Confused by this hiring policy. Help please.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve recently settled negotiations for a new job so I’m happy and set to start next week, but in my search I discovered the following phenomena which I can’t quite understand, much less confirm.

The story goes that at least a few high profile companies in my area (Fannie and Freddie, among others) will NOT consider a candidate that has been submited for a position by two or more separate vendors (agents).

Now I can appreciate some frustration from seeing the same candidate submitted two, three, even five times for the same position from various sources, but why would any serious recruiting manager simply toss a highly qualified candidate? I understand that agents like to submit a candidate that is “exclusive” to them to increase their chances of winning the placement so this kind of policy benefits them to a high degree. But the story is that the employers set this kind of policy, not the agents.

Any informed opinions on this matter?

2

Not informed, but an educated guess: they’re probably afraid of potential legal action when Agent #1 finds out that his/her candidate got hired after being rejected and then submitted again by Agent #2.

3

My WAG.

If an applicant is hired but was submitted by three agencies, the responsibiltiy will be on the company to decide who to pay the fee to, while all three agenciies will feel that they deserve the fee.

4

Doesn’t seem like good business to me. As an agent trying to staff positions while competing with several dozen agents just like you, servicing the same clients in the same market, would you really sue a client and risk losing ever doing business with that firm again?

5

Sure. I can see that. But as with all competitive markets, the client waits to see/interview all available candidates and picks one that fits best with regards to skills and price. If two agents submit the same guy for the same position but one has a higher mark-up and is not willing to negotiate, guess who wins? What’s wrong with that? It’s akin to me contracting a renovations firm to remodel my bathrooms. Same job, multiple proposals, one winner.

6

I don’t know the full answer, but Quicksilver is missing a piece. The agencies each submit the candidate under the terms IF you hire this person, you pay me. That is to prevent companies from claiming to have found the candidate themselves.

It’s kind of like if the contractor sent you a bill after you decided to put up the new wallpaper yourself. In this case the agency owns the whole concept of that particular wallpaper.

Trying to sort that out between 2 staffing agencies is indeed a mess. Perhaps what is really going on is the employer is telling the agencies “Only submit us candidates where you are the exclusive agent.” There is probably nothing preventing you as a job seeker from applying directly to the employer. But if you are working with agents, it appears you would need to pick one.

7

I hope someone replys with a definitive answer, because I can see this possibly biting people in the ass.

You see one job listed by a staffing agency. You apply. The next day you see another job listing from another agency that sounds kinda of similar, but it doesn’t mention who the company is. Did you get lucky, and there are two positions out there right now? Or is it the same job, and you end up shooting yourself in the foot when you apply for the second one.

8

I have also spoken with several headhunters who tried to get me to promise I hadn’t been submitted for the job by another company first. Since they were being cagy and wouldn’t tell me the name of the company they were submitting me to, or the name of the job, I just said “Beats me.”

9

:smack:

AHA! That must be the missing element! This would absolutely make sense. Hence the agents saying that the employer has a hard nosed policy for tossing duplicate candidate submissions from different agents. The FACT of the matter is that, agencies are essencially FORCING the employer to take that stance to avoid having a fight over who submitted the candidate first!

You clever little devil, you! :wink:

10

Harriet is correct. There used to be an on-line column, now an email newsletter called Ask the Headhunter which covered this. It makes perfect sense. Once you find a good candidate, without this rule you could shop him around to get a better price. This means don’t submit yourself to more than one agency. If you are not happy with one, tell them to go blow before you switch to another.

These days we only go through agencies if we are desperate. It is way too expensive.

11

So let me be clear on this. I see a listing for a marketing manager on Monster.com, posted by a staffing agency with the employer listed as ‘company confidential’. A few hours, maybe the next day, I see a listing for a marketing manager by another staffing agency for a confidential company, with similar wording. I should only apply to one of the jobs?

12

I don’t see anything wrong with using more than one agency. I got my current job through a head hunter, and at the time I had 3 agencies trying to find me positions at the same time. It may work differently in other fields (I’m in IT) but they all found my resume on Monster, and knew of an unpublished position that they thought I would fit. Then I went through an interview process with each headhunter (so they would better know my interests and qualifications). If I said I’d be interested in the vague position, they’d tell me who it was and what the position was exactly, and submit my resume to the company.

So at this point, I know that I’ve been submitted to Acme Consulting or whatever. If I got to this stage with another headhunter and it turned out to be the same position, I could say that headhunter 1 had already submitted me. This never happened to me, I’m guessing because a company would only go with one placement firm at a time, to reduce the chance of getting the same candidate from 2 people.

It makes total sense to me that a company would not want to be placed in the position of having to decide which headhunter gets the finder’s fee. I forget the number, but the fee is generally a good chunk of the candidate’s yearly salary. This is generally acceptable, because you can spend a lot of money internally on recruiting if you have to do the pre-screening yourself. The tiny company I work for only has 1 HR person - this could double or triple if they put up a listing on Monster and had to screen hundreds of eager applicants.

So this is probably an agreed-upon practice. Companies will reject you if you’ve been reffered two or more times to avoid the hassle of multiple placement firms claiming the finder’s fee, and headhunters will work hard to make sure that you haven’t been submitted to the position already, since that’d just be a waste of their time.

I kind of like headhunters, as long as they’re professional (there are some really shady places, though). At the time I was looking, I was working 50+ hours a week, plus travelling, and I would have gone nuts if I had to troll though listings at the same time. I really like my current company, so it worked out well.

Voyager, all of the headhunters knew that I had other people looking for me, and didn’t seem to think it strange.

archmichael, at the point you’re talking about (applying for a vague posting), you’re several steps away from actually having your resume submitted. If a placement firm does submit your resume without telling you exactly what it is, they really, really suck. Even the one really shady place I dealt with for awhile told me what the post was before they submitted me.

13

Asked and answered. I love this place!

Thanks all.

:slight_smile:

14

I went through this recently when I was unemployed and looking for a new job. Several of the agencies I worked through said something like, “This job is with XYZ Corporation. Have you applied with XYZ or had any other agency submit your resume to XYZ?” If they did submit my resume, I then had to agree not to let anyone else apply to XYZ on my behalf. This is pretty much standard practice.