Contingency recruiting is a pay-on-success model: the recruiting firm earns its fee only when you hire a person it introduced. Karpel Associates offers clean energy contingency recruiting to companies across the US, filling mid-to-senior management and individual contributor roles in finance, operations, engineering, sales, marketing and business development.
How does contingency recruiting work?
You brief us on the role, we agree terms up front, and sourcing begins. There is no retainer and no charge for the effort itself. If you hire someone we put forward, the fee becomes due; if you fill the job another way, you owe nothing. That makes contingency a low-risk way to add specialist reach to your own hiring.
The tradeoff is usually focus. Contingency firms often compete with other agencies or an in-house team on the same opening, so many of them favor speed over depth. We handle the roles we accept differently. We still build a profile with you on a discovery call, still screen hard, and still deliver a short, curated slate rather than every resume that matched a keyword.
Which clean energy roles suit contingency recruiting?
Contingency works best when the profile is well defined and the talent pool is reasonably deep. Here is how that typically plays out by function:
| Function | Example positions | Why the contingency model fits |
|---|---|---|
| Sales | Regional sales manager, account executive, sales director | Clear targets and a measurable track record |
| Engineering | Project engineer, electrical engineering manager | Credentials and project history are easy to verify |
| Operations | Site operations manager, O&M supervisor | Defined scope and a sizable candidate pool |
| Finance & Accounting | Controller, FP&A manager, project accountant | Skills that transfer well across sectors |
| Business Development | Origination manager, partnerships lead | Relationships can be confirmed during screening |
| Marketing | Demand generation manager, product marketing lead | Portfolio and results are visible early |
When a role is genuinely scarce, confidential or at the executive level, a dedicated engagement tends to serve you better. Our overview of retained search for senior renewable energy roles explains when to make that switch.
What makes our contingency recruiting different?
The people worth hiring are rarely applying for anything. Some 80% of our placements came from people with no presence on job boards. To find them, we rely on our proprietary pipeline of 40,000+ clean energy professionals and a LinkedIn network of more than 30,000 connections, so you meet people your posting will never reach.
Everyone we submit scores 90% or higher on the skills your role demands, and we narrow the field to the strongest three to five. That keeps your interview calendar manageable without lowering the bar. Our track record includes 98% offer acceptance and 94% candidate retention, and hires below the executive level can still have outsized impact: a Sales Director we placed took a division from $5M to $140M in less than three years.
We also bring market intelligence to the table. Salary expectations for engineers, controllers and sales leaders shift quickly as new projects and factories compete for the same people, so we share compensation benchmarks early and help you shape an offer that a strong candidate will actually accept.
Contingency hiring across the clean energy sector
We recruit for solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, biofuels and grid companies, and battery storage is one of the busiest areas we cover. Developers and integrators adding commissioning engineers, project managers and sales staff often start with contingency hires, and our battery and energy storage recruiters know that market well. Our home base is the Bay Area, but we recruit across the country, so remote and multi-state teams are no obstacle.
Sometimes the need is more urgent than any permanent search allows. If a role has to be covered right away, look at our contract and interim placement service, which supplies experienced people for a defined period.
Get a contingency search started
Send us the job description, or just a rough outline of the role, and we will say plainly whether contingency is the right fit. Contact our recruiting team to talk it through.