Dear Barb:

Thank you for accepting my invitation to connect on LinkedIn. Perhaps you’d be open to offering some suggestions as to the most effective ways to get decision makers (Director, VP and C-Suite executives) on the phone.  Once I speak with them in real time, I have no problems conducting sales presentations and closing them on using my recruiting services. After being in outside (medical device) sales for many years, I still struggle with getting past their administrative assistants, which is curious, since I never had any problems, previously.

Can you please help? Thank you for your time and kind attention.

Robin S. Newhall, CA 

Dear Robin:

The best way to get through to your decision maker is to have their name in advance. You can accomplish this either by researching social networks or websites which often list the names of your targets.

Another way to obtain names is to call a receptionist between the hours of 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. and ask for the correct spelling of the name of the person you need to contact.

For example: “Would you please give me the correct spelling of your MIS Director’s name?”

If you are asked why you need this information, give a simple answer. You are sending some information to them and want to make sure you have the correct spelling of their name and exact title. When you ask for the spelling vs. asking for the name itself, most receptionists will assume you have a name! This is a very effective way to obtain names.

When you call in and ask for the person by name rather than by title, your chances of being transferred greatly improve. If you are asked the reason for your call, there are several effective responses:

1. I’m calling for a referral
2. The reason for the call is personal
3. I have previously mailed information and was following–up, _________ is expecting my call
4. The reason for my call is to get some additional information
5. I’ve been networking with a number of professionals and was given _______’s name as someone who might be able to lead me in the right direction. I would greatly appreciate it if you would connect my call.

If you’re dealing with a receptionist, their job is to give out information. If the gatekeeper is a secretary, one of their functions is to screen what they deem to be unimportant or sales calls. They must see the benefit to their employer if they are expected to put your call through. Use these ideas and you will get through to your targets.

Barb Bruno, CPC, CTS

Would you like to Ask Barb a question? Email her at support@staffingandrecruiting.com. Each month in The Fordyce Letter print edition, Barbara Bruno answers questions from individuals in the Recruiting Profession. We will bring you some of these Q&A responses from Barb each week on FordyceLetter.com.

This week’s inquiry comes from Tarin Yankovich:

Hello Jeff,

First off, I have been a fan of you and the Fordyce articles you write for years, thank you for all your great advice! Your experience and wisdom have giving me the foresight on numerous occasions to avoid situations that would have otherwise cost my firm valuable business. Here is a recent question that came up; I thought you’d be the perfect person to shed some light on it for me and possibly your readers.

I run a search firm in Los Angeles and run a national practice within the Finance space. We work with many of the largest finance companies in the world. As most, our business goes in cycles with clients, meaning we’ll do many searches with a client one year and the next we won’t. As a result, sometimes a couple years go by during which time we won’t work with a client but still have contracts with them.

I have one particular client I worked with in 2007; we did many VP level searches for them and they were happy with our results. At the time I had several contacts at various levels within the organization in Chicago, Boston, and New York.  Since the 2009 recession and with a myriad of internal changes at the company literally all of my original contacts both in HR and management have moved on, their assistants have moved on, and even the President of the firm has moved on. Additionally, the firm changed their name a couple years ago using hyphenated name, and recently the firm has dropped the old name altogether and only uses the new one.

Here is my dilemma, I have continued to call on the firm and know who most of the new players are.  Recently I found an open door and am trying to rekindle this relationship with a new search assignment. I don’t want to lose momentum with a new contract if I don’t have to. I have a signed contract, my contract (not theirs), from several years ago, at a percentage I really like. I don’t want to haggle with a new HR person, renegotiate a good contract, and possibly lose the search or get a lower fee than I negotiated pre-recession. However I’m smart enough to see a couple possible issues. I have a contract, with no expiration date, which is signed by a signatory who is no longer there, under a name that the firm no longer uses. I do have some wording that says should the signatory leave his position the contract is still valid, but I fear I’m facing a few issues and want to make sure I’m covered. So, is my contract still valid?

Any guidance would be much appreciated.  Thank you Jeff!

Tarin

Hi Tarin,

Thanks for the fan mail!

Amybeth Hale and the rest of the Fordyce stars will magically beam our conversation around the placement planet. You’re helping us make the world safe for placement!

Now, on to your inquiry.

If I were still working a desk (Oh, I’m not? Sorry!), I’d be smart like you. Assumptive too. I’d assume I had an enforceable agreement with the client. That’s a five-figure assumption.

There are five reasons why:

1. The terms of your fee agreement are more favorable than you’d be able to negotiate now.

This means the reward of placing pursuant to it justify the risk of it being unenforceable.

Who knows what might happen if you start making waves? Perhaps you’d be hit with a PSA (placement service agreement). That would mean a low fee ceiling, a goofy guarantee, and a basic employer-lawyer wish list. Who needs that?

At best there would be delay and uncertainty until a deal was made. Just nonproductive HR happy-talk, hassling, and hiccups.

2. Your fee agreement covers the “successor liability.”

Although I haven’t seen that agreement, I’ll take your word that it covers this sitch.

If you’re right, great. But even if you’re wrong, there are other options.

Read on.

3. Your fee agreement is “impliedly assumed” by the buyer.

The implied assumption concept is legally like your five-figure one (with more words).

An implied assumption is the legal happening that happens “by operation of law” when a buy-sell agreement is executed (completed) that omits a liability. The buyer didn’t actually (knowingly) assume liability under your fee agreement. So you can budge a judge to assume the deal included the ongoing rights and liabilities of the biz. (Just like you!)

In the absence of an actual (knowing) assumption of liabilities, a contingent liability (like a fee agreement for a future placement) would likely be impliedly assumed by the buyer in conjunction with a sale of assets of a business. Why? What changed? Just the faces and maybe the places. But basically, the business continued intact. It even needs the same kinds of employees. There was just a change of ownership of an ongoing business.

The buyer could have discharged (eliminated) contingent liabilities, but this requires notice to the creditor.

You didn’t receive actual notice (“Hi, you’re history. Bye.”), and you didn’t receive constructive (pretend) notice (because there was no publication in a newspaper to “All Creditors” or whatever).

That’s the Legalese way to lay out the case for an implied assumption of liabilities. We use it to convince employer lawyers to pay and courts to make them pay.

4. Your fee agreement is “assumed” by the “successor entity.”

The usual scenario starts when the client acts on your referral. The interviewing process starts. Then somewhere in my famous “Ten Steps In The Placement Process,” the client tries to shoehorn in some new agreement with you.

Whoa! It waived its right. A waiver is the voluntary relinquishment of a known right. Here, the client says it didn’t know of your original agreement with its ancestors, or didn’t think it was bound.

You reply that it knew or should have known about it, since when it assumed the business, it took subject to (acquired) its contingent liabilities.

Now, the client’s estopped (legally stopped or prevented) from denying liability. It waived its right to do so.

Of course, it doesn’t have to hire your candidate. But that’s not the way it works. If they’re in love, a hike in the marriage license fee doesn’t estop the marriage. I know this for a fact. When it happened to us at the counter in 1972, this HR mangler had just enough money left to move the license celebration to Arby’s.

Isn’t this fun? We’re just jivin’ with the jokers using long words with many syllables.

5. It makes no difference when your fee agreement was signed, by whom, or where they are now.

All that matters is that someone signed it. “Unauthorized” or “authorized”, demoted or promoted, fired or retired, insane or sane, dead or alive.

Anybody with a signature who signs (“X” is fine) and sends back the agreement binds the client.

Best wishes for placement after placement under that original fee agreement. Your go-for-it” approach is just what it takes. Now you have the ammo to back up your assumption.

Thanks again for the fan mail and a super JOC inquiry, Tarin!

Jeff

If you have a legal question you’d like to have Jeff answer here on The Fordyce Letter, check out Jeff’s On Call! and submit your question.

William Tincup was featured recently in John Sumser’s Top 100 Influencers, which is a running series that Sumser is doing on recruiting and HR professionals who have made an impact in our industry. While Tincup isn’t a recruiting agency guy, he is a self-employed professional services guy, just like many of you. Tincup, along with Bret Starr, co-founded their company Starr Tincup in November of 2000. Starr Tincup is a marketing consultancy that serves the recruiting and HR community. He has been responsible for building the company brand, including the website, book (Try Not To F&ck This Up), direct marketing, email marketing, event strategy, social media strategy, and so forth. Tincup has been known (affectionately? notoriously?) throughout the recruiting and HR community for his low-brow sense of humor, colorful language, and yet his approachability and willingness to have conversations about his work and his thoughts on business and marketing strategy.

Recently, he fell out of love with his work and decided to move on.

At this point, you may be wondering “What does this have to do with me? This guy’s a marketer; I’m a recruiting professional!” I promise – there is a good point to all of this.

Falling out of love with one’s work is common. We’ve all had days where we’ve sworn that if we get on the phone with one more rude person or if one more client tries to cheap out on paying a fee, we’re through. Of course, few are the time when we actually follow through on those threats. But that thought is still lingering in the back of our minds – “Is this all really worth it?”

William Tincup’s story struck me because he detailed the reasons he decided to throw in the towel. He stopped believing in the outsourced marketing services business model. He was frustrated with the double standards applied to his efforts vs. in-house marketers’ efforts. He became annoyed that, as an external service provider, his status was constantly being threatened by these ridiculous standards. And the final straw for him, as he states:

“…the realization that over the course of 10 years in the game I might of [sic] been told “thank you” seven or eight times.  I (read: my firm) changed lives, changed destinies, built lasting brands, created market share, created real value, got people promoted, etc, etc. Yeah, I know – payment for services rendered was my thanks.  Yeah, well, that wasn’t enough.”

I would be very surprised if just about every person reading this article hasn’t struggled with at least one of these issues at some point during your professional recruiting career. Who hasn’t felt like the red-headed stepchild at least once when working with a difficult client? Who hasn’t been held to some crazy standards as an external recruiter that an internal employee would never be held to? And who hasn’t wished that once, just once, someone would thank them for all of the amazing talent they’ve helped shepherd in to an organization?

When you really fall out of love with your work, how do you know when it’s time to say “Enough!” and leave before you become bitter? Is it just a bad case of the Mondays, or is this a recurring gut feeling that just will not go away? How do you get past the rut and fall back in love with what you do? Weigh in with your thoughts in the comments below. Sharing your experience might just save someone from calling it quits!

Why should a recruiting firm start, develop, and maintain relationships with hiring managers as a key activity? We have found that over the years the largest contribution to our ability to survive in an ever more competitive environment has been our desire to establish and maintain strong rapport with hiring managers. It didn’t start as a planned activity – it just happened over time. The benefits have been many. It’s much easier to understand “the secret sauce” of openings when you have known the hiring managers over a long period of time. Having worked with them as candidates in the past adds to a level of credibility the competition cannot easily match. And being able to get their opinions about their ex-co-workers is priceless.

With the benefit of hindsight, the formula for successful networking with hiring managers is rather simple. You start by concentrating your attention on the best people in your industry. You get to know them professionally and, quite often, personally. You learn what they do and don’t do that makes them rising stars. You try to get opinions from people who know them about what makes them special and then discuss it with them.  In this way, you are developing relationships with both current and future hiring managers.

If you can create a connection when these people are happily employed and are not looking to change jobs, you build a relationship that could weather a storm for many years. Sooner or later, when they decide to look for new opportunities, you are there to help and advise. You build your rapport over a long period of time – someone with less than 10-15 years of experience in the industry is seldom senior enough to have influence in the hiring process.

So where do you begin?  Whom do you connect with? Be very careful in selecting members of your network. Concentrate on rising stars with whom you “click”. There has to be a connection at the personal level. Look for similarities such as attending the same high school or college, coming from similar small towns, an interest in sports and the like.   Then, over the years, you keep in touch by emailing them once a quarter or so, and make an attempt to meet them in person a couple of times per year (if possible). If you show genuine interest in what they do, the conversations tend to be rather easy and pleasant. The catch – it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation with a rising star in any complex field if you are not an expert. So make yourself an expert. If not in the nitty-gritty technical details, then in learning who are the stars in your fields, where they work, what they do and what makes them special.

Information is key. Read all the industry publications you can get your hands on and every time you see an interesting story or article, share it with the people you are cultivating.  By being an expert in the people and companies in your field, you will be able to add valuable information to the exchanges you have with your rising stars. Very few professionals have the time or interest in doing the work it takes to really master this subject. As a rule, if you have an in-depth conversation with ten or more people working for a given mid-sized firm and you get them to tell you anything about the people around them, you will become an expert on that firm. This further encourages their belief that you are the only one capable of helping them.

There are challenges in maintaining these activities productively. You must work very hard at distinguishing the difference between Data and Metadata.

Data is resumes with their collections of education, firm names, project descriptions, technical skills, other keywords, visible progression of responsibilities and the like. Data is when a candidate describes to you their projects – what they did and what the results were. Data is when you collect lots of resumes or LinkedIn profiles and determine which candidates are open to the opportunities you have. Data is facts.

Metadata is the collection of opinions about all of these. You need to be as well informed about these as possible, and that gives you an edge and allows you to enhance your relationships with your rising star hiring managers. Metadata is knowledge of what are the best schools in your field at the Bachelor level and at Master level?  They may not be the same. What firms are the hardest hires? Who do they tend to select? Who can share with you internal opinions about various potential candidates? To what degree can you rely on those opinions? What do you do when you have multiple opinions that disagree? What are the hottest technical skills? To what degree do different firms have proficiency in deploying the latest technology that calls for these skills? What kinds of questions do you ask to ascertain if the candidates have these skills, and to what degree?

As your mid-level hiring stars progress in the field, you will be called upon to help them build their careers, teams, and eventually, their companies. By this point you should have a good idea of who the key firms are in your field, who are winning in the market place and who are losing. As your contacts’ levels of seniority rise they will become more and more interested in discussing their industry and where the various firms are in the competitive market place. Here again your research will pay off.

As you get more involved with your hiring clients you should become more aware of the organizational issues they are dealing with. What are the conflicts the organization is dealing with today? What problems had the organization dealt with in the past and how did they deal with these? What worked and what did not? In other words, to the degree possible, become an expert on your hiring manager’s companies.

How will this benefit you in the long run? In today’s ultra competitive recruiting environment, unless you have a sustainable edge you will be out of business soon enough. Lowering your fees is NOT a competitive edge – your competition from low labor cost countries has you beat on that one. Having a strong relationship with hiring managers where your integrity, your expertise in a competitive labor marketplace, knowledge of technological competitiveness, in-depth knowledge of what makes your clients’ firms and your clients individually tick – all of these constitute a high barrier the competition will have a hard time overcoming.