Welcome to The Fordyce Letter:

The Fordyce Letter

Straight Talk for the Recruiting Profession


Business, How-To, Staffing

Marketing Basics To Help You Jump Start Your New Temp Business

by 9 hours ago


Marketing business sales

Companies across the United States want to streamline their processes. Flexibility, efficiency, and cost savings are necessary to survive in this new economy. Contract staffing allows companies to achieve those goals and become productive at the same time.

There are three pieces of good news here for recruiters. One is that the companies you are already working with for direct hire placements probably need contractors, and you already have those business relationships established.

The other piece of good news is that any recruiter, regardless of size, can add contract staffing to their business model if they use a full service back-office provider. The back-office should handle the financial, legal, and administrative tasks so you don’t have to deal with funding, contracts, time sheets, payroll, taxes, workers compensation, background checks or any other administrative issue.

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Uncategorized, Weigh In!

Follow These 5 Tips to Place An Unemployed Candidate

by 1 day ago


fordyce-default

EmploymentSmall75Nobody wants to hire an unemployed person. It’s a problem that most recruiters — whether here in the U.K. or elsewhere — face. On several occasions, I’ve actually had clients request that I seek somebody already in work.

The increasing scarcity of jobs puts us in a tricky situation where:

  • Employers can be pickier about who they hire;
  • There are more jobless candidates (who nobody wants);
  • People are reluctant to trade in a secure job for a new one.

Clients are demanding high caliber candidates while refusing to consider the talent that is actually available to us and them.

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Ask Barb

Go Global? Develop A Solid 30 Account Base First

by 1 day ago


Ask Barb

Dear Barb:

Is international recruiting something I should consider? I live in Seattle and place primarily in the Bay Area. I keep hearing about people making a killing placing in Europe, Asia and other international areas. I’m a sole proprietor and don’t have the advantage of a team to support me. Do you think this is a way to avoid getting hit when the U.S. economy takes another dive?

Justin G.

Seattle, WA

Dear Justin:

You never shared your niche or area of specialization in your question. I always advise that a client territory of 30 accounts is pretty much recession proof. This is comprised of 10 key accounts and 20 back-ups. The key accounts call you first, view you as a trusted advisor/consultant and hire multiple candidates from you throughout the year. The back-up accounts call you and others and probably view you as one of the vendors they utilize for top talent. However, they know who you are and the services you provide.

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The Business of Recruiting

The Anatomy of a Recruitment Coup

by 2 days ago


USC logo

USC logoLast week, in a dramatic announcement that reverberated around the world of academia, the University of Southern California announced it hired two of the preeminent neuroscientists in the world, stealing them away from crosstown rival UCLA.

While salary was certainly part of the deal, what convinced Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson to decamp from the University of California Los Angeles after two decades was a combination of bigger and better facilities, a commitment to building a world class program, and considerations of culture and lifestyle.

After being rebuffed for years, how USC finally managed to snag the men and their Laboratory of Neuro Imaging is a case study in recruiting professionals who are among the top in the world in their field. In this case, there’s no indication that either internal recruiters or professional search firms were involved. Still, the methods the school used, and the issues that helped convince the men to make a move, are ingredients of every placement.

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Fees, Jeff's On Call!

Bona Fide Advice About That ‘Bona Fide’ Job Order

by 3 days ago


Jeff Allen COllection Tip

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.”

How Client Pays:

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Uncategorized

You May Have Been Given the Business, But Your Grace Will Get You More

by 6 days ago


Danny Cahill

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.

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Cold Calling

Email Trumps Voice Messages For Getting a Response

by 7 days ago


email voicemail survey response
email voicemail survey response

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.

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Staffing, Weigh In!

Are Recruiting Firms A Bad Idea?

by 7 days ago


Kiala Kazebee

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.

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Jeff's On Call!

Unplacement Liability and the Case of the Renegade Recruiter

by 7 days ago


JeffOnCall_new

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.

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Ask Barb

With So Many Trainers, How Do I Know What to Do?

by 8 days ago


Ask Barb

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.

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