Ep. 11 of Out of Line with Tiffany Scott, with Staci Bender Epstein.
Staci Bender Epstein and I first connected because she was, in her words, LinkedIn stalking me. Now she's one of my favorite people in this industry. She runs a small but mighty staffing firm with her husband, Ed, and she's one of the most honest people I know about how hard business development really is.
Episode 11 covers a lot: running a business with your spouse, imposter syndrome, and why women need to stop apologizing in executive rooms. For agency owners, though, the part I keep coming back to is how Staci is rethinking the contingent model. Most of us have felt that pain and never fixed it.
Staci is a serial entrepreneur who moved from marketing into executive staffing. She started out interning at a marketing agency in the technology space while she was in college, and she graduated in 1999. Today she co-runs Be Group with Ed. He focuses more on recruiting, and she leads business development and sales. The firm does contract placement, plus permanent search that's mostly contingent.
When I asked why companies pass on a firm that's offering free candidates, Staci didn't blame the market. She looked at herself first.
"sales is still a numbers game. The more companies you reach out to, the more that clients you're going to bring in."
She also hears the usual objections. A client already works with another firm, or wants to try to fill the role through its own network first. Her answer is to reach out to more companies. I respect that. It's easy to blame the buyer, and harder to admit the pipeline is thin.
The pitch for contingent sounds great to a buyer: you work for free until you find someone great. Staci explained the downside.
"The challenge with that is when you do work with a client that takes 6 months to make a decision, we've now worked for 6 months where we've seen nothing."
Because Be Group is so consultative, she says, that's come back to bite them. If you've ever run a search for half a year and watched the client go quiet, you know exactly what she means.
The model she's working on is what she calls hybrid contingent:
"it's like a percentage up front to start the search, and that percentage is applied to the overall percentage of placing that person."
The point is skin in the game on both sides, and especially for the client, so they're invested in the partnership. I suggested another option for companies that are nervous about direct hire: structure the fee more like contract, paid weekly. Either way, the conversation about how you get paid is part of your value proposition, not an afterthought.
Staci was also honest that contingent still works sometimes. She had just signed a contingent fintech client she was excited about. Different clients call for different terms. The lesson isn't to abandon contingent. It's to stop treating it as the only option, and to know before a search starts which clients have earned that risk and which ones need to put something on the table first.
Staci said the harder part is bringing on clients that are growing. Historically, much of Be Group's business has been one placement and done.
"we're just looking for clients that, you know, have more opportunity throughout the year for us."
That's where they thrive, she says: being a true partner as a client grows. It's a good filter for your target list. A company that's hiring once is a transaction. A company that's growing is a relationship.
We talked about succession and what Be Group 2.0 could look like. Staci and Ed are open to merger conversations. She also pointed out something many perm-heavy owners overlook: not everybody buys a permanent placement firm. Buyers want the recurring revenue from contract. Perm is often where the profit is, but contract is where the value is. Finding the right balance is something they're still working on.
Be Group used to make fun, 10-second AI videos about real staffing topics until the platform they used shut down. Staci has always used humor for tough things, and the industry is tough right now. It isn't that there are no jobs, she says. A job goes up and gets a thousand applicants in a day. Being different gets you remembered in a crowded market.
Pull your last ten contingent searches and note how long each took and how many closed. If the math doesn't work, sketch what a retainer or credit model would look like for your best clients. Then sort your accounts by how often they hire, and put more of your outreach toward the ones with steady demand all year.
Find Staci and Ed at Be Group: begroupconnects.com
Staci is looking for growing clients with demand all year, not one-and-done searches. Spotting those companies early, before you sink months into a search, is the problem myScout is built to solve.
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