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148 How to Hire A-Players
Matt Todt, a seasoned recruiting manager in the pharmaceutical
industry, asks these questions when speaking to a recruiter’s
references:
Is this recruiter professional?
Does the recruiter follow up and do what he or she promised?
Does the recruiter have a well-defined process for conducting a
search?
Does the recruiter follow instructions?
Did the recruiter interact with you and your people appropriately,
or was he or she inappropriately aggressive?
Would you hire the recruiter again?
Negotiating the Contract
The process is not over when you settle on a recruiting firm. You
want to review the contract closely before you sign it and have your
attorney do so as well. Here is another helpful checklist from Matt
Todt to guide your contract negotiation with a recruiting firm.
What is the fee? Calculated on base salary? Base plus bonus?
What is the guarantee period?
What is the definition of a ‘‘candidate’’? For example, you can
stipulate that if a recruiting firm presents you with a candidate
who is already in your database, you don’t owe that firm a fee if
you hire the person. Alternatively, if a recruiter submits someone
to your company and you hire him or her later for a different
role, you often still pay the recruiter’s fee.
Include nonsolicitation and confidentiality agreements in the
contract. These are clauses that spell out that the recruiting
firm cannot recruit your employees or share information with
your competitors. Ethical firms always follow these guidelines,
but it never hurts to have them in writing.
In order to fulfill a guarantee, recruiting firms sometimes require
written details about why a new hire they placed with a
company did not work out. You can take this verbiage out of