Whether you know it or not, if you’re a Preferred Member of Top Echelon Network, you’re branding yourself to other recruiters every day—through the things you do and the things you don’t do.  This is important, because how you brand yourself helps to determine which recruiters want to work with you and how often they want to work with you.

In this episode of “Top Echelon TV,” Membership Development Coordinator Drea Codispoti and Communications Coordinator Matt Deutsch discuss the three ways in which Preferred Members can brand themselves in a positive fashion and increase the chances that they’ll make split placements in the Network.

What are your thoughts?  What can recruiters do to brand themselves more effectively as Preferred Members of the Network?  What are things that recruiters do that brand them in a negative fashion, perhaps things they don’t even know they’re doing?

It’s back!

The Top Echelon Network Annual Ohio Golf Outing will be held on Thursday, July 14, at Windmill Lakes Golf Club in Ravenna, Ohio.

Believe it or not, this is the ninth time that the golf outing has been held (there were two events the first year).  Each year, between 20 and 30 Preferred Member recruiters attend the event, and they enjoy a day filled with fun, camaraderie, food and drink, and of course, golf.  (For some people, golf doesn’t often equate to fun . . . at least not on every hole.)

As has been a common practice at the event, guests of Preferred Member recruiters are invited to attend, and Members are also encouraged to invite clients or candidates, as well.  These types of guests have attended in the past, and the experience has always been a positive one.

In addition, Jim Fitzpatrick of Fitzpatrick & Associates, Inc. (who, coincidentally, is “The Recruiter of the Month” in the Network for the month of May) has something special planned for those in attendance.  What is it?  Details are confidential, but if Fitz is involved, it must be fun.

If you’d like to attend the golf outing, please contact Debra L. Stitt, CPC of Quality Source, Inc. of Ohio at Debra@QualitySourceInc.com.

The recruiters below obviously had fun at last year’s golf outing, and there’s more fun to be had this year.  So if you’ll be in the area and want to mix business and fun, make plans to attend this year’s event!

For years, The Cornerstone, the newsletter of Top Echelon’s contract staffing recruiters, was sent to the Preferred Members of Top Echelon Network.  The Cornerstone was eventually discontinued in favor of another newsletter, Contracting Corner, which is now published once per quarter.  However, we still run contracting statistics in select issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.  These statistics include Non-Split Contract Placements, Split Contract Placements, and Non-Recruited Placements, among others.

Many of the Top Producers in the Network have added contract staffing services to their business model and have also taken advantage of the services provided by Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution.  For more information about the benefits of contracting and the services that Top Echelon Contracting provides, call (888) 627-3678, Ext. 2.

Below are this month’s contracting statistics, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting.

The next meeting of the Northeast Ohio Regional Core Group is scheduled for 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 16, at Shula’s Steak House II in Independence, Ohio.  It’s recommended that attendees arrive at 7:15 a.m. if they’d like to engage in some pre-meeting networking prior to breakfast.

If you plan to attend, please bring your hot job orders and/or candidates to share, along with any other topic you wish to discuss.  This is an open discussion meeting.

As a reminder, there’s no meeting scheduled in July because of the Annual Ohio Golf Outing.  Recruiters are encouraged to sign up for the golf outing, if they haven’t done so already.  It’s a great event for networking and fun that has led to many split placements down through the years.

Below is the address and phone number for Shula’s Steak House II:

6200 Quarry Lane
Independence, Ohio 44131
216.901.7852

If you’d like to promote your Regional Core Group meetings in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog, send an email to marketing@TopEchelon.com.

So . . . Eric Berg of JN Adams & Associates, Inc. was “The Recruiter of the Month” in Top Echelon Network for April, and now Jim Fitzpatrick of Fitzpatrick & Associates is “The Recruiter of the Month” for May.  Who’s “The Recruiter of the Month” for June?  Well, you’ll have to stay tuned for the answer to that question.  We haven’t built a time machine.  Yet.

In the meantime, we recognize recruiters for achievement in two categories every month and quarter.  Those categories are “Recruiter of the Month” (as we’ve already mentioned) and “Highest Split Placement Fee of the Month.”  Below are the winners of these awards for May.  We’d like to congratulate the recruiters who earned them and thank them for their efforts.  Remember, for more information about the placements and cash-in totals associated with these awards, please login to the Members’ Area and view the profiles and placement details of the recruiters involved.

(And yes, more information about the placements associated with these awards may be included in a future issue of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.  Why?  Why not?)

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Recruiter of the Month
Jim Fitzpatrick of Fitzpatrick & Associates

Jim was one of four recruiters who made two Network placements during the month of May.  However, he edged out Hani Mussa of KnowPeople, Inc.; Larry Ploscowe of EXEK Recruiters, Ltd.; and Bob Wylan of R.A. Wylan & Co., Inc. based upon his cash-in total for those placements, which was $36,542.50.  Although the other three recruiters also made two placements during the month, Fitzpatrick boasted a greater cash-in total than they did.

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Highest Split Placement Fee of the Month
Jim Crumpley of Jim Crumpley & Associates and Arthur Rogove of Merit Consulting, Inc.

This hefty fee was earned by placing a Director of Design Assurance.  The action causing this placement was listed as “Regular phone communication with a TE Network Member in my specialty area.”

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Our criteria for these awards:

Top Echelon Network is a split placement network.  As such, we place an emphasis on split placements, and that emphasis constitutes the basis of our criteria for these awards.  We determine the monthly and quarterly award winners based upon two factors, which are listed below in order of importance:

1.) The number of split placements made
2.) The amount of cash-in dollars earned as a result of those split placements

In other words, the number of split placements that recruiters make is our first consideration.  In the event of a tie, the cash-in total earned from those split placements is the deciding factor and serves to break the tie.  Obviously, the recruiter with more cash-in dollars in the event of a tie is the recruiter who wins the award.

In the “The Hot Sheet” feature, we highlight successful Trading Partner relationships within Top Echelon Network.  We’re talking about relationships that have resulted in split placement income for the recruiters involved.

We’d like to congratulate those recruiters who are part of this week’s installment, and we wish them even more placement success in the future!

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The Players:

• Juli Smith of The Smith Consulting Group, LLC in Jackson, Mich.
• Chris Burchell of Recruiting Excellence in Raleigh, N.C.

The Money:

Since April of last year, Smith and Burchell have made four split placements together in the Healthcare IT industry.

The Sizzle:

“In late 2009, we switched recruiting disciplines from Civil Engineering to Healthcare IT.  I reached out to everyone in the Network who was working in our new discipline of Healthcare IT, and Chris Burchell was one of the people I called.  We made our first split about four months after we first spoke.

“Chris is enthusiastic, very open, and very trustworthy.  We communicate on a weekly basis and some weeks on a daily basis about our hot candidates, as well as the jobs we have that are hot.  In February, we both realized that we would be attending the HIMSS Conference in Orlando, so it was really nice to meet him in person and put the face with the voice.  He has become a very important extension of our team and one of our best teaming partners.  I love his sense of humor, too.  He’s been great to work with!”

—Juli Smith

“Working with The Smith Group over the past year and a half has been a terrific experience.  We have made numerous placements together over that time, and much of it is due to our constant communication with one another.  Our relationship developed pretty quickly, as we happened to be entering a new vertical at roughly the same time.  Instead of looking at ourselves as separate agencies, we chose to pool our resources, industry knowledge, and of course, candidates and job orders.  This enabled us to leverage our knowledge capital and ‘get a feel’ for each other and how we work.

“Today, we are so close that we’re on [instant messenger] together, and constantly provide candidate/job order updates, along with random ‘digs’ every now and then.  I even had the pleasure of meeting Juli at the 2011 HIMSS meeting in February, and she looks a lot younger in person (yes, that would be one of those ‘digs’).  My business is better because of our relationship, but I have also been fortunate enough to make some good friends.”

—Chris Burchell

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You think you’re ‘Hot Sheet’ material, don’t you?

Do you have a Trading Partner with whom you work particularly well?  Are you churning out split placements year after year?  Well, then you just might be “Hot Sheet” material!  We’re always looking to highlight the most successful Trading Partner relationships within the pages of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog, and yours could be next.  Feel free to nominate yourself (and your Trading Partner) by sending an email to marketing@TopEchelon.com.  We’ll take care of the rest.  Well, most of the rest, anyway.