This is the next in an ongoing series of articles presenting recruitment advice. Suitable for everyone who runs or works in a recruitment business.
Recruitment
is an Art Form
An important point to remember with all recruitment or sales advice is that both activies are art forms. As such there are lots of ways to do them.
I only offer advice that I have either used myself or presented to others and seen work well. Consider how you can adapt the advice here for your market place and your style of recruitment or sales and I truly expect it to help you be a success.
Four Tips for Avoiding Back Door Hiring
Back door hiring is that unhappy event that happens to all recruiters at some point in their career where the client hires a candidate without informing the consultant.
[Historical note - the phrases 'back door hiring'; 'being back doored' etc are not mine but ones I have heard widely in the industry - the analogue is that the candidate has been ushered quietly in through the back door of the building away from prying eyes. You might be aware of this situation via a different name.]
There are a range of reasons why clients do this is ranging from accidental oversight to criminal intent. Sometimes we do our job as recruiters so well that the temptation of what we are offering is too much for the decision maker.
From the candidate perspective they are often presented with the bleak choice of being morally upright or getting a job offer. A tough place to be in when you need a job.
For those consultants thinking this is all about forming strong relationships with their candidates let me agree and say that despite the best possible of relationships back doors will happen. People are people and sometimes that means they are less than upstanding and moral. What you need is a safety net for those occasions when people fall from grace.
I had one client who, as it turned out, had no budget to recruit but couldn’t resist the two candidates I presented to him from his direct competitor. He hired them after telling me they had failed the interview.
Fortunately his CEO was a decent chap and settled the bill immediately I brought it too his attention. (And put an official repremand on the record of the hiring manager). So all ended well but had I not been vigilant in my recruitment practice thousands of pounds of earnings would have been stolen from me.
So I present below four tips to help you get what you deserve and what you are legally owed:
1) Have a regular checking system – ensure that you have a regular system for checking against back doors. This should be an absolute part of your recruitment processes – as a company. If for some reason you company does not want to implement a system then put your own personal one in place for your personal units.
I suspect that once you have found your first example your company will be keen to adopt a checking system.
2) Check up on every arranged interview - I’ve had quite a few consultants tell me that they check up on the interviews that they are suspicious about. In my opinion that’s like having a fire alarm and turning it off when you are fairly happy there isn’t going to be a fire. You simply can’t know when there is going to be a problem so you check all of them.
You do that and I guarantee that at some point one will come up that will totally surprise you.
3) Check to the full extent of your terms and conditions – most recruiters have terms and conditions that describe their ‘introducing of a candidate’ as lasting for twelve months. So you check right up to the end of that time frame.
I remember clearly an experienced consultant whom I was coaching and I had him start to check for back doors. Something he had never done before. When I checked I found out he had stopped at interviews he had arranged six months ago. I strongly suggested he go back the full time span and lo and behold his first back door, worth nearly £9,000 in fees, turned out to be an interview he had arranged eleven and a half months ago.
Needless to say he religiously checks all his arranged interviews right to their end date now. (Disappointingly he never did buy me that bottle of wine he promised me to say thank you!)
4) Powerful Paperwork – this could almost be a blog topic in itself however once a back door situation has arisen your chief weapon will be your paperwork. Something that really helps is having a signed ‘Declaration slip”. This is a piece of paper which the candidate has signed to confirm that your company has introduced him to the client.
Several companies that I know of have added this as a tear off and return portion to their interview confirmation letters. If anyone would like an example of one then email me and I will send one over.
Along with the declaration slip your internal paperwork regarding the candidate and the interviewer needs to be strong and well documented. Dates are important and if you have those wonderful consultants who are terrific at sales and bad at paperwork then please try to educate them. Having a strong paper trail detailing candidate and client discussions can result in an out of court and early settlement when back doors happen.
I have literally seen thousands of pounds of billings and commissions lost when poor paperwork has prevented the truth from being provable!
I truly hope the above helps.
Until next time; be successful!
Stephen Hart
Trainer, Coach, Public Speaker
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