You can register for Top Echelon Connect Fall 2023! (In the past, this event was referred to as the Top Echelon Network Fall Conference.)

That’s because Early Bird Registration for the conference is now live. You can sign up for $535 per person.

We strive to keep the cost of attending our recruiter networking events as low as we possibly can, even in the face of ever-rising inflation. That’s because we want you to attend. When you attend, you meet other recruiters and build trading partner relationships. And when you do that, you make split placements.

Booking a room at the Sheraton O’Hare Suites

This year’s Fall Conference is scheduled for Tuesday, September 19, and Wednesday, September 20. The site of the conference is the Sheraton O’Hare Suites (formerly the Sheraton Gateway Suites). Our room rate with the Sheraton O’Hare Suites is $157 per night. That rate is good for Top Echelon members attending the conference.

To make hotel reservations at the Sheraton O’Hare Suites, call 1.847.699.6300. Be sure to reference the “Top Echelon conference” and its dates when you make the reservation. Please note there are a limited number of rooms available at that rate for our group. As such, they will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Sheraton O’Hare Suites is located near the Chicago O’Hare Airport. A courtesy shuttle will be available for your transportation. Also keep in mind that you do not have to stay at the Sheraton O’Hare Suites. You also have the option of staying at any hotel of your choice and traveling to the Sheraton.

How and where to register for the event

Now . . . how can you register for Connect Fall 2023? We have a special website for conference registration. Click here to visit that website, which contains the following information:

• The preliminary agenda
• The speakers
• A link to register for the conference
• A link to book your room at the Sheraton O’Hare Suites

Or, if you want to “cut right to the chase,” you can click the link below to register for the Fall Conference:

Yes, I want to register!

It’s a proven fact that attending our events helps recruiters enjoy more success as members of Top Echelon’s split network. This event will be no different. I can promise you that there will be sessions and activities specifically designed to help increase your billings. And I don’t mean just your TE billings. I mean your overall billings, as well.

So sign up, save some money, and make some placements!

We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!

Once again, we have some large recruiting fees in this week’s Top Echelon Network split placements.

And we also have another Network member who made their first TE split.

First, though, congratulations are in order for Amy Chapman of Key People Staffing and Steve Kohn of Affinity Executive Search, Inc.. That’s because Amy and Steve placed a Sr. Production Manager to earn a fee of $32,500 at 25%!

In addition, Mike McRae, CPC of Transcend Recruiting made his first split in Top Echelon Network. He placed a Controls Engineer with Michael Stuck of Gables Search Group. (Some of you may remember Mike from his years as an Account Executive with Top Echelon.)

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 May 8 through May 14, 2023.  

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

— — —

Debra Wilkens

Jason Kaminsky

Job recruiter: Jason Kaminsky of bizjobz, LLC

Candidate recruiter: Debra Wilkens of The Monroe Agency

Job title: ACCOUNT MANAGER – LEGAL SERVICES

Overall placement fee: $22,500

Fee percentage: 22.5%

— — —

Michael Stuck

Jamie Frankovitch

Job recruiter: Jamie Frankovitch of Kyler Professional Search

Candidate recruiter: Michael Stuck of Gables Search Group

Job title: OFFICE MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $25,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Michael Stuck

Mike McRae, CPC

Job recruiter: Mike McRae, CPC of Transcend Recruiting, LLC

Candidate recruiter: Michael Stuck of Gables Search Group

Job title: CONTROLS ENGINEER

Overall placement fee: $18,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Michael Stuck

Troy Randolph

Job recruiter: Troy Randolph of Lea Randolph & Associates, Inc.

Candidate recruiter: Michael Stuck of Gables Search Group

Job title: RN, CLINICAL TEAM MANAGER – HOME HEALTH

Overall placement fee: $17,600

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Gary Schultz

Brian Dussault

Job recruiter: Brian Dussalt of Brian Dussault

Candidate recruiter: Gary Schultz of Work 22, Inc.

Job title: OFFICE MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $11,700

Fee percentage: Flat

— — —

Steve Kohn

Amy Chapman

Job recruiter: Amy Chapman of Key People Staffing

Candidate recruiter: Steve Kohn of Affinity Executive Search, Inc.

Job title: SR. PRODUCTION MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $32,500

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Phil Hurd

Sherry Umpleby

Job recruiter: Sherry Umpleby of Innovative Search Solutions

Candidate recruiter: Phil Hurd of Oculus Search Partners, LLC

Job title:  PROJECT MANAGER – CAPITAL PROJECTS

Overall placement fee: $27,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

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.

I have addressed this topic before in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog, but I feel compelled to address it once again. One reason why is because of the importance of the topic and how central it is to your success as a Preferred Member of Top Echelon Network.

We always say the Network is about building lasting relationships with split recruiting partners.

That’s why, when new recruiters join the Network, we recommend completing your Agency Profile and your Recruiter Profile, including your photo. We don’t recommend this lightly. There is a method to our madness!

When you start reaching out to your new trading partners, those recruiters will view your Profile, including your photo, so that when they reach out to you, they have a sense of who you are and what you do. If there is nothing in your Profile, how will they know whether or not they wish to partner with you?

Why not give your trading partners (and potential trading partners) the advantage of a properly completed Profile, including a photo? Recruiters join the Network to make more placements. This is a simple way to assure that you attract trading partners and build long-lasting relationships. Plus, who doesn’t want to put a face with the name when they give you a call?

Your TE Profile and your Agency Profile are as important to you as a resume is to a job seeker. In essence, you’re presenting yourself to other Preferred Members in Top Echelon’s recruiting network. As such, you want them to understand what you specialize in and how you might be able to help them.

There are a number of crucial components that your Recruiter Profile should contain. I have listed four of those components below:

#1—A photo of yourself

You might think this isn’t a necessity, but rather an optional item. But in reality, it’s more of a necessity.

Plainly put, people like to know what people look like, especially if they’re working with those people or if they might work with those people. Don’t post a “glamour shot.” Instead, use a good (and relatively recent) representation of you.

#2—Updated contact information

This is especially necessary when it comes to your phone number. But it’s not just the phone number. It’s your extension, too, if you have one.

If you don’t include your extension, then somebody could call your office looking for you and get stuck inside your voicemail system, never able to connect with you. This can lead to frustration, which ultimately leads to a negative experience.

Then that recruiter may not want to work with you in the future. (Also remember that you should put your mobile phone number on your Recruiter Profile.)

And yes, be sure to include a physical address in the contact information. After all, you want to make sure that if another Network member sends you a placement check, then that check makes it to the right place!

#3—A breakdown of specialties

In the area of specialization, break down the skill areas of focus in which you work.

For instance, if you work IT, don’t just say, “I work IT.” That’s like saying, “I like toast.” Well, what kind of toast do you like?

In the IT example, break the specialty down into the programming languages or systems that you work in an outline form. If you work “Java Developers,” put that in your Profile. You get the idea.

#4—How you like to work

Something else you might want to include in your Profile is the way in which you like to work in a split placement situation or a trading partner relationship. This isn’t essential, but it is something to think about.

That’s because how you work can be just as important as what you work. Two recruiters can work in exactly the same niche, but that doesn’t mean they’re automatically going to make split placements.

The Recruiter Profile section should be more of a breakdown of you and your recruiting experience and who you are as a human being. Give people a bit of information about who you are as a person so they can feel more comfortable calling you and talking with you.

You never know what you may have in common with somebody else and where that will take you.

So complete and/or update your Agency Profile and Recruiter Profile in Top Echelon Network as soon as possible!

Welcome back to our ongoing series of blog posts in 2023 about best practices for exporters in Top Echelon Network! (Don’t worry, there’s also a series about best practices for importers.) Below are the other blog posts in the exporter series so far:

• “Call the Recruiter BEFORE Working Their Job”
• “5 BIG Reasons to Talk to the Job Order Recruiter”
• “Find Out These Six Things Before Sending a Candidate”
• “3 ‘Do’s’ and 2 ‘Don’ts’ for the Candidate Recruiter”

To refresh everybody’s collective memory, when a split placement happens in Top Echelon’s recruiting network, it happens between two people. It happens between the Network exporter and the Network importer:

1. The Network exporter is the recruiter who has the candidate and submits them to the importer.
2. The Network importer is the recruiter who has the job order and accepts the candidate from the exporter.

Needless to say, we want the communication and the relationship between the exporter and the importer to be as smooth as possible. Why? Because that leads to more split placements more quickly.

That’s the reason I’ve been writing a series of blog posts devoted to describing what each group of recruiters (exporters and importers) can do in order to contribute to a healthy split recruiting relationship.

Network exporter recommendations

With that in mind, my list of recommendations for exporters is below:

1. Call importers (job order recruiters) and qualify the job orders before sending candidates to them.

2. When you have identified the candidate(s) per your discussion with the job order recruiter, submit them through the system immediately. They will either “run with the candidate(s)” or ask you to get more information.

3. If an importer asks you to get updated information or work with one of your candidates in getting any information . . . do it and earn your 47% of the placement fee.

4. Don’t hand over the candidate and just tell them to “run with them.” This is a partnership. Would you do that with your best client? I don’t think so.

5. Make sure that your Top Echelon Network Recruiter Profile is up-to-date and fill out the specializations that you work.

6. Do NOT call other Network members and badger them to see if they’ve received your candidate submissions. If they felt the submissions were worthy of filling their clients’ needs, they would have responded to you.

If you have any questions, please contact me by calling 330.595.1742 or by sending an email to drea@topechelon.com.

Top Echelon Customer Success Manager J.D. Fye recently conducted a special Training Tuesday webinar titled, “Texting is Now Faster and Easier in the Top Echelon ATS!”

J.D. Fye

You may have attended this free webinar on Tuesday, May 2. 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, 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:

— — —

While our premium texting service has been available in the Top Echelon ATS for a few years now, we’re excited to announce that we’ve added a much-requested feature: templates!

Gone are the days of typing out each and every text to candidates and clients. Join Customer Success Manager J.D. Fye in the next Training Tuesday webinar video, as he walks attendees through:

• Setting up and managing your texting subscription
• Various ways to send texts from within your database
• Adjusting your notifications to make sure you stay on top of replies
• Creating the brand-new texting templates
• And much more!

So act now and don’t delay. Watch this training video and see for yourself why “Texting is Now Faster and Easier in the Top Echelon ATS!”

Watch this Help Center 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.