Just because February is the shortest month on the calendar, that doesn’t mean you can’t earn big recruiting fees during the month!

Just ask Top Echelon Network members Nick Stoia, CPC of ASAP Search and Sara Alexandroff of Sterling St. James, Inc. Nick and Sara placed an Embedded Software Architect recently to earn a $53,400 recruiting fee at 30%.

But that’s not the only big split placement fee in this week’s issue of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog. That’s because Pam Ratz DeVille of Selective Resources, LLC and Maggie Wolgamot of Ridgeback Management Services, LLC placed an Executive Leader – Information Systems to earn a $48,400 fee at 22%!

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

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

Please note that the placements listed below reflect deals finalized in Top Echelon Network for the period from February 19 through February 25, 2024.

Remember, if you don’t want information related to your Network 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 Top Echelon Network!

This Week’s Top Echelon Split Placements

— — —

Sara Alexandroff

Nick Stoia, CPC

Job recruiter: Nick Stoia, CPC of ASAP Search

Candidate recruiter: Sara Alexandroff of Sterling St. James, Inc.

Job title: EMBEDDED SOFTWARE ARCHITECT

Overall placement fee: $53,400

Fee percentage: 30%

— — —

Brad Dodge

Bob White

Job recruiter: Bob White of Impact Solutions, Inc.

Candidate recruiter: Brad Dodge of iLocatum Recruiting

Job title: CUSTOM INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION SOLIDWORKS MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Overall placement fee: $23,000

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Tom Honeywill

Christina Boudreaux

Job recruiter: Christina Boudreaux of Connectly Recruiting

Candidate recruiter: Tom Honeywill of Decide Consulting

Job title: WORDPRESS DEVELOPER

Overall placement fee: $14,400

Fee percentage: 18%

— — —

Jim Strickland

Amy Chapman

Job recruiter: Amy Chapman of Key People

Candidate recruiter: Jim Strickland of BioSource Recruiters

Job title: HRIS ADMINISTRATOR

Overall placement fee: $18,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Maggie Wolgamot

Pam Ratz DeVille

Job recruiter: Pam Ratz DeVille of Selective Resources, LLC

Candidate recruiter: Maggie Wolgamot of Ridgeback Management Services, LLC

Job title: EXECUTIVE LEADER – INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Overall placement fee: $48,400

Fee percentage: 22%

— — —

If you’re a newer 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.

In last week’s issue of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog, we announced that Danny Cahill would not be able to join us for Top Echelon Connect 2024. However, in a stroke of good luck, we have been able to secure Scott Love for our next networking and training event!

Below is the bio for Scott Love, followed by descriptions of two of the sessions that he will be presenting at Connect 2024 in St. Petersburg.

Scott Love

Scott Love believes that recruiting is a game, and he has been playing it ever since 1995. His recruiting firm, The Attorney Search Group, places attorneys in major markets with global law firms. From 2002 to 2016, Scott built and later sold one of the most trusted brands of recruiter training and development. Over 4,500 recruiting and staffing companies from over 36 countries invested in his resources. Scott has trained thousands and coached hundreds, and has spoken at nearly every recruiting trade association in the United States, including major franchisor organizations, global publicly-held staffing companies, and major recruiting networks. Scott’s newest venture to help recruiters make more placements is The Placement Club. With over 900 members and dozens of hours of free training content and other resources, it has quickly become a vibrant free learning community for experienced and intermediate recruiters.

Scott is the author of Why They Follow and the co-author of Rainmaker Confidential. He has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Selling Power Magazine, The Huffington Post, Bloomberg, and dozens of business publications around the globe. He is passionate about charity and service work and is actively involved in several Washington D.C. and Richmond non-profit organizations and Episcopal ministries, and he is also an advisory board member of Protect Our Defenders. Scott is a graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy and is a former surface warfare officer. He has two children and lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife and twelve-year-old daughter.

Below are the descriptions of Scott’s first two scheduled sessions at Connect 2024. The titles of those sessions are “Client Development and Game Theory” and “Rainmaking in a Niche.”

— — —

“Client Development and Game Theory”

In this presentation, Scott will share key concepts of client development based upon game theory. You will learn:

• How to develop a client development strategy that produces better odds of success
• How to keep from wasting time in chasing low likelihood prospects
• How to find better ways to approach clients and make first contact
• How to avoid being seen as a low-level HR vendor
• How to identify niche opportunities
• How to identify and even create distinction that separates you from your competitors

— — —

“Rainmaking In a Niche”

This program shares an innovative and creative concept of becoming known to your prospects with very little financial cost. In this program, you will learn:

• How to get visibility to a large group of prospects at no charge
• How to build goodwill from potential referring sources
• How to put yourself in a position to reach out to high-level. prospects directly
• How to raise your status and cachet with client prospects

— — —

Keep in mind that Early Bird Registration for Top Echelon Connect 2024 will remain in effect through Thursday, March 14. The price of Early Bird Registration is $595 per person.

So you should sign up today and save some money!

Below is some important logistical information regarding the upcoming convention:

• Dates: Thursday, May 2, and Friday, May 3
• Location: Tradewinds Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida
• Room Rate: $229 per night
• Main speaker: Scott Love

To book a room at the Tradewinds, call the hotel’s group reservations number at (800) 808-9833 and mention that you are with Top Echelon in order to receive our special room rate. (And for you trivia buffs out there, it’s worth mentioning that the Tradewinds was the site of Top Echelon’s very first convention for recruiters more than 30 years ago.)

As we’ve done for our past several recruiter networking events, we have a special website dedicated to Top Echelon Connect 2024.

The URL for that website is connect.topechelon.com. In the meantime . . .

Click HERE to register for Top Echelon Connect 2024!

If you have any questions about registration (or about any other aspects of the convention), please contact me at 330.595.1742 or via email at drea@topechelon.com.

I’m pleased to announce the Virtual Core Group (VCG) meeting schedule for the month of March!

For those of you who don’t know, Top Echelon Network recruiters share the following information during Virtual Core Group teleconference call meetings:

• Hot job orders and candidates
• Information about the activity they’re seeing in the marketplace and/or in their niche
• Ideas for increased production on their desks and within their agencies

These are the activities that lead most directly to making more split placements in Top Echelon Network.

So that is why I’m inviting—or in other words, strongly encouraging—you to attend one of these Virtual Core Group meetings. Below is the complete VCG schedule for March, including the industries involved and the time that each meeting will be held. (Note: all times are Eastern.)

Tuesday, March 12:

• 2:30 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. — Healthcare
• 3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. — Sales & Marketing

Wednesday, March 13:

• 1:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. — Manufacturing/Engineering
• 2:30 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. — Information Technology
• 3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. — Biotechnology/Pharmacology

Thursday, March 14:

• 1:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. — Architectural/Engineering/Construction
• 3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. — Accounting & Finance

You can join the meeting to which you belong by accessing the information listed below.

Google Meeting link: https://meet.google.com/qba-qdic-kou

Below is the agenda for each Virtual Core Group meeting:

1. Welcome
2. Roll call of the members
3. I will share the newest software updates for both Top Echelon Network and the Top Echelon recruiting software.
4. Members will share their hot jobs with corresponding group discussion.
5. I will direct a software and Network protocol Q&A session to close the call.

It is my goal that this agenda will help you take away more from the meeting than just hot jobs and/or candidates. Hopefully, it will help make you more knowledgeable in terms of the Top Echelon community.

If you’d like to join one of the groups listed above or if you’d like to start a new group, please contact me.

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

In the first part of this series of blog posts, I addressed the first three steps involved with “Proven Protocols for Working a Job in TE.” Those steps were as follows:

1. Read the Network recruiting instructions and job description.
2. Evaluate the job.
3. Check your inventory.

If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read that blog post. In the meantime, we’re going to move on to the next part in our series, which involves asking questions of the job order recruiter.

Now of course, you did read the Network recruiting instructions, correct? And the job description?

Because if you ask the job order recruiter a question and the answer to that question is already in the Network recruiting instructions and/or the job description, chances are good that they will not be amused. (And, incidentally, neither will I.)

You have read them? Good. Then let’s proceed. Below is a list of questions that you can ask the job order recruiter about the position they are trying to fill:

• How long have you had this client?
• How long has this job been open?
• Is this a growth position or a replacement position?
• Have you presented anyone yet? If so, what experience were they lacking or what did the client NOT like about them?

And, as you might expect, there is a question that you should NOT ask the job order recruiter during that initial phone conversation. That question is “Who is your client?”

While this will help you recruit for the position, it is NOT a “first date” question.

Note to the job order recruiter: Keep in mind that if the recruiter calling to work your role is exceptional at what they do, you may want to share the client information with them. That way, they do not accidentally identify excellent candidates in the region and niche of the job in question AND contact candidates who actually work for the client. That can end badly.

As always, trust is the key. That’s why it represents one of The Four Pillars of Top Echelon Network.

When you ask questions of the job order recruiter, be sure to listen! They have built a relationship with the client and they have an understanding of how to be successful with them.

If the job order recruiter makes suggestions regarding submissions, communication methods, or candidate requirements . . . hear them out and follow their lead. That will save frustration for the both of you!

What happens after this initial call? I will address the answer to that question in the third and final 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.

As you may have noticed, we’re continuing to release quite a few updates and upgrades, both to our recruiting software and also to the Top Echelon Network software.

In light of all these updates, we recently promoted the Top Echelon Product Updates Page!

On that page, you can see the most recent updates and upgrades to our software. We break the updates into categories based upon the month that we’ve released them. Not only that, but we also supply an answer to the question, “What’s next?”

However, this week, I would like to remind you of another page related to our applicant tracking software and the Top Echelon Network split placement software.

That page is the Top Echelon Software Status Page.

We update this page if there is ever a service interruption regarding our software. This includes scheduled maintenance of our systems, which we do from time to time. When you visit this page, you can see there are five “Top Echelon Software Systems” listed:

1. Recruiting Software
2. Careers Page
3. Job Posting Service
4. Top Echelon Network
5. Website Hosting

Ideally, what you want to see is the word “Operational” next to all of them. About 99% of the time, that is what they say. However, if there is an outage for any reason (once again, including scheduled maintenance), there will be information communicating the status of the situation and when the software will be fully operational and accessible again. There is even a history section, where you can browse through past incidents.

Like the Product Updates Page, the Top Echelon Software Status Page is designed to communicate the most important information to you, our customers. We want you to stay informed about our products and services, so that you can use those products and services to the best of your ability to generate more revenue for your recruiting agency.

If you have questions about these updates or about any other aspect of your Top Echelon Network and/or recruiting software account, you can:

→ Send an email to support@topechelon.com.

→ Visit our Help Center.