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How to Collect Your Fee When the Candidate ‘Answered an Ad’

by | Apr 27, 2015 | Recruiter Training, Top Echelon Blog

Welcome to our series of posts in the Top Echelon Recruiter Training Blog: “Jeff Allen’s Collection Tip of the Week.”  Each week, we’ll highlight one collection tip from Allen, JD/CPC, the world’s leading placement lawyer.

Since 1975, Allen has collected more placement fees, litigated more trade secret cases, and assisted more placement practitioners than anyone else.  He’s also the author of 24 books and a regular columnist for The Fordyce Letter, one of the leading publications in the recruiting industry.

Below is this week’s collection tip for recruiters, courtesy of Jeff Allen.

What the client says:

“The candidate answered an advertisement.”

How the client pays:

It’s amazing how many cases come to us—all the way to collection—without the recruiter checking whether the client even posted an Internet ad.  Actually, it’s over half the time!

As with salary misrepresentations, employers will freely say an ad was running.  But they know they’ll get nailed if they write it.  When they’re pressured, they try to figure out something else.

So as a rule, if the client doesn’t proudly send you a copy of the ad, it probably didn’t run.  You should run, though . . . to your lawyer.

If you receive the actual posting, review it and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Did the ad look the same as the job order?
2. Did the ad run just before the interview?
3. Did the candidate really respond to the ad?
4. Did you set up the interview?
5. Did the employer notify you that the candidate responded to the ad?

And then here’s the clincher question to ask the candidate:

6. Did he or she write that you were the source of the referral on the client’s application?

These are highly-collectible fees, because an ad is a passive recruiting device.  It rarely incites a client to hire.  Ads flood employers with resumes, and the attempt to read them electronically generates very funny mismatches.

Identifying, inciting, and igniting is what incendiary recruiters do.  We’re on fire and that causes the hire . . . and that’s how you collect your fee!

It’s very difficult for an employer to connect an ad with a hire if a recruiter was involved.

That’s why these disputes often result in the client paying a full fee.

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Know how to collect your well-earned fees?  Test yourself!  Visit Allen’s Placement Law website and click the “Placement Fee Collection Quiz” button.  Allen can be reached via telephone at 310.559.6000 or via email at jeff@placementlaw.com.

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