Clients requiring approved vendors to utilize bounty jobs

Hi Folks;
Happy New Year!
A large and steady client for over a decade is requiring its vendors to use the bounty portal.
As a seasoned recruiter I find no value in bounty and it takes out the human element and surtaxes my fee.
Has anyone had this experience and how did they remedy the situation?
Thank you!
Sal

Views: 1074

Comment by Scott Love on January 5, 2009 at 4:12pm
Yes, absolutely, Todd. The answer to every question in recruiting starts with "It depends...". If you can find an HR exec who is a strategic thinker and is secure in their role and position, then they will add more value. My best client was an HR exec. Once there was an opening, he would have me call the ops manager in the respective city, I would get the candidates presented and the interviews going, and then circle back with the HR exec to get the offer, which he let me present and close with the candidate. Most HR people are not like this but you should be open to it. I have a recording I made about dealing with HR, a free webinar, I'll post it on my page, it's a free 30 minute audio recording on 'How to Deal with HR'.
Comment by Salvatore Petrara, CPC on January 5, 2009 at 4:16pm
Scott;
I agree with you that those types of relationships a few but robust.
In most organizations HR is does well in good times yet extremely in bad times (like todays climate) thay are walking on eggshells and regardless of your relationship they will not risk their jobs (or give reason) for a staffing vendor...
Comment by Carole on January 5, 2009 at 5:41pm
I've been a recruiter for 20+ years, contingent and now corporate. Bounty appeals to the corporate half of my brain- larger impact and less risk. I still have to screen/manage the process. I see this as a sourcing tool. The same is true for the recruiter- a good way to "source" new companies that I have existing candidates matching thier needs. My concern was how they "screen" recruiters. Maybe it's just when the check clears.:-)
cj
Comment by LunaZuniga on January 5, 2009 at 6:08pm
It's not for recruiters, it's for companies. When I was with a company in a Corporate Recruiting setting, I looked at BountyJobs (and competitive companies) for the purpose of trying to field the onslaught of agency calls I received daily for the positions we posted on our internal site. Although I didn't engage anyone because mycompany wasn't ready to make process changes, the idea was intriguing for the following reasons: 1) We received between 20 and 50 calls / unsolicited resumes from agencies per day! It was a large corporate environment and all the calls didn't come exclusively to me but it was enough to warrant examining some method of "managing" these unsolicited communications; 2) We could start with a clean slate (if we desired) and put all vendors on the same level, rather than playing favorites for initial submittals (we could also select "preferred vendors"); 3) We could track results to determine which vendors we might select as "preferred" for future submittals (thus, we could continue to work with companies who tailored their submittals - read "value"); 4) once we selected a candidate, we could work as closely with the vendor as we normally would to ensure quality communications at all times. Now, from a vendor's perspective this will not work as well because, as we all know, there are some vendors who aren't as focused on quality of the submittal and those would be quickly identified through this system. I think ANY system will have it's loopholes and there may be some who have worked with these systems (BountyJobs for instance) who feel communication breaks down with it's use. I wonder if there's any way to circumvent that breakdown by establishing relationship first with the company, requesting to be a preferred vendor and being able to ask clarifying questions regarding the job description prior to submitting an candidates? As a 3rd party vendor, I would imagine that would be a huge communication gap for me if I didn't have access to the client to ask these clarifying questions. JD's are so vague after all...
Comment by Todd Kmiec on January 22, 2009 at 10:20am
Sal,

I had a similar situation with a prospective client. I told them that we don't work through Bounty Jobs and we definitely understand the business model there and we'd love to work on positions directly if things are not working out there at any point. They came back to us about a month later.

The best negotiator is always the person who is willing to walk away. I'm sure you've read some of the feedback on their system on these pages. It doesn't appear to be working and it certainly isn't going to work long term. The best thing for you to do is to run your business the right way and if they want to try this out, let them and be there to work with them when it disappoints.

Todd Kmiec
Todd Kmiec & Associates
todd@toddkmiec.com
919-883-7560

http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profile/ToddKmiec

http://www.linkedin.com/in/toddkmiec

Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/toddkmiec
Comment by Kate Jackson on April 30, 2009 at 3:14pm
I'm a Recruiting Leader for a Fortune 5 company and we're looking into signing with BountyJobs. Researching others' experience with BountyJobs led me to this thread. A lot of what has been written here makes sense...I thought I'd add what is appealing from a Corporate perspective:

We're not looking to sign with BountyJobs to save money and I don't think we'll use the site for the big, senior executive roles in which many of you probably specialize. We'll likely use the site for finding the niche, technical skill sets that our in-house recruiters have not been able to fill.

Some of our groups have long-established relationships with particular search firms--they will be able to work exclusively with them if they choose...through BountyJobs at only a 3% charge for the firms. But under the existing system, most of the 400 firms with which we currently have contracts are not getting any business from us--we have a disciplined approval process that ideally limits the search firm spend to the hardest-to-fill jobs.

In addition to freeing us from maintaining 400 contracts--and allowing us to more quickly add new vendors--we hope it will speed up the sourcing process when we post a job. Instead of selecting a firm to begin the search process from almost scratch, we expect firms with relationships with candidates that fit our profile to bid on our job. Unlike executive roles where leadership and intangibles which I can't easily pull off a resume come into play, our roles will likely require very specific job and industry experience. If a candidate has a good work history in the right area at a good company in our industry, I'm less interested in a thorough personality vetting by the firm-I just want to get that hard-to-find person connected with my hiring manager quickly.

Lastly, because we're a big company and we love metrics...the site should reduce our cycle time for these roles and will give us some metrics around which firms are delivering and may lead to preferred relationships with our Company.

For our executive roles...that's another matter. Discretion is a major issue and we won't want our competitors to know. We would also expect a more rigorous vetting process from the firm.

I'll be back to let you know how our experience with BountyJobs goes. Another perk of working with the site is it makes it easier for me to get off the phone with the aggressive search firm salespeople who call me--I'll be able to tell them to look for our jobs on BountyJobs.
Comment by Terry Penn on April 30, 2009 at 3:31pm
Bounty is either the future of recruiting or the end... I'm not sure which. Seriously though, it will work great just as you plan...
Comment by Salvatore Petrara, CPC on April 30, 2009 at 5:01pm
Hi Kate;
I am dubious regarding any large successes you may have with the BJ portal.
GE is well known to attract and retain the best employment talent globally (with your assistance no doubt).
I am sure you know the old adage in application development, "garbage in garbage out"
As indicated earlier a long time client has requested its vendors to utilize the BJ portal and also @ 3%, not 25%.
My experience with BountyJobs has not been that good as it does hinder human elements that are vital to the success of any experienced executive recruiter
Perhaps a beta test with a hand full of lower level roles may be an appropriate to test its viability for a powerhouse like GE.
Regardless your course of action I wish you the best of luck
Comment by Terry Penn on April 30, 2009 at 5:08pm
This is depressing, a guy on active duty at Al Faw Palace out recruits me...
Comment by Stephanie Huff on January 6, 2010 at 3:16pm
As a corporate recruiter we tried BountyJobs over a year ago and attempted to do the same thing. (have all third party recruiters submit agencies via Bounty). I hated it. I felt I got bogged down with a lot of unqualified candidates and we still had to have the candidates apply through our ATS...it just seemed like extra work to me. So we stopped using it after several months. It also seemed to take a lot longer to get the agencies paid their fee. I prefer to use a short list of prefered agencies and don't want to have to deal with using new agencies that don't know our company and our culture or enough about the position to explain it appropriately to the candidates.

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