The year is young, but we’ve already had some big placement fees in TE Network . . . like this one and this one.

Matthew Deutsch

And now we have another one!

That’s because Russ Hovendick of Client Staffing Solutions, Inc. and Mark Marshall of CRJ Search recently placed a Plant Manager to earn a placement fee of $47,500 at 25%. However, that wasn’t the only split placement made recently in the Network.

There were others, as well, as you can clearly see below. Because the only thing better than a split placement fee . . . is a big split placement fee.

As a friendly neighborhood reminder, here is the information that we publish with our split placements:

• Names of the trading partners involved (with their profile photos, when available)
• Job title
• Overall placement fee (before TE Network’s 6% brokerage fee, of course)
• Fee percentage

Please note that the placements listed below reflect deals finalized in TE Network for the period from February 2 through February 8, 2026.

Remember, if you don’t want information related to your split placements published in The Pinnacle, please send an email to marketing@topechelon.com to that effect.

Once again, congratulations to everybody below for the split placements they made in TE Network!

This Week’s Split Placements

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Robert Litton

Michael Agen

Job recruiter: Robert Litton of Litton Resource Group

Candidate recruiter: Michael Agen of New Solutions Group, LLC

Job title: PHYSICIAN ASSISTANT

Overall placement fee: $10,000

Fee percentage: Flat

— — —

Brad Dodge

Job recruiter: Gino DiGuardi of Alari Search, LLC (inactive)

Candidate recruiter: Brad Dodge of iLocatum Recruiting

Job title: VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS

Overall placement fee: $22,500

Fee percentage: 15%

— — —

Brad Dodge

Chuck Cole

Job recruiter: Chuck Cole of Cole Professional Search

Candidate recruiter: Brad Dodge of iLocatum Recruiting

Job title: BUSINESS SYSTEMS ANALYST

Overall placement fee: $29,250

Fee percentage: Flat

— — —

Brad Dodge

Charlie Isgette

Job recruiter: Charlie Isgette of Marlie Park Group

Candidate recruiter: Brad Dodge of iLocatum Recruiting

Job title: REFRIGERATION TECHNICIAN

Overall placement fee: $11,232

Fee percentage: 18%

— — —

Rob Hunter

Jeff Calannio

Job recruiter: Jeff Calannio of SPG

Candidate recruiter: Rob Hunter of Questgroup Consultants, Inc.

Job title: SALES DIRECTOR

Overall placement fee: $23,600

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Michael Mabry

Nick Stoia, CPC

Job recruiter: Nick Stoia, CPC of ASAP Search

Candidate recruiter: Michael Mabry of Sora Resource Group, LLC

Job title: OPERATIONS SITE LEADER – RENEWABLE ENERGY

Overall placement fee: $28,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Mark Marshall

Russ Hovendick

Job recruiter: Russ Hovendick of Client Staffing Solutions, Inc.

Candidate recruiter: Mark Marshall of CRJ Search

Job title: PLANT MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $47,500

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Becky Mead

Joe Cresci

Job recruiter: Joe Cresci of Food Management Search

Candidate recruiter: Becky Mead of Your Talent Team

Job title: BEVERAGE SALES MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $6,210

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

If you’re a newer TE Network member and you’d like to enjoy more success in our recruiter network, then I encourage you to contact Top Echelon Director of Network Operations Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS.

You can do so by calling 330.595.1742 or by sending an email to drea@topechelon.com.

There are over 1,500 job orders in Top Echelon’s recruiting network.

Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS

And since there are that many job orders and many Network members who are eager to work these jobs, I thought it would be prudent to review some best practices for working a job in TE.

So that is exactly what I will doing, starting with this—the first in a series of blog posts regarding the topic.

And I’m going to start where it makes the most sense: the beginning.

Here are the first three protocols for working a job in TE Network:

#1—Read the Network recruiting instructions.

This is where the job recruiter will tell you things that you need to know and of which you need to be aware. More specifically, these are things that you need to know before you read the rest of the description and call them.

The job recruiter put that information there for both their benefit and your benefit. They don’t really have the time to explain the things that are listed in this field. When you follow this step, it helps everybody become more efficient and effective in the call to work the job.

#2—Evaluate the job.

Ask yourself if the job is in your area of expertise or in an area in which you are capable of recruiting. You are asking this question for a simple reason. You do not want to engage with the job order recruiter and ask them to teach you how to recruit in their space.

They are not going to want to do that, and I certainly do not blame them. Nobody has time to waste.

#3—Check your inventory.

If you use Top Echelon’s recruiting software, run a search to see what’s in your inventory. That way, when you call the job order recruiter, you can tell them that you have X number of candidates to whom you can market this job as one of your stages of recruiting for the position.

These are all steps that you should take before you call the job order recruiter. As you might have already guessed, there are also protocols involved for when you make that call, and I will address those in the next blog post in this important series.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about this blog post or if you want to be more successful in the Network right NOW, then please contact me.

You can do so by calling 330.595.1742 or by sending an email to drea@topechelon.com.

Now that we’ve begun a New Year in 2026 (and we’re already through the first month of the year), I’ve prepared a list of 10 things to keep in mind while working in Top Echelon’s recruiting network.

Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS

This list will help guide you down the correct path of productive relationships, proper networking, and more split network success. (Of course, more success = more split placements.)

So, from the home office in Canton, Ohio . . . here is my “Top 10 List” for more split network success:

1. Have a great recruiter profile, one that includes the following: photo, personal profile, area(s) of specialization, and company profile.

2. Regularly share information with the Network: candidates and your newest job orders. This will show activity and that you’re here to build trading partner relationships and share with others.

3. Create Hot Job Alerts that will retrieve results to allow you to see what job orders are regularly being shared in your relevant niches.

4. Do NOT re-post other TE Network members’ job orders on the Internet without their written permission. This is a BIG DEAL and will get you in “hot water.” (Not literally, but if I had my way, it might be literally.)

5. Attend a Top Echelon Virtual Core Group meeting, every month if possible. This is a great way to share information and position yourself to make more splits!

6. Find a group of recruiters who are niche-like and establish regular communication with them.

7. Do NOT make candidate submissions to another member’s split job order until you’ve talked with them on the telephone, qualified the job order, and established a rapport.

8. When posting a split job order, be sure that you include the fee agreement and guarantees that you’ve established with your client on the JDS. This will ensure that any recruiter who works with you on this assignment knows the rules of engagement. This includes proration and replacement.

9. When posting a split job order on TE Network, make sure that a descriptive detail of your client’s needs are included. This is so your trading partners have a good idea of those needs before they call and qualify the job order. This will make the process move more smoothly.

10. Keep it simple with the basic Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you can live by this rule, then your experiences with your split recruiting partners will be that much better.

If you want to understand more about appropriate business conduct in Top Echelon, please refer to the TE Network Policies Manual.

If you have any questions about these guidelines or about how you can enjoy more split network success, please contact me at 330.595.1742 or via email at drea@topechelon.com.

There are many “cardinal sins” that you can commit as a member of Top Echelon’s recruiting network. Although many times, recruiters aren’t even aware that they’re committing these sins, they still have an effect on other Network members.

Perhaps the biggest of all cardinal sins is this one: wasting other recruiters’ time.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of ways that a recruiter can waste another recruiter’s time in a split placement situation. However, the one I want to address right now pertains to what might be called a “pre-split placement situation.”

It’s Your JOB to Remove Your Job

In a nutshell, the way in which to NOT waste another recruiter’s time in that situation is as follows:

Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS

When one of the job orders you have posted on TE Network gets filled, please remove that job order from the Network immediately.

That’s because there could be recruiters working that job order, even as your client extends an offer to another candidate that you’ve presented. If you’re lax in doing this, then you greatly increase the chances that you’re going to waste the time of another well-intentioned recruiter. And that recruiter just wants to help you fill your open search assignment!

But it goes even beyond that. You have to remember that you brand yourself with everything that you do within the Network. If you brand yourself as somebody who doesn’t remove job orders as soon as they’re filled, then other recruiters are going to be less likely to work your search assignments when they see them.

This is especially the case for those recruiters who have been “burned” by your job orders in the past. The last thing you want to do is alienate somebody who could have a perfect candidate for you. You might not get a whiff of that candidate . . . or the recruiting fee that went along with placing them.

So avoid this cardinal sin. Instead, fill your job orders and then remove them from the Network.

Do NOT waste the time of other TE Network members. That’s the first step in making more split placements in our recruiter network.

If you have any questions about this blog post, I encourage you to contact me. You can do so by calling 330.595.1742 or by sending an email to drea@topechelon.com.

Top Echelon Training and Support Manager Todd Bossler recently conducted a special TE Recruit Training Tuesday webinar titled, “Sourcing Skills Reboot: Hidden Candidates in Your Database.”

Matthew Deutsch

You may have attended this free webinar on Tuesday, February 3. On the other hand, you may not have been in attendance.

Regardless, we have the recorded version of the webinar, which I am presenting to you now. (The recording is also located in the Top Echelon Help Center.)

If you are not a user of our recruiting software, TE Recruit, then check out the video, anyway, to see how the software could benefit your recruiting desk and agency.

We at Top Echelon are continually working to make the resources that we provide to our customers better, and this is yet more proof!

Below is the official description of this training video:

— — —

Finding the right candidates is the foundation of every successful placement . . . but when was the last time you truly revisited your sourcing strategy?

Todd Bossler

With the new year well underway, now is the perfect time for a sourcing skills reboot. In our next TE Recruit Training Tuesday webinar video, Training and Support Manager Todd Bossler will take a deep dive into overlooked sourcing techniques and show you how to uncover high-quality candidates already sitting in your TE Recruit database.

During this video, you’ll learn how to harness the full power of TE Recruit to source, track, and engage talent faster and more effectively. You’ll also discover time-saving shortcuts and best practices designed to help shift your recruiting desk into overdrive, so you can spend less time searching and more time placing the right talent.

Whether you’re new to sourcing or looking to sharpen a long-neglected skill set, this session will help you work smarter, more quickly, and with more confidence.

So watch this FREE video and join Todd for “Sourcing Skills Reboot: Hidden Candidates in Your Database”!

Watch this TE Recruit training video!

— — —

Remember to check The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog every week for more updates regarding Top Echelon software improvements and upgrades.

If you have any questions about how you can maximize your TE Network membership, please contact Director of Network Operations Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS.

You can do so by calling 330.595.1742 or by sending an email to drea@topechelon.com.