Editor’s note: Jeff Allen has heard every employer excuse you can imagine for not paying up — and dozens more that defy imagination. A few years ago he began documenting them in a weekly collections column. Because of the importance of collections, Fordyce will periodically reprise the most common situations he addressed.
What Client Says:
The candidate answered an advertisement.
How 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, that is!) — to your lawyer.
If you receive the actual posting, review it and ask yourself:
- Did the ad look the same as the job order?
- Did the ad run just before the interview?
- Did you set up the interview?
- Did the candidate really respond to the ad?
- Did the employer notify you that the candidate responded to the ad?
And then the clincher to ask the candidate:
6. Did he or she write you were the source of the referral on the client’s application?
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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!
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.
