Suck it up as a lesson learned. The recruiter should have known in the first place that the candidate was not a match.
Duh.
There is no way a recruiter can predict that every candidate she sends to a client will be one whom they are willing to hire. It's often very difficult beforehand to get a clear idea of what they want. You shoot for someone within the specifications and they take it from there. Also, many search assignment descriptions are a moving target because the client keeps changing his mind.
Ooh! Ooh! Mr. Kotter… Hey Michael, this situation presupposes that this is the first time the recruiter has worked with this company, or that something has changed.
It creates the opportunity to discuss business ethics and expectations on both sides; something was obviously not done prior to submitting a candidate.
It now falls upon the recruiter to educate this client in the implications of their actions, perhaps using the ‘but for’ rule, where but for his submission of this candidate, these names would not have surfaced.
This is the scenario you outlined and depending on where you’re doing business, you might have a legal case, but where you have to resort to a legal case, you don’t have a client. (continued)
That being said, if diplomacy fails, the recruiter’s best option is to research the industry and locate the competitors to company A and make it a point to recruit the best and brightest out of company A in order to market them to the competitors.
The old saw rings true: There are buyers and suppliers and how you work with a recruiter determines which category you fall into.
Best regards,
John H
I would go farther, and let all my recruiter-colleagues know. Pretty soon, no recruiters will deal with this company, and they'll *have* to use the referral technique to find candidates (and interview way too many unsuitable candidates).
Commenting by HaloScan
