The end of the year may be rapidly approaching, but TE Network recruiters are gaining momentum and making split placements as 2026 looms on the horizon!

Matthew Deutsch

Take, for example, the case of Janis Mitchell of Precise Resource Inc. and Krishonna Williams of She Recruits, LLC.

As you can see below, Janis and Krishonna recently placed a Senior Business Analyst, earning a fee of $37,500 at 25%. And that was just one of multiple split placements that Network members finalized during the past week.

Congratulations are also in order for Charlie Wesley of Doyle Recruiting. That’s because Charlie made his first split placement as a member of TE Network, teaming up with David Wood, CPC of The David Wood Company to place an EHS Manager for a fee of $19,000 at 20%.

Let’s keep the momentum rolling into 2026!

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 December 8 through December 14, 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.

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

This Week’s Split Placements

— — —

Job recruiter: Lauren Treleven of Pathway Talent (inactive)

Candidate recruiter: Brad Dodge of iLocatum Recruiting

Job title: PERSONAL LINES MANAGER

Overall placement fee: $21,600

Fee percentage: 18%

— — —

Job recruiter: Tom Craig of Keystone Distinction Group

Candidate recruiter: Nancy Gordon of Harlan Recruiting Group

Job title: MAINTENANCE TECHNICIAN

Overall placement fee: $13,312

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Job recruiter: Sharon Werdebaugh of Your Talent Team

Candidate recruiter: Victor Lopez of Resource One International

Job title: ELECTRONICS ENGINEER

Overall placement fee: $21,250

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Job recruiter: Mark Crabtree of Crabtree & Eller, LLC

Candidate recruiter: David M. Sgro, CPC of True North Consultants, Inc.

Job title: FULL STACK SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Overall placement fee: $25,875

Fee percentage: 22.50%

— — —

Job recruiter: Maria Hemminger of MJ Recruiters, LLC

Candidate recruiter: David M. Sgro, CPC of True North Consultants, Inc.

Job title: IT ANALYST

Overall placement fee: $18,000

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Job recruiter: Chuck Cole of Cole Professional Search

Candidate recruiter: Jim Strickland of BioSource Recruiters

Job title: ELECTRICAL CONTROLS TECHNICIAN – INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING

Overall placement fee: $22,282

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Job recruiter: Cindy Sommer of SearchStars, Inc.

Candidate recruiter: Jim Strickland of BioSource Recruiters

Job title: OB/GYN SONOGRAPHER

Overall placement fee: $22,880

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Job recruiter: Georgette Sandifer of Gallman Consulting

Candidate recruiter: Jim Strickland of BioSource Recruiters

Job title: FOREMAN – HEAVY CIVIL/SITE PREP AND UTILITIES 

Overall placement fee: $22,500

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

Job recruiter: Chuck Cole of Cole Professional Search

Candidate recruiter: Michael Stuck of Gables Search Group

Job title: MANUFACTURING MANAGER 

Overall placement fee: $33,750

Fee percentage: 25%

— — —

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

Candidate recruiter: Charlie Wesley of Doyle Recruiting

Job title: EHS MANAGER 

Overall placement fee: $19,000

Fee percentage: 20%

— — —

Job recruiter: Janis Mitchell of Precise Resource Inc.

Candidate recruiter: Krishonna Williams of She Recruits, LLC

Job title: SENIOR BUSINESS ANALYST

Overall placement fee: $37,500

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.

In this current environment, making placements is more vital than ever. You want to be the recruiter who stands out from everybody else.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is by leveraging the power of Top Echelon’s recruiting network. (And as luck would have it, you are a member of this network!)

However, there are multiple moving parts involved with this protocol. I’d like to explore them, with an emphasis on doing what is necessary to help your split recruiting partners help YOU to close more deals with your clients.

For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll be focusing on the “importers” in Top Echelon Network, those recruiters who have the job order or search assignment and “import” candidates from their trading partners. Specifically, I will address the data that importers share with exporters, namely the job description and other important information.

This data and information is central to the following three-step process of helping others help YOU make more split placements:

#1—Writing a Good Job Order

Everybody who writes job descriptions probably thinks their write-ups are top notch. So for the sake of posterity, let’s just review the key elements of a well-written job description with the purpose of informing your Top Echelon Network partners about what your client is really seeking in candidates to fill their position.

Position Title: Make sure the title is relevant to the industry and fully written out, avoiding abbreviations.

Job Description: According to respected industry trainer Greg Doersching’s definition of a complete job order, you must accomplish six major objectives. I have listed those objectives below.

1. A complete understanding of what skills and experience the client requires. This goes far beyond a formal job description. You need to find out what the client’s “hot buttons” are. What areas of experience are more important to them than others? This is rarely covered in their formal job description.
2. A picture of how this role fits into the rest of the organization, both from an organizational standpoint, as well as a process standpoint.
3. A complete picture of what it is about this organization that will make a person want to join and stay with this company—the “sizzle.” You must have something that will ATTRACT candidates and the scope of the job responsibilities are not an attractant—what this company offers an employee on a day-to-day quality of life basis is.
4. An idea of where the client would like you (and your trading partners) to search for this candidate—what kind of companies should be targeted.
5. An understanding of whether or not this search assignment is good for your agency. (And by extension, good for your trading partners.)
6. A picture of how this client’s interviewing process will work, including an anticipated timeline.

In short, include every requirement, skill set, list of duties, and details of what the candidate will be doing with who, what, where, why, when, and how. Don’t assume that your trading partners are going to know what your client is looking for, even if it’s a role they have worked a hundred times over. Tell the story in detail!

#2—Including Network Recruiting Instructions

Network Recruiting Instructions are all of the things that you would share with your partner that will make the difference in the types of candidates they send to you—how you like to work, your communication preferences, payment details, and any piece of information that you would share with the partner if they were sitting at the desk next to you.

The Network Recruiting Instructions are designed to help you communicate the intangible items to your partners so they are more effective in their efforts to help you.

#3—Responding to Trading Partners

The final step in all of this is to respond to your partners when they reach out to you. I can not emphasize how critically important this step is. After all, Communication is one of The Four Pillars of Top Echelon Network. This network runs on communication between its members, and this is one area in which you can’t afford to “drop the ball.”

I understand that everybody is busy, and I certainly sympathize with that. However, taking a few minutes of time to respond to a trading partner can make all the difference in the world. (And it can certainly make the difference in terms of whether you make more splits or not.)

And for you exporters in the audience, be sure to read the job details very clearly. Consider this thought before sending a candidate to one of your trading partners for their open position: “If this was my client and my relationship with them was on the line, would I send this candidate?” That is how important this interaction is to your success in the Network.

Remember: ALL Top Echelon Network members should treat one another as they would treat their best client in this business!

We’re pretty far along with our “Networking Tips” series. We’re down to the nitty-gritty, one might say.

Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS

That’s because we’ve reached the point where we’re addressing in what areas recruiters should work. We’re at the point of networking action!

Needless to say, all of the networking tips that we offer in The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog have been designed with one objective in mind. That objective: to help you make more placements, specifically split placements.

We want you to succeed. After all, we don’t succeed if you don’t succeed. We have a vested interest in how many placements you make.

The Four Pillars of TE Network play a role in all of our networking tips. Although there’s no specific mention of them in this week’s tip, you can see how Quality, Communication, Trust, and Active Participation are woven throughout. It reinforces the importance of these Pillars and how integral they are to your success as a Network recruiter.

Okay, I’m down off my soapbox. Networking Tip #8 is as follows:

Select a niche where there is networking action!

Before selecting a “niche market” on which to focus your split recruiting efforts, review the Network’s statistics. You must make sure there’s enough placement and job order activity.

Do not isolate yourself in a niche where you will not have any trading partners. For example, select a general specialty like “Engineering & Manufacturing.” Then select a sub-specialty like the “Metals Industry” to be your strong suit.

First and foremost, we encourage you to be client driven! Satisfy your clients first, and you will get repeat business. If your clients need you to be a generalist, then be a generalist, for goodness’ sake!

After all, you have a very diversified split network behind you. As a result, you should be able to find a programmer one day and a CFO the next day.

However, when searching for new clients, try to find ones that hire candidates within your general specialty. Or better yet, your sub-specialty.

By writing job orders within your sub-specialty, you’ll save many hours. That’s because you’ll know where to look for candidates and you’ll spend less time learning a new field.

To maximize your efforts, establish working relationships with other TE Network recruiters who are pursuing the same types of search assignments and candidates. In fact, the more recruiters you network with who work the same areas as you, the better off you’ll be!

You’ll have a larger pool of candidates from which to pull and a larger pool of job orders for the candidates you recruit. Also, your chances of meeting and developing critical working relationships with other recruiters is maximized if you’re regularly working in the same general specialty.

We feel that between being too generalized and being too specialized, there’s an optimum point for networking action. Nobody can tell you where that point is.

However, we suggest that you start by defining a general specialty and sub-specialty. Remember to keep your ears open to everything that your clients tell you.

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

It’s that time of year again! Yes, that’s right—it’s the END of the year. (You can almost set your calendar by it.) And with the end of the year comes the Christmas holiday.

Mark Demaree

As you might have already guessed, that means it’s time for us to publish our upcoming holiday hours. That way, you’ll know when we’re in the office and when we’re not.

Making you guess might be more fun, but it might also make you angry. We wouldn’t like you when you’re angry, so . . .

Offices Closed on December 25

The Top Echelon offices will be closed on Thursday, December 25 in observance of the Christmas holiday.

These hours apply to:

• Top Echelon’s recruiting network
• Top Echelon’s applicant tracking system

The Top Echelon offices will re-open for business as usual at 8 a.m., Eastern Standard Time (EST) on Friday, December 26.

Like Thanksgiving, this is the time of year to be grateful for everything you have. We at Top Echelon are certainly grateful to have all of you as customers.

We’re thankful for your commitment as TE Network members, we’re glad to call many of you friends, and we’re hopeful that this holiday means as much to you as it does to us.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Top Echelon Director of Network Operations Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS recently conducted a special Training Thursday webinar titled, “Supercharge Your Searches with Smart-TE: AI-Powered Talent Discovery.”

Matthew Deutsch

You may have attended this free webinar on Thursday, December 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:

— — —

Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS

Discover how the Top Echelon Smart-TE’s AI Search String Generator transforms the way recruiters find talent by turning any job title and description into powerful, optimized Boolean search strings instantly.

In this special Top Echelon webinar video, you’ll see how Smart-TE analyzes your job details; identifies key skills, experience, and qualifications; and automatically builds advanced search queries that surface the best-matched candidates already in your database. No Boolean expertise required.

Top Echelon Director of Network Operations Drea Codispoti, CPC/CERS will walk you through how the tool expands job titles into synonymous variations, extracts critical keywords, and delivers ready-to-review results directly inside the People Advanced Search screen in TE Recruit.

If you want faster sourcing, smarter automation, and dramatically higher relevance in your searches, this session will show you how Smart-TE gives you a competitive edge.

So watch this special training video and get ready to “Supercharge your Searches with Smart-TE”!

Watch this Top Echelon training video!

— — —

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.