What Are Your Thoughts When One of Your Top Clients Starts Broadcasting Positions On BountyJobs, RecruitAlliance, Dayak, etc?

I begin today's forum discussion with an odd visceral feeling. It's not a terrible morning, but it can't be called a good one, either. Here's why:

One of my top clients implemented a Talent Acquisition unit/team/architecture about 9 months ago. Before this point, I had access with the decision makers . . . however, Talent Acquisition immediately prohibited any discussions with Hiring Managers outside of their knowledge. Every call had to be 3-way and they had to be copied on all email correspondence (understandable, if you ask me . . to a degree, anyway). My only thought is that the TA employees hired came in with an 'us versus them' mindset in dealing with 3rd Party Recruiters - if you've been doing this a little while, you can tell by the tone and inflection of conversations -- as with all new relationships, it takes time to earn trust.

Anyway, the output/results from implementing a dedicated TA function has went starkly south. Fallouts increased 50%, offers aren't being accepted at the same levels, the recruiting process now has several additional steps that makes the candidates feel as if they're on an assembly line or in a meat grinder, etc. As in any math equation, using more steps to get to the result increases the variability, or 'margin of error'. While I don't have the data in front of me, I can only imagine that the TA function is operating well below direct ROI, and that isn't calculating the opportunity cost associated with fallouts and a lower acceptance rate.

As the Hiring Managers are now calling me complaining about not getting candidates anymore (at least, good ones), I always felt that I could work through the newfound inefficiencies . . . that is, until this morning. As I check the online Vendor Mgmt Systems every week or so (BountyJobs, RecruitAlliance, etc.) to see 'what's going on in the employment space', I came across this Client broadcasting their open positions for the world to see.

I'd like to reach out to RBC to see what the community thinks about this situation. Here are some questions:

a. Have you encountered this yourself?
b. What was your first thought and how did you feel?
c. What did the ensuing conversation with the client sound like?
d. Did you walk away or play the 'wait until they come back around' game?

Looking forward to your thoughts . . .

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Slouch on December 17, 2008 at 10:00am

This is what i think

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Permalink Reply by Michael Katz on December 17, 2008 at 10:01am

I experienced a TA with one of my clients in NYC, a major online-tech company. One of the big selling points a TA system makes is the reduction in contingency fees paid to 3p recruiters. They basically approach a client and say 'look. you are paying different fees to different companies who work with different managers AND you have to deal with a ton of cold calls. Let us manage all of that for you at a commission of only 15%'.
They make their money on volume and typically don't want 3p recruiters because the TA eats the difference between their 15% and the 3p's fee of 20-30%.
I can only tell you it is a very frustrating experience. I went through the conference call routine for a while, but at every conference call there were many, many 3p recruiters (and different companies each time from all over the country). The TA was quite okay with turning over as many disinterested 3ps as they wanted. Since then the company was bought out so I do not know the current status.

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Albright on December 17, 2008 at 10:30am

This TA Team has convinced this company that YOU (and the others recruiting for them) were not needed. For whatever reason your client must have agreed.

I would make one last pass through the managers you have relationships with. Like the ones who you mention that are complaining. Ask them to meet for lunch. Individually or in a small group. Find out what is really going on then make a decision.

I have always felt that the actual "company" is not your client - rather it is the manager you've got a relationship with that is the true client.

There is probably not much the managers can do so plan on just moving on. As agency recruiters we need to place people or die a slow professional death. Don't let it happen!

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Permalink Reply by Slouch on December 17, 2008 at 10:43am

I think they call them vendor management systems. I think this is part of the problem.

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Permalink Reply by Joshua Letourneau on December 17, 2008 at 11:22am

JD, you're right - "Vendor Management Systems". [Note: My reference to TA means 'Talent Acquisition', however it's not always abbreviated as such.]

If a company thinks that any decent and self-respecting firm is going to pay a quarter of their fee to a 'VMS' provider, then they're barking up the wrong tree.

I agree with the notion that a company is either a Client or a Source . . . but as in all relationships, you want to salvage and fix what may be broken instead of immediately severing a partnership (or what you *thought* was a partnership) for a few years.

In the end, who can be to blame? Is it the new TA function at the Client? Perhaps, because business results have went south in a big way - I can assure everyone that this was not the original intent.

Could blame fall on the new Sr VP, HR of North American Operations for hiring a Director of TA from a company that has an absolutely terrible employment brand and is known for high turnover and meat-grinder recruiting? Perhaps, because the Director of TA not only brought over his own methodology, but also his Recruiting Mgr and Jr Recruiter from his old company - as you can imagine, now my Client is running into the same problems as the other company. When you hire someone that brings over a team, it is worth the due dilligence to see what results that team is delivering for their current firm.

Could blame fall on the advancement of technology solutions? Not really, at least it's not the tech vendors faults in my opinion. Rather, it's the mindset that Recruiting solutions can only be found through new technologies - nothing, absolutely nothing, could be further from the truth . . . but if you go to a tradeshow and 50% of the presenters work for showcased tech firms, what do we expect?

Can blame be passed because of the 'chasm' that exists between External and Internal Recruitment? Perhaps . . . but why? If Internal Recruiting saw TPRs' as partners, this chasm wouldn't exist . . . considering TPRs always operated with high integrity and ethics.

At the end of the day, I find myself circling back to a central point that was learned during the CRM failure/debacle of the mid-2000s, and that is this:

The more you try to remove human interaction from a process that is all about people, first and foremost, the more you work against achieving your desired result. This is as true of Sales Departments that think technology will sell for them (instead of a human being selling to another human being), as well it is true of Recruiting Functions that believe they can fully automate recruiting.

To echo Jim Collins in "Good to Great" . . . technology is an accelerator of competitive advantage, not a creator of competitive advantage. Could this be more true in any space than our own????