Talent 911

3 Ways to Recoup that Headhunting Fee You Paid

I'm in the business of staffing.  We work with clients who have needs they can't fill - we fill them - the client pays me money.  When this goes right - it's a win-win.  Client gets a great employee.  I get paid for the service I performed.  When it goes bad - it goes bad. 

I worked 10 years on the HR/Recruitment side of the business.  I took calls every single day from headhunters wanting to 'help' me with my openings.  I get why so many get beat up in the staffing world - it's sales people calling on HR people who feel like they are being 'sold' to, not 'helped'.  So, when that HR person finally agrees to take your 'help' and it doesn't end perfectly - there's going to be a problem!  When that HR person signs off on check to be cut for $10K, $15K, $20K or more - and they feel like the services weren't rendered - there's going to be problems!

So, I'm going to give you some inside advice on 3 ways to recoup your fee you feel was unjustly paid:

1. Stretch Your Gurantee - I've signed staffing agreements (contracts) in the last 12 months with gurantees ranging from Zero days to 180 days.  At a minimum, if I was sitting at your corporate HR/Recruiting desk, I would require a 90 days gurantee on any direct hire agreement.  If I can't tell if the hire is good in 90 days - I should hire myself!  If they aren't any good - I don't pay - thanks for playing - please try again - I've got nothing to lose.

2. Barter - I'm a business person.  I don't want the fee for this one placement we just found for you, that you now don't like and don't want to pay for.  I want fees on every single one of your hires!  If I ahve a client who is unhappy, I want to make them happy - and I want to be happy.  Tell you what - I won't charge you for this one - but I want the next 2 hires, exclusive.  Deal? Deal. If you have a good relationship with your staffing partner, they'll do this in a heartbeat.

3. Just Don't Pay - Don't get me wrong - I hate you if you do this - but probably 75% of the time - you'll get away with it.  That $10K fee you're refusing to pay, will cost me about $10K if I have to take you to court to get you to pay, and I can gurantee you'll never work with me again.  If you did this I would never work with you again either - but let's face it - you have thousands of me waiting to business with you.

The truth is, most staffing companies are in business for the long haul.  If you're really upset over paying a fee - something went wrong along the way and most reputable firms will be willing to work with you.  I'll say most times I run into a HR/Talent Pro who is upset over a fee - it all goes back to the hiring manager not making the call when they needed to on a bad hire.  One thing we do to help this is a simple 30/60/89 days check-in with both the employee and hiring manager.  A simple, how's it going, and a simple day 89 - Last Chance! - call before you have to pay.  3 minutes of work, stems off a bunch of striff over paying a fee for a bad hire!

The 1 Thing That Can Make Your Corporate Recruiters Better Overnight

I've had 3 opportunities in my career to step into traditional corporate recruiting departments and make changes that would 'turn' these departments around so that the organization would see them as a positive producing department, where previously that had not been viewed as this.  As you can imagine there are numerous changes that can be made to do this.  You could go out and hire more talented recruiters.  You could redesign and launch a new employment brand.  You can redesign your processes.  You can launch a new career website.  Add in recruiter specific training.  Get hiring managers and leadership involved in 'owning' their talent in their individual departments.  All great stuff.  All things that I eventually did - all which take considerable time and resources!

When you are stepping into a new organization and taking over, those who hired you expect instant miracles.  Why?  Because that's what you told them you could do when you interviewed.  One problem.  You told them this without truly knowing what you were going to find when you started opening up closet doors in the department and skeletons began falling out all over the place.  You didn't realize your staff of recruiters were really just HR admins in disguise.  That your ATS was an advance spreadsheet, and nothing more.  Your hiring managers believed the only way to get talent was to wait for you to deliver it to them on a silver platter, just so they could say "I don't like that kind - bring me another platter!"  You didn't know your major vendor was the CEO's cousin who had no clue and no sense of urgency - but was entitled all the same.

Doesn't matter now - deliver the miracle!

There is really only one thing I know that works in recruiting.  Doesn't matter if you're an agency or corporate.  Doesn't matter the industry.  Doesn't matter the recruiting experience level you have on your staff.  It's been the one miracle that in good times and bad has always sets recruiters apart - at all levels.  Activity.  Outgoing phone calls, number of candidates interviewed, number of resumes sent to hiring managers, etc.  Higher activity level = higher recruiting department satisfaction and results, 100% of the time.  It's a simple miracle.

So - how do you do this tomorrow?

Step 1:  Instantly track the number of 'outgoing' phone calls made per recruiter.  If you don't have technology to track this - develop a simple call sheet that tracks candidate name, phone number, position called for and result.  Track calls for 2 weeks. (outgoing calls only - keep it simple, establish a habit - great recruiters call candidates)

Step 2: On week 3 - set daily outgoing call goal 25% higher than the two week daily average.  (don't let on you will do this on week 3 or you'll have low numbers your first two weeks)

Step 3:  Hold those recruiters accountable who aren't reaching their call goal.

You'll hear every single excuse in the world - you have to stay strong.  "I have too many meetings" - tell them you are giving them permission to no longer attend those meetings.  "I have to much paperwork" - stop doing paperwork - that's for after 5pm and on weekends (recruiting isn't a 40 hr per week job). Only concentrate on calls.  Calls. Calls. Calls.

Miracle, delivered, almost instantly.

Want to hear some more?  Call me - I've got more miracles. [email protected]; 517-908-3156 or @TimSackett  - my company delivers staffing miracles every freaking day!

HR - It's You or It's Me

I love 'end of days' type posts and articles.  The end of Job Boards!  The end of HR!  Here's another one great one over at ERE by Dr. John Sullivan called: The End of Sourcing Is Near..., which talks about how eventually (in John's opinion) most sourcing information will be readily available to almost everyone.  This makes really the only thing left to do in recruiting is to sell the candidate on your job and your organization.  Sullivan explains the importance of this very critical step in recruiting - the sell:

"Recruiting leaders should begin focusing on these selling aspects because, as previously stated, “finding” is becoming so easy, and there is little push for change in candidate assessment because most recruiters and hiring managers are comfortable with the existing process of assessing candidates through interviews.

Once you realize that the selling aspect of recruiting is almost universally under researched, underfunded, and it is almost always executed in an unscripted manner, you’ll see that it’s ripe for significant improvement and change. If you review the recruiting literature you will find very little written about the science of selling and the importance of using data-driven selling approaches within the recruiting function. The pressure is increasing on recruiting leaders to make a decision to shift resources away from sourcing by recruiters and toward the remaining big challenge: selling."

Like most 'end of days' type posts, Sullivan's end of sourcing post is probably a little over the top, but he makes a great point.  HR Pros don't recruit well for one simple fact - HR Pros didn't get into HR to sell - they got into HR to do HRy things like: build processes, improve processes, administer people practices within an organization, training, problem solving, etc.   They didn't go - "Oh boy! I can't wait to get into the Fortune 500 HR shop so I can sell our company like a a life insurance salesman trying to make quota!"

That's where I come in.  I don't hire HR pros to work in recruiting.  I don't sell the recruiting position as an HR position.  I don't go over to Michigan State's HR program and speak to students about 'getting their start' in HR by coming to work for me.  99% of those folks, while great people, would fail in my environment.  They want to be in HR - Recruiting is not HR.  There in lies the problem for most HR shops.   Most HR folks - probably 70-80% - have to do some 'recruiting' in their organizations.  They don't have a recruiting department or a sourcing group to do all the heavy lifting.  Most HR Managers, if they're lucky, have a full time recruiter, but this still means, when it's busy, they still have to recruit.

That's why so many HR pros engage recruiting agencies.  We offer a skill set they don't, necessarily, have on their staff.  We sell.  We sell the crap out of a position and your company.  We can make an average company look like the Best Place to Work and a really bad company look like the next big opportunity.  No power steering - No problem - manual steering builds up great arm muscles!  Want tinted windows?  Yeah, we can get those installed.  Recruiting is selling.  In fact, Recruiting is double selling.  You sell the candidate on the position, then you sell the hiring manager on the candidate.  Good recruiters can work in any industry - because selling skills are transferable to any product or service.

So - do you want your HR Pros to sell, or do you want me to sell?  By the way - I don't hire HR Pros, I hire closers.

Let my company do some selling for you - let's connect: [email protected]; 517-908-3156 or @TimSackett.