Sounds a bit painful doesn’t it, however it’s a practice between 2 recruitment agencies whereby if one has a candidate and the other has a role, they work together to place the candidate and as such, they split the fee.
All nice so far.
I mention this practice as I had a situation recently whereby an agency approached a client I’m working for (on a retained basis) to say they had a candidate for the role I’m working on.
My client advised them to get in touch with me as I am their retained partner, however, they refused.
Their reason, “my candidate won’t work with anybody else but me”.
This confused me. So, I spoke directly with the agency and it was obviosity not to do with the candidate at all…
I was told, “no, it’s not fair to split the fee with you when we’ve done all the hard work”.
This agency,
- was working off a JD only & had this for over 6 weeks along with 2/3 others
- Hadn’t taken a brief from the client face to face
- Advised me that prepping the candidate over the phone about the JD was what they saw as the hard work part
- Focussed on the fee only rather than what’s best for the client and candidate
& here’s my favourite
- Were talking as if it was a done deal their candidate had the job, rather than having to go through the same screening as many others I was working with based upon a bespoke brief.
Reason for my story, well mainly to get it off my chest as it still pisses me off that people call themselves recruiters because they can speak on the phone to a candidate who has applied to their advert and email the CV to the client and call this recruitment, but mainly because it once again highlights just how poor the recruitment landscape has become that the only focus from this agency was their disgust at not getting a full fee (should they be successful) rather than what’s best for the key people in this story, candidate and client.
I’m not instigating recruiter bashing, however I wonder what the thoughts are of anyone who’s faced a similar issue?
