Are we, as a profession, selling two different stories...depending on the situation?

I've been thinking about this since posting my reply in the other discussion about the client who had the resume from 2 years ago.

As an industy/profession why are we telling our clients the "But for my efforts....." is the rule we need to apply when we are the ones sending a resume in that someone else introduced 11 months earlier.

Yet when we are the agency that sent it in 11 months earlier - we are then trying to say "Hey - wait a minute - we get 12 months 'ownership' of all candidates".

I for one think this topic needs some discussion. Especially since we all have different agreements, etc. and are pulling our clients in all sorts of directions.

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Permalink Reply by John W. Riley on January 22, 2009 at 3:58pm

i have a client that if the person has ever applied "EVER" for any position they cannot count as our candidate....needless to say i do not do much business with them because of that situation.-JR

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Permalink Reply by Brent Potter on January 22, 2009 at 5:12pm

Such a difficult subject. We as recruiters know that had we not brought to surface the candidate that we're at that time representing- that candidate that has been sitting in their database for the past 10, 11 months, there would be no way they ever would have came back across that candidate for their requirement. So we're owed something, right? This is even worse when the recruiting firm that submitted the candidate didn't have the decency to tell the said candidate they were presenting them to the client (speaking from experience!).

On the other end, imagine calling up a candidate for a requirement you’ve just been given that you haven't spoken to in a few months. They've since moved on. Being your inquisitive self, you find a colleague in their department to see if they know where they've since moved on to, to find out they've accepted a role with a company that you submitted them to a while back. Pay me my money! Our contract says I have ownership! Fortunately this hasn't happened to me (that I know of).

In the case where I submitted a candidate to my client (who was subsequently interviewed, twice, all orchestrated by yours truly) that already had his information sent from another firm, the other firm was awarded the fee. Sure, we pitched our argument; and our client actually agreed that they would've passed over the candidate had we not brought them to the surface again, but we opted to cut our losses after an initial discussion.

Contracts are contracts, fair is fair (as unfavourable as it may play out sometimes). But all we can do is hold our breath and wait for Karma to reciprocate to us what we have coming- a nice fee on a solid placement.