How would you pay a retained firm for a candidate you referred to them?

A retained firm is working a position for your company. Your company gives that firm a name to connect with regarding that position. Do you pay the same fees on that candidate?

How do you construct your agreements with retained firms to account for referrals from your company that get placed at your company? What are best practices for this?

Obviously, if you are a corporate recruiter worth your salt, there are things you can do to prevent this. However, it still will happen that your hiring manager will go to the firm before you. So what do you do?

Cheers,

//Josh

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Comment by Joshua Kahn on August 22, 2007 at 12:18pm: Thanks for sharing your perspective Craig. I ask the question without revealing my opinions on it to gauge what others in the industry feel about it.

Thanks again.

//josh

Comment by pam claughton on August 22, 2007 at 9:29pm: I agree completely with Craig on this. Giving a name is not the same as giving a candidate. The name still needs to be recruited and developed into a candidate and at this level, often schmoozed very carefully to even get the individual to consider looking at the opportunity.

The way to avoid such a scenario is to develop a tighter relationship with the hiring manager so that they will come to you first before going outside to a retained firm.

Pam

Comment by Joshua Kahn on August 23, 2007 at 9:45am: Pam,

thanks for the note. Agreed on all points. tightening the relationship with the hiring manager in an organization of hundreds of hiring mnagers is no simple task. Especially as hiring managers change, recruiters change the departments they support. Makes for a complex, moving target in terms of developing those lasting trusting relationships. Not to say we'd give up on it, but part of the challenge is to get all the recruiters here communicating the capabilities of our team to the hm's. So, for now, we have to deal with the practice of sharing names.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond, much appreciated.

//josh

Comment by Susan Burns on July 1, 2008 at 4:18pm: Josh - agree with what has already been said. You could always negotiate an agreement up front as well for a different payout for pure leads Vs those that are handed over. I guess it would also depend on how much work this particular search firm does in actually vetting the candidate. You could also work language into the SLA that states if a hiring manager reaches out without partnership with recruiting the agency has an obligation to partner with you to confirm if the prospect is already in your database. Not to make this too complicated, but if your working with a few close firms as partners they are usually open to doing this.

Re the hiring managers and working with them not to reach out to search before the recruiting department - one suggestion: if they reach out first and don't partner with recruiting they get to pay the fee. Now, if they already carry this responsibility its a bit tougher. But, if recruiting pays the bills this is a good, fast way to get them to partner.