We’re not even two months into 2025 and TE Network recruiters are making split placements with big fees!

A month ago, we shared the story of a split between Amy Chapman of Key People Staffing and Jeff Katz of JSK Recruiting. Amy and Jeff placed a Vice President at 25% to earn a fee of $75K.

That impressive fee has already been challenged by recruiters Ron Thomason of Source Financial Staffing and Ali Taghikhani of Synapse International. That’s because Ron and Ali placed a Head of Fund Accounting to earn a $72K fee at 25%.

But wait, there’s more! This was one of three placements that Ali made recently in TE Network. And even more than that, they’re the first three splits that he’s made as a member of the Network. That is most definitely cause for celebration. (As if a $72K split wasn’t cause enough.)

However, Ali is not the only recruiter who made their first TE Network split placement recently. Other members who did so include Janet Rivera Jones of 5 Star Global Recruitment Partners, Michael Lebowitz of Global Personnel, and Laurie Williams of Reach Hire Talent Solutions, while W. Scott Krepps of We Do the Search made his first Network split as the owner of his own agency.

Congratulations to everybody who made their first split placement in TE Network!

As a friendly neighborhood reminder, here is the information that we publish with our 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 3 through February 16, 2025.

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.

Congratulations to everybody below for the split placements they made in TE Network!

This Week’s Split Placements

— — —

Job recruiter: David Wood, CPC of The David Wood Company

Candidate recruiter: Steve Copeland of fulltimeGiGS/Albert Energy, LLC

Job title: EHS MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $30,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Job recruiter: Holly Weber of Global Talent Resources Corp.

Candidate recruiter: Brad Dodge of iLocatum Recruiting

Job title: PROJECT ENGINEER

Overall placement fee: $18,125

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Job recruiter: Janet Rivera Jones of 5 Star Global Recruitment Partners

Candidate recruiter: Sara Katz of First Search, Inc.

Job title: PARTS DEVELOPMENT COMMODITY IMPLEMENTATION BUYER ASSISTANT MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $22,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

 

Job recruiter: Michael Lebowitz of Global Personnel

Candidate recruiter: W. Scott Krepps of We Do The Search

Job title: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $35,750

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Job recruiter: Victor Lopez of Resource One International

Candidate recruiter: Teresa Pernini of Pernini Legal, LLC

Job title: SENIOR SCHEDULER – COMMERCIAL CONSTRUCTION

Overall placement fee: $26,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Job recruiter: Michael Agen of New Solutions Group, LLC

Candidate recruiter: John Ricciardi of Afton Consulting Group

Job title: REVENUE CYCLE MANAGER – HOME INFUSION

Overall placement fee: $10,000

Fee percentage: Flat

— — —

Job recruiter: Chuck Cole of Cole Professional Search

Candidate recruiter: Jim Strickland of BioSource Recruiters

Job title: NETWORK INFORMATION AND SECURITY ADMINISTRATOR

Overall placement fee: $27,500

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Job recruiter: Bob Millman of AutoPro Technical Recruiting

Candidate recruiter: Michael Stuck of Gables Search Group

Job title: MAINTENANCE TECHNICIAN

Overall placement fee: $8,985

Fee percentage: 18%

— — —

Job recruiter: Ron Thomason of Source Financial Staffing

Candidate recruiter: Ali Taghikhani of Synapse International

Job title: HEAD OF FUND ACCOUNTING

Overall placement fee: $72,000

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Job recruiter: Yanna Belilovsky of SourcePro Search, LLC

Candidate recruiter: Ali Taghikhani of Synapse International

Job title: PRACTICE GROUP MARKETING MANAGER 

Overall placement fee: $30,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Job recruiter: Brenda Wylie-Biggs of KB Search Team, LLC

Candidate recruiter: Ali Taghikhani of Synapse International

Job title: PROGRAMMER – SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

Overall placement fee: $18,480

Fee percentage: 21%

— — —

Job recruiter: Kristy Staggs of Byrnes & Rupkey, Inc.

Candidate recruiter: Laurie Williams of Reach Hire Talent Solutions

Job title: QUALITY ENGINEER

Overall placement fee: $16,250

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

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.

At Top Echelon, we want to help you make more placements. It’s been part of our mission as a company since we began operations in 1988.

We want to help you make more placements with TE Network.

We want to help you make more placements with TE Recruit.

And we also want to help you make more placements with our integrations. That includes Quil, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that transcribes and summarizes conversations, extracts relevant information, and categorizes notes.

And that is a great transition to announcing that you can register for a FREE webinar next week titled, “Unlock Faster Placements in 2025 with Top Echelon and Quil.” Because the only thing better than making more placements is making more placements faster!

I have listed the pertinent information regarding this webinar below . . .

— — —

Title: “Unlock Faster Placements in 2025 with Top Echelon and Quil”

Date and Time: Tuesday, February 25, at 1 p.m., Eastern Time

Length: 45 minutes (with Q&A)

Description:

Recruiting in 2025 is evolving. Over half of agency owners now plan to use contingency recruiting models as their primary approach, and AI is playing a growing role with:

• 61% of firms using AI for better data management.
• 46% leveraging AI for data enrichment.
• 62% turning to AI for candidate sourcing.

Yet, 42% of placements still come from candidates already in your ATS database—candidates who often need to be re-sourced. This not only extends your time-to-fill, but also reduces profitability by duplicating recruiter effort, using extra sourcing tool credits and increasing dependency on LinkedIn Recruiter.

That’s where Top Echelon and Quil come in. Quil integrates seamlessly with Top Echelon to:

• Update your database automatically after calls.
• Automatically produce branded write-ups in minutes, not hours or days.
• Help you uncover hidden, high-quality candidates in your ATS for faster placements.

Join our webinar on February 18 to see how Top Echelon and Quil can help you streamline processes, shorten time-to-fill, and boost profitability in 2025.

Register for this FREE webinar!

And believe it or not, you don’t have to wait until next week to find out more about Top Echelon’s integration with Quil. That’s because you can book a demo right now.

So do it . . . book a demo . . . attend the upcoming webinar . . . and start making more placements (and making them faster) in 2025!

A split partner relationship can be a delicate thing. That’s because it depends on so many different factors, not the least of which are the personalities and preferences of the recruiters involved.

I receive phone calls, emails, and messages from TE Network recruiters all of the time. They call for a number of reasons, including to share their experiences with other Network members.

A TE Network recruiter recently contacted me about a situation. That situation: one of their split recruiting partners tried to micromanage them.

I won’t go into the details of the situation, but suffice it to say, micromanaging does NOT constitute “best practices” for TE Network membership. I’d like to take this opportunity to explain why.

Below are five reasons not to micromanage your split partners in TE Network:

#1—You’re complicating the placement process.

The recruiting and hiring process is complicated enough. There are people on both sides of the sale, and there are more than enough people in the middle of the sale. The candidate, the hiring manager, other company officials, and now TWO recruiters.

When a split partnership works well, there is teamwork involved and the process can unfold more smoothly. However, when you micromanage the situation, it usually does not help things go more smoothly.

#2—You’re straining the relationship.

Nobody likes micromanaging. They just don’t. You’re not helping the situation or the relationship. You’re introducing stress into both.

The last thing that two recruiters need in a split placement situation is to become annoyed or bothered with each other. You can’t be bickering. You must work together to bring a satisfactory conclusion to the process.

#3—You’re not operating in “the spirit of networking.”

One of The Four Pillars of TE Network is Trust, perhaps the most important Pillar. That’s because it’s the key ingredient to not only making one placement, but also making multiple placements.

If you’re going to be part of a split placement network and you’re going to work with trading partners, then you must trust those partners. You can’t just say that you’re going to trust them and then your actions contradict that.

#4—You’re branding yourself in a negative fashion.

Branding isn’t just for clients and candidates. It’s also for your TE Network membership. You don’t want to brand yourself as somebody who micromanages your trading partners during the placement process. You want to brand yourself in a much more position fashion than that.

When other Network recruiters think of you, you want positive things to come to their mind . . . not things they would like to avoid. People don’t like micromanaging, period.

#5—The recruiter may not want to work with you again.

What is the end result of all this? The other recruiter not wanting to work with you. That should not come as any big surprise. Even if you make a split placement with the person, that’s no guarantee they’ll want to work with you again.

It all depends on what kind of experience you provide for them. If you’re constantly “looking over their shoulder” and bugging them about every single detail, that’s not a positive experience.

If you make a split, that’s a negative experience with a positive ending. However, if you don’t make a split, that’s a negative experience with a negative ending.

Do not micromanage your trading partners. Trust them to do what needs to be done. Work together and rely upon each other’s strengths. Provide a positive experience from start to finish.

And of course, make as many split placements as you possibly can.

If you have any questions about this blog post or about your membership in Top Echelon’s recruiting network, please contact me at 330.595.1742 or by sending an email to drea@topechelon.com.

In TE Network, exporters are those recruiters who “export” candidates. In other words, they provide candidates to other Network members who have open job orders.

So you’re either an exporter only in our recruiting network, an importer only, or you’re both. There is no wrong answer.

Your recruiting desk and your agency are unique. Whatever works for you, well . . . works for you.

However, if you are an exporter or you do supply candidates to other Network members, then I would like you to send me an email at drea@topechelon.com.

When you email me, indicate the industries that you serve. State the niches in which you export candidates. Some examples include the following:

• Manufacturing
• Engineering
• Healthcare
• Information Technology
• Biotech/Scientific
• Food & Beverage
• Automation & Controls
• Accounting
• Construction
• Chemicals
• Aerospace

During these crazy and ultimately uncertain times, both in the world and within the economy and employment marketplace, I want to take a proactive approach to helping Network members.

I want to help match your candidates with other recruiters who need candidates to fill their clients’ job orders.

So if you’re an exporter, contact me immediately. Do it today, if possible.

Let’s do everything we can to be as successful as we can, and let’s help our split recruiting partners in the process!

Top Echelon Training and Support Manager Todd Bossler recently conducted a special TE Recruit Training Tuesday webinar titled, “Placement Tracking for More Success in TE Recruit.”

You may have attended this free webinar on Tuesday, February 4. 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:

— — —

You know what they say (whoever “they” are): if you can’t measure it, then you can’t improve it.

And that also applies to your placements, and that’s why placement tracking is the topic of the next TE Recruit Training Tuesday webinar video!

During this FREE video in the Training Tuesday webinar series, Top Echelon Training and Support Manager Todd Bossler will address:

• The ins and outs of the TE Recruit Placement Report
• Using Pipelines with your Placement Reports
• Recording placements through the streamlined Placement Form
• Tracking split placements between users and external recruiters
• And much more!

The new year is here, so let’s dig in and make it the best year in recent memory, starting with watching this video to learn all about “Placement Tracking for More Success in TE Recruit”!

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 Top Echelon split 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.