through a shared pool.
Shortlists get built once and then reused across several clients. It feels tailored when you’re on the receiving end, but the same candidates are often being circulated across multiple clients.
How it actually works
The process usually begins with trust. A recruiter is brought in because they reference hiring trends, salary benchmarks, availability, and movement in the sector. They position themselves as embedded in the space rather than operating around it.
You invest time in the brief. The role is shaped beyond a job description into something more specific: team dynamics, expectations and cultural fit. Then the process moves out of sight.
At the same time, similar conversations are happening elsewhere. Similar roles, similar level, similar requirements. And because the candidate profiles overlap so much, the same people end up in front of multiple clients.
Not deliberately. It just happens.
What you end up with isn’t really a single search. It’s more like a shared marketplace.
What the structure drives
When candidates sit in one shared pool, everything starts to move faster. That becomes the priority.
Recruiters are juggling multiple timelines, so speed naturally wins out over depth. The quickest route to a placement is often someone already active in the system, not someone newly found for the role.
Over time, “shortlist” starts to mean something slightly different. Less about carefully matched fit, more about who’s available and ready right now.
And because several companies are effectively drawing from the same pool at the same time, they end up competing for the same people. Not necessarily the best people. Just the ones who are available.
Where the cost shows up
The fee is the obvious part. Agreed upfront, easy to compare, easy to sign off, but the harder cost shows up later.
A hire that looked right in process gets into the business quickly, often from a pool that’s been shaped by speed more than depth. At first it can look fine, and then over time, gaps start to appear between what was expected and what the role actually needs.
When that happens, it rarely stays contained. It shows up in management time, team strain, slower delivery, customer impact, and often the role ends up open again sooner than planned.
Most estimates put a failed mid-to-senior hire at somewhere between one and three times the salary once you factor in everything around it including; lost time, replacement effort and disruption in the team. This cost sits with the business.
A different way of working
There is another way of structuring it. Instead of multiple parallel searches pulling from the same pool, it’s one brief at a time. One client, one focus, one process running properly in isolation.
No sharing candidates across roles. No recycled shortlists. It becomes less about moving people through a system and more about building something specific for the role.
That changes where the effort goes. Less focus on speed to CV, more focus on fit, context, and whether the hire will actually last.
It takes longer upfront. It’s more deliberate. And it means fewer roles are taken on at once. But that’s the point. It is not a faster model. It is a more deliberate one. And it is intentionally limited in volume.
The real question
Contingency recruitment isn’t “bad”. It works well when speed and volume matter. The issue is expecting it to behave like something it isn’t. When a transactional system is described like a relationship-led one, there’s always going to be a gap between expectation and reality. The structure drives how people behave, and that behaviour drives the outcome.
So, the question becomes pretty simple: do you want access to a shared pool moving quickly across the market, or something built around one outcome, properly focused from the start?
Nobul works on a focused, exclusive basis. One brief, one team, one focus, building searches around long-term performance, not volume.
If that fits what you’re trying to do, book a call with us today.
