Welcome to The Fordyce Letter:
Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Jeff Allen offers you a tip about what you should do to ensure you never miss out — or get beat out — of your well-earned fee.
What Client Says:
It wasn’t a “bona fide job order.”
Bona Fide Advice About That ‘Bona Fide’ Job Order
by 
Jeff Allen
11 hours ago
Jeff Allen
11 hours ago
You May Have Been Given the Business, But Your Grace Will Get You More
by 
Danny Cahill
3 days ago
Danny Cahill
3 days ago
Note: This article was first published in Danny Cahill’s newsletter, According to Danny.
Dear Danny,
I’m going to try and explain my situation as best I can because there are a lot of moving pieces.
I have a VP I work with and we have a great relationship. I know exactly what he’s looking for and every placement I’ve made with him has been very successful (according to both parties). During my time working with him I also built a great relationship with a woman in HR and she gave me several searches that weren’t related to the VP I know.
Recently I made a placement with her. After the first month of this person starting, he got sick, very sick and was in the hospital for almost 30 days. My contact and I agreed that we would extend my guarantee for 30 days on the premise that I would find a replacement if needed for 66% of my normal fee. That was in line with my 30, 60, 90 day guarantee, only extended to 120 days.
Well, on day 117 he quit.
Email Trumps Voice Messages For Getting a Response
by 
John Zappe
4 days ago
John Zappe
4 days ago
Click for larger image
Earlier this week I invited Fordyce readers to tell us how often they got a response — any response at all — to cold-call emails and voicemails you send or leave for candidates and clients.
The results are reported in the accompanying chart. The headline is that emails get a better response rate than do phone messages.
What it says is that almost 40% of those of you who took part in the survey say you get a call back to your phone message less than 25% of the time. Looked at from another angle, hardly anyone is getting anywhere close to half their messages returned.
Email, though. gets better results. Just under 8% of the respondents told us they are getting a response to at least half — and in some cases more than 75% — of their emails.
Our poll is anything but scientific. A properly conducted, random survey of recruiters and response rates might come up with very different results. However, it does track with what I’ve heard anecdotally, and with some surveys about email reply rates.
What prompted our Fordyce poll was a Top Echelon Network poll about same day callback rates. That survey of members of the splits network found few are getting called back the same day they leave a message.
Are Recruiting Firms A Bad Idea?
by 
Kiala Kazebee
4 days ago
Kiala Kazebee
4 days ago
In a recent post written by Neil Patel for Quicksprout, he states, “In most cases recruiting firms don’t have the best candidates. Why you may ask? It’s because talented people don’t need recruiters to help them find a job.”
That’s a pretty loaded statement.
Patel then goes on to say,
If someone is really good at what they do, they’ll constantly be bombarded with job offers.
Recruiting firms are not the temp agencies of yore. Patel needs to update his information.
Unplacement Liability and the Case of the Renegade Recruiter
by Jeff Allen
4 days ago
Jeff Allen
4 days ago
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for the great job you are doing in writing the Jeff’s On Call! column.
I have the following problem: A headhunter put me in contact with a firm I suggested to him, and after a couple of rounds of interviews I received an indicative offer.
In the meantime, the client’s Executive Committee voted against paying this particular fee. The client claims that he told the recruiter from the beginning that there might be a difficulty in getting this fee paid as they usually only pay for headhunting partner-level hires.
With So Many Trainers, How Do I Know What to Do?
by 
Barbara Bruno
5 days ago
Barbara Bruno
5 days ago
Dear Barb:
I feel like there are so many trainers out there, and after attending two conferences in the last year, my people are confused on what ideas they should implement. We attend all the free teleconferences or webinars offered, read three trade publications, have internal training, and I send my team to at least two conferences.
How do you know who has the better methods or techniques when trainers, in essence, disagree with each other? It confuses my sales team, and I’m wondering if I’m not providing too much training if that is possible. I mandate that each of my employees reads a sales book each quarter. Some of the ideas they come back with, I would never implement in my company. How do I get the greatest ROI on the money I’m spending on training?
Ron H.
Dallas, TX
Dear Ron:
When I first entered this profession, I felt the same confusion and there weren’t near as many trainers as you have today in our profession. It has been proven by the Department of Education and great sales organizations that you must create and implement a consistent successful repeatable sales process.
Tech Startups’ Challenge: Finding Talent
by John Zappe
5 days ago
John Zappe
5 days ago
More tech startups than at any time in the last four years will be looking to hire this year, says Silicon Valley Bank, but they worry they won’t be able to find the talent they need.
Even as most leaders and founders of the firms surveyed by the bank for its annual Startup Outlook say conditions in the U.S. are better this year than last, the number of them who report hiring talent is their biggest challenge has grown. Nine out of 10 executives report finding and hiring the talent they need is their biggest challenge.
The annual survey, says 87% of the tech startups reported plans to add staff this year. That’s up four points from last year, and 14 points from the first survey conducted in 2010. The strongest market for startup hiring, according to the report, is Texas. The Boston area and metro New York are 3rd and 5th respectively.
Finding Talent Is Biggest Challenge
Software and hardware startups report having the hardest time finding the tech talent they need. For healthcare sector firms, hiring is not quite as much of a challenge — 17% describe it as “extremely challenging” compared to the next lowest scoring industry, cleantech, where 23% described hiring that way. However, healthcare startups are also the least likely to be adding staff, at least compared to the sectors.
Perhaps not too surprising, only the smallest of startups, those with fewer than 10 workers (which tend to be very early stage firms), say their biggest challenge, just ahead of finding talent, is the compensation it takes to land tech professionals. For every other size firm the biggest challenge is finding workers with the necessary skills.
Most in demand, especially among hardware startups, are the STEM skills; 82% of the executives said they are looking for those workers, and 40% reported no skills are more important. Only 17% said management, marketing, or other non-STEM skills are important to them.
Make the Phone Your Friend: Focus On Results, Not Volume
by 
Helen Charles-Morgan
6 days ago
Helen Charles-Morgan
6 days ago
Today I have had a great morning on the telephone, I have:
- Called my consultants for updates and offered my advice in a couple of areas they were struggling in;
- Rang my key clients with updates (picked up a few new exclusive roles whilst doing so);
- Chased a few candidates for interview feedback and was advised to call an excellent professional who is looking for a move (MPC for next week);
- Spoken with various candidates who are all great matches for two urgent positions we are working on at the moment. One informed me of an interview he had attended recently with a client I have worked with in the past;
- Chased a lead and have secured a new training session;
- Made just six calls (to companies I have not spoken to before) on my MPC and arranged two telephone interviews.
I admit I loved every minute of it. All my calls were planned. I did not think for one minute I was making a sales call, but what did happen was I achieved results,. The calls reminded me how much I enjoy using the telephone; the results are instantaneous, not delayed waiting for a reply to an email.
Few Recruiter Messages Get Returned the Same Day – Or Ever
by John Zappe
6 days ago
John Zappe
6 days ago
If you rarely get a same day call back from a candidate or a client, it’s not you. Less than 5% of recruiters report getting their calls returned the same day.
Count yourself lucky is you get your calls returned at all. One survey by a messaging service said only 33% even listen to messages from business contacts. From numbers they don’t recognize, a mere 18% will listen.
That doesn’t mean they bother to return them. Some surveys of cold-call response rates found that one-in-twenty messages will get a response. The longer the message, the lower that response rate goes. Improving the call back percentage, even by only a few points, can make a big difference in client acquisition. Improving both the number of calls in which you actually speak with a live person, as well as improving the percentage of call backs is the key part of Jim Domanski’s session at the upcoming Fordyce Forum.
You Collect Even If You Were Only Partially the Source of Hire
by Jeff Allen
7 days ago
Jeff Allen
7 days ago
Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Jeff Allen offers you a tip about what you should do to ensure you never miss out — or get beat out — of your well-earned fee.
What Client Says:
We would have found the candidate on our own.
