Pay per name?

I subscribe to an American discussion group called Sourcers Unleashed.  The founder/moderator is a Telephone Names Sourcer called Maureen Sharib. It's a fascinating discussion group.  However, what I wanted to mention was the rather unique way Maureen charges for her name sourcing service.

From her website

"We begin a custom search within a focused target group you specify.....  Organizational research that produces targeted candidates for your hard-to-fill positions starts at $42.00 per name. Each name is guaranteed to fit the parameters you specify."

So that's around £21 per name for what most UK recruiters would call Name ID or Name ident. 

Maureen also offers a "Profiling Service" (candidates are screened for technical criteria matching, information is collected on current job title, educational information, areas of expertise, etc and the candidate is pitched with your job opportunity).  The Profiling Service starts at $45 per completed profile (in addition to the cost of the names).

So for name id and contacting that's £43 per person.  Regardless of the candidate's interest in your role. 

Christine Hayward of the AESC kindly ran this concept past some of their membership for me. I also mentioned it to a few researchers at the recent ERA forum, none of whom could see their client's going for it. Some of the feedback included:   

“It is not standard practice to charge by the name. I have been in the position of both hiring independent name generation and providing the service. The cost is either based on an hourly rate or a flat fee per project, though the number of hours worked is most common.”

“I would say “you are having a laugh!” Usual rate is c£30 an hour.”

“We use independent researchers but we have never heard of let alone are asked to be paid per name generated. I would definitely feel this is not standard practice. I would be very reluctant to go with this arrangement.”

I can see the advantage of this type of charging for very specialised searches (as Maureen mentions) where the candidate pool is small or candidates are notoriously difficult to locate.  Maybe something around the clinical trials or top secret MOD market.  Who will be (or already is) the first researcher in the UK to offer "pay per name" research?

Comments

[cathy]

Yeah, I think there will be a lot of growth in this area.