By Aaron Dodd
Operations Director

It’s my experience that in business many companies talk of being in “partnership” with their suppliers. However the reality is that almost all so-called partnerships are simply marketing spin. The relationships are usually very uneven, often with one overly dependent on the other; this will inevitably mean that one side is either being overcharged for their service or product or vice versa.

In the recruitment industry the best results for both parties without question comes from genuine business partnerships characterised by open communication, shared risk, mutual trust, fair payment for services and shared goals.

However anyone who has been in the industry for longer than six months knows that this is seldom the case. Recruitment is a competitive industry and it’s this competition that has led to rampant fee cutting that inevitably compromises service quality....especially in long term RPOs (the horror stories I’ve heard!). The contingency fee model also means that service purchasers have little to lose, supplier loyalty is minimal and supplier switching is commonplace.

Mindset endeavours to be a thought leader in the talent space and as such we attempt to form genuine partnerships with our clients. Indeed, we have even walked away from clients that don’t treat us as partners. A genuine partnership requires give and take from both sides and as such we make the following commitments to our clients;

• We will work with you to define your genuine personnel needs and deliver short-listed candidates that meet those definitions in terms of skills, qualifications, experience and personality. We will not commit to a defined number of candidates as there may only be one or two that meet the specifications.
• If you are not offering a package that will attract  quality candidates we will tell you up front so that you can revise your person spec or your package offer. If these can’t be altered then we reserve the right to not continue with the assignment. Mindset will not take on impossible assignments!
• We will keep you informed of our sourcing activities. In some cases you will have direct access to our applicant tracking system.
• If the sourcing process proves to take longer than expected we will let you know a revised shortlist date.
• We will meet you in person to present and discuss shortlist candidates.
• If required, we will interview shortlisted candidates with you.
• We will assess all shortlisted candidates after your first meetings against personality benchmarks that we will work with you to define, using our Prevue methodology.
• All assessed candidates will be met with in person and the validity of the Prevue psychometric test results will be investigated in detail.
• We will make verbal contact with all referees and will give you feedback on the referees’ responses.
• We will make final recommendations to you on which (if any) of the shortlisted candidates should be appointed based on their assessment results, assessment interviews and reference checks. If there are reasons why a candidate should not be appointed we will tell you.
• We will invoice you a pre-determined and agreed set fee for the recruitment process. Normally this will be in three parts; the first on commencement, the second on shortlist and the third on appointment.
• We will work with you to put together an appropriate induction plan that will assist in the new employee to generate results faster.
• We will follow up with both the employee and the client throughout their first 12 months to ensure that the needs of both parties are being met.

• Clients will make their key personnel and the role’s stakeholders available to us so that we can develop an understanding of the people the new employee will be working with and the culture of the client’s organisation.
• Clients must be prepared to pay a fair market salary (or above) for the role in question....OR be prepared to accept a lower quality candidate.
• Clients must make themselves available at fairly short notice for interviews. Going on annual leave mid-process (yes, it’s happened) or being “too busy” is not acceptable in a competitive talent-short market.
• If Mindset submits shortlisted candidates, we expect you to meet with them. We are recommending them for a reason and, just so we’re clear,not interviewing a candidate because you “don’t like their CV” is not a reason.
• Clients will promptly return phone calls, emails etc and complete Prevue job surveys in a timely manner.
• If a client does not like a proffered candidate they will give the Mindset consultant detailed reasons so that the same error is not made again. This saves both Mindset and the client’s time. Saying “I just didn’t like him (or her)” is unhelpful to say the least.
• If Mindset withdraws a candidate from the pool due to a poor reference check or Prevue profile, we may recommend restarting the sourcing process. Although it’s upsetting for all parties, please recognise that Mindset will not recommend a candidate that we feel will not deliver the results. We ask that our clients respect our recommendations; that is after all what you are paying us for.
• Clients will pay their invoices on or before their due dates.

Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Subscribe to RSS feed

By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director at The Mindset Group.

Much has been written of late about the many flaws in the contingent recruitment business model.  Last week I experienced first-hand just how seriously poor the model is. Those that promulgate it and try to run their recruitment businesses with it will ultimately fail their businesses, clients and candidates. They also act as the best advertising money can’t buy for those recruiters who operate with better proven exclusive and ideally, retained models. The case story follows;

Preamble; Mindset only operates on retained exclusive recruitment and selection assignments. We will walk away from non-exclusive jobs and only work on a retained basis as we like to be paid for the work we do. The client in question has an exclusive retained services agreement with Mindset that commits them to use Mindset exclusively for all their recruitment activities for 12 months, in return for a set competitive fee structure. This is not a preferred supplier agreement but an exclusive supplier agreement. Mindset has many such agreements with its clients.

We are currently recruiting a State Manager for just such a client. Mindset has advertised the position and has also carried out a parallel search process to uncover suitable passive candidates. On Wednesday I commenced a first interview with a candidate who had responded to an advertisement. The first thing he said to me was “you should be aware that I was already interviewed for this position by another agency on Monday”. Further investigation revealed that a contingent recruiter without permission of the client had advertised the position and was interviewing candidates, telling them that he represented the client.

The client was duly forwarded a copy of the web advertisement and was rightly furious. He issued an immediate request to the contingent recruiter to immediately cease and desist all actions “on their behalf”. The MD and owner of our client is a former practicing solicitor and prior to running the business was partner in a major Melbourne law firm specialising in commercial law. He believes that the actions of this recruiter may well indeed be fraudulent as he is misrepresenting to candidates (and others) that he represents Mindset’s client.

Further it then transpired that Mindset had interviewed a candidate that we had uncovered through our search processes. This candidate had been “floated” to the local manager of our clients business a week or two earlier by the said recruiter. This local manager had met with the candidate but no offer had been made. No contract had been entered into either as the local manager does not have the authority to commit to such contracts.

The contingent recruiter then started to send threatening and unpleasant emails to our client about “his” candidates and that even if they were employed via Mindset (by no means a foregone conclusion for either) that he would be invoicing our client. The more these emails came in, the more the MD hardened his attitudes towards him and better yet, the more professional and ethical Mindset was perceived to be! Naturally the legally-trained MD wasn’t the least bit perturbed about the contingent recruiter’s threats. He was more annoyed that his time was being wasted by him.

Reading these emails it became clear to me that this contingent recruiter had assumed that ALL recruiters work with the same non-exclusive competitive model that he operates under. His thinking was so set that he was unable to conceive of an alternative way to run a recruitment business. He refused to accept the definition of “exclusive”, let alone “retained”. This recruiter also had 22 separate positions listed on a major job board. It needs to be asked; how could a client possibly get a quality service from someone with allegedly so much work on their desk already? How many of these jobs were even legitimate? Our client’s listing certainly wasn’t!

To summarise the effect that the non-exclusive contingent business model has;

• Candidates are pissed off as their time is being wasted and their hopes dashed by recruiters interviewing them for jobs that they either don’t have or don’t exist.
• Clients are pissed off as most MDs would prefer to select the company that represents them in the marketplace.
• Clients get poor service as the clear focus is speed of getting a backside on a seat, not necessarily the right backside!
• Antics such as the above give the recruitment industry a bad name, but conversely make the ethical professional ones that create real value look fantastic.

I recognise that there will be shonky operators in any industry and trust that market-forces will ultimately weed them out. However in the meantime I thank them profusely and encourage them wholeheartedly. They entrench our clients with us and drive new ones to us in their scores. Once they are with us they don’t leave!

Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink | Subscribe to RSS feed