How to Make More Placements with Split Fees | NPA Worldwide Panel

How many jobs have you turned down because they were outside your geography, your niche, or simply because you are already at capacity? What if you didn't have to walk away from any of them? I'm Mark Whitby, and you're listening to the Resilient Recruiter Podcast. Today is a special sponsored episode, a panel interview with three members of NPA Worldwide, a global network of independent recruiters built around split fee placements.

At first, I was going to go on the intake call all by myself. What am I going to ask? Am I going to sound like an expert? But I just immediately turned around and called our trading partner.

At the end of a 45-minute call, we spoke and he's like, Jeff, I got the guy. I'm like, really? I got the guy. Guess what?

That's who they hired. My panelists are Heather Gardner, Jen Anderson, and Jeff McGraw. I wanted him to be on the call to ask, like Jeff said, questions that I probably wouldn't have thought of. And so he helped me land the client.

The other big piece about this was we were talking about the contract, putting it together. And he's like, well, what are you going to put as the fee? I'm like, 25%. That's usually what I always charge.

He goes, put 30. Okay. And they never blinked an eye. If I had not worked that job, had not been an MPA, had not had that business partner, I never would have had that opportunity.

Heather made six splits in her first year with NPA. Jen has made over 55 in the last decade. And Jeff has been doing split placements since 1994. I don't have that many clients.

So when I have a little bit of downtime, I can go in the system, see jobs and be like, oh, here's an IT role that is very similar to the things that I've worked on in the past. Maybe just a different location. I can work with them, get all the information. In this episode, you'll hear why treating other recruiters as collaborators, not competitors, might be the best business development decision you make this year, and how split fees could help you make more money without more effort.

It's great in lean times, but it's even better in times where there's a lot of opportunity. The entire membership benefits because when someone's up, someone's down. And we all bring each other up to a level that really helps support each other's individual businesses. You can learn more about NPA at npaworldwide.

com. All right, Jeff, Heather, and Jen, welcome. Thank you for being here today. Good morning.

Good afternoon. Thank you for having us. Thank you. So just to give people a little context, I'm going to ask each of you just to like give us the 60 second version of, you know, your company, where you're based, what sort of people you recruit and also your kind of experience with NPA worldwide.

Heather, would you get us started? Yeah. My name is Heather Gardner. I'm over in California.

My staffing agency is High Sierra Talent. I do mainly staffing in Sacramento Bay Area, but with MPA, I partner all over the country. A lot of my work right now is in Texas. Yeah.

My company has been around since January of last year, so relatively new. I've been in the staffing agency for about nine years now. So relatively new to MPA, I've been in for a year this round. Fantastic, thanks for sharing that Heather.

Jeff? Hey, good day, good to see you, Mark. So I'm Jeff McGraw with William Charles Search Group. I'm based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Our other partners are in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So we're 11 people at this stage of the game, 25 years in business. Our primary market that we target are middle market companies in manufacturing and distribution. We do work at the executive C-level and then a few steps below that, but typically all leadership positions.

Yeah. I joined NPA in, gosh, 1994, so it's been quite some time. And I did join as a solo entrepreneur at that time, but my journey has brought me to join up with another NPA firm, which we can get into at some point if you're interested, which I joined up with William Charles two and a half years ago. All right.

That's awesome. And Jen, how about you? Hey, Mark. Nice to meet you.

I'm Jen Anderson down in Clearwater, Florida. My firm is called Prestige Recruiting Firm. I've been in the recruiting industry for 15 years. I've owned my company for 10.

I've been part of NPA for 10 years, and I currently serve on the board for the Americas on the East Coast. I do pretty much everything in recruiting except for IT and finance. I'm a member of the company. I have clients from a university all the way down to a med device manufacturing company to landscape irrigation commercial work.

So I do everything. I get clients by referrals, and I just do anything but the IT and finance. And I think, and I do everything global. So I started in MPA as a candidate recruiter by myself, of course, and then I flipped the switch immediately.

My clients just ramped up and I've always been on the job side now and love working with everybody there. It's been a great adventure. Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to getting into that.

We were chatting while we were waiting to get started here, and I was sharing that I've been to the Tampa St. Pete area twice. We've had events there. Love that area.

Just absolutely beautiful. So you're very fortunate to live so close to the beach. We live near the beach here in Scotland, but it is much colder. So you need a wetsuit to go in.

So, and you guys, unfortunately, it sounds like you're not going to make it to Dublin this year, but NPA have a conference coming up in June, which I've been honored to have been invited to speak at. What's the most recent one that you went to and what do you get out of it? I almost never missed the annual global conference this past year. It was in San Antonio, Texas.

it's so important to be face-to-face with our trading partners. That's where we build the trust and the camaraderie. And it forges the opportunity to work closely with our partners. So never miss one if you can.

Yep. You meet people there and they end up not necessarily - Thinking you're going to work with them, you're like, oh, you're a new member. I haven't met you yet. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I really like that person.

And then later on you start talking and you have a job. Like Jeff, I didn't know Jeff until I met him in person. And we worked together several years ago, but I wouldn't have done that had I not met him in person. Right.

Yeah. Makes sense. The relationships really are forged in person, aren't they? It's so much easier than just doing it virtually.

Do any of you guys know Teresa Nordstrom? Yep. Absolutely. Know her well.

She is a bundle of energy, isn't she? Yes, she is. So Teresa is one of our clients, but I know that she is a huge believer in MPA and does a lot of splits with you guys. She does.

We should probably just like, I think most recruiters know the concept of a split fee, but they may never have really participated in that type of arrangement. So maybe, can I ask one of you just to explain how it actually works? So, you know, our network is based off of ethics, morals. We have bylaws.

We have an operations manual. So everybody has to abide by the rules per se, and you also are protected in a split network like this. So, you know, if... Something happens and a partner goes awry.

You have MPAs, backed operations and bylaws that we've all signed. We have to take - it's kind of like a grand poobah group. You have to be vetted to join our network because we're member-owned. The members have a say in how things are run.

We have a board that - that represents the members and keeps the entire membership in their mind when we're making decisions, not just it's global. So we have global board of directors and people work internationally together. So I would say that was the biggest appeal for me to join a network like this, because I don't know these people when you first start. And you're protected and you're like, okay, everyone has to abide by the same bylaws and rules.

So if they don't, then I have protection with the network as an organization. If something were to happen, there would be, you know, somewhat consequences or I would be protected as a member. The split part of it is, you know, you understand what the fees are when you're talking to your partner, what their job is. You understand what their guarantee period is before you work a job.

What else am I missing? And then the network itself is run by, you know, the membership fees and a small portion of the membership. the amount of split fee that is made. So we each pay a 2.

5% fee to the broker, to the network, just because that's part of what our rules and bylaws are to be part of the network. Am I missing anything, Jeff? Well, two things. One, I just wanted to reiterate the most important, one of the important things that you said, Jen, is that we are a member-owned cooperative.

And so decisions are made based upon what's in the best interest of our owners And it's not a for-profit entity owned by some corporation or by just one individual. So that's pretty key and important. But to answer the question about the split fees, so our typical split is 50-50. We share the fee equally with the 2.

5% coming out from each side of the split. The other thing to mention is that in addition to direct hire split, we also have the opportunity to work on contract or interim split placement opportunities as well. Fantastic. All right.

And Heather, I guess you're the newest NPA member. What's been your experience? Like, well, I guess maybe ask you what motivated you to participate? Yeah.

So this is my second time in MPA. My first time I was MPA, I didn't make any splits, but I love the concept of it. When I joined this time, I had one connection I already knew that got me in a little early since my company was a little bit newer. But this time around, going to the MPA conference, complete life changer.

Having those connections and knowing the people, it's different because there's an online website where people post the jobs and you can always just go in there and send random resumes over to the job, but that's not how you're gonna make a placement, right? You're gonna make a placement by having the relationships with Jen who has the job, right? So Jen's not gonna really wanna work with me if she doesn't know who I am, right? You don't want to tell like all of your client information to this random person you've never met.

But if you've met me, then you are like, oh, Heather's awesome. I want to work with her. And you're going to have this conversation. So this time around in MPA, I've already made six splits in one year.

I have another offer on the table. Yeah. Hopefully that one goes through. That one's going to be a lot bigger deal.

But the one that's on the table right now, I wouldn't have worked with this salesperson if I hadn't met him in San Antonio. So MPA is amazing. When you don't have enough orders yourself... So I don't have that many clients.

So when I have a little bit of downtime, I can go in the system, see jobs and be like, oh, here's an IT role that is very similar to things that I've worked on in the past, maybe just a different location, and I can work with them, get all the information. MPA is just amazing. Awesome. Heather, you hit on something which I think is...

The first thing I wanted to ask you guys about is the benefits of split fees, but also why it matters more now. This is an old concept, right? It's been around for decades. I don't know what you're...

I'd love to hear, first of all, how you're funding the market in general, but also then how you feel like having the option to do splits enhances your business. So because I'm connected to thousands of recruiters through the podcast and in our coaching program, we have working at any time with say 50 different businesses, then I have a real sense of what's going on in the market. And I would say not universally, but many recruiters have told me that the market's been tough in the last couple of years or, What are you guys seeing?

And then how does NPA sort of help you to enhance your business? Good questions. I would say that from our perspective, the last few years, we've been lucky, I guess, in terms of the clients that we target. So middle market manufacturing distribution companies that are family owned or part of a family office.

at least in our geographies that we work as well, the business has been pretty robust. Awesome. A good steady stream of opportunities. But where NPA has really come in to assist is when we have a client in Grand Rabbids, Michigan, who has a facility in Mexico that needs to hire a CFO and, We're sitting in Michigan or Pennsylvania and don't really know the cross-border culture, where to go, how to find someone.

We connect with our trading partner member in Mexico. And because, again, of the trust relationship that we've built with our partners, that person just runs with it. They know the company, the hiring authorities. They know the detail that we know as if it was their client's.

And we made the split and they made the hire. And we can talk about multiple situations like that that just occur. So it's great in lean times. But it's even better in times where there's a lot of opportunity.

And that's where the entire membership benefits because it's, you know, when someone's up, someone's down. We all bring each other up to a level that really helps support each other's individual businesses. Makes sense, I guess. And that's additional revenue you wouldn't have otherwise had, right, Jeff?

You would have just had to walk away from that opportunity. So it makes total sense whether you have jobs or opportunities that you're not best placed to be able to cover or you are light on jobs. In either case, you've got more opportunities to increase revenue. Yeah.

That'll make a lot of sense. What misconceptions do you think recruiters have about split partnerships, Jen? I think people have a hard time trusting other people with information most of the time. Yeah, that makes sense.

But for me personally, I'm like, I'm protected by MPA. So if I have a partner that I don't know that wants to work my job and I have a good conversation with them, I don't care about sharing my client. I don't care about telling them who the hiring managers are to look them up so they have an idea of who I'm working with. I personally copy them, blind copy them and all my correspondence with the client, with the candidate, because I want them to know what's happening because recruiters want information all the time.

Right. I want feedback. I want to know what's going on, what's happening with this. So I...

when I work with someone, I just copy them on everything. So I don't have to have a second email, a second, whatever. And I trust them to know that they're not going to go after my client. They're not going to contact someone there.

Like I, and I, I learned that personally from another MPA member when I started. Yeah. They did that to me as a candidate recruiter. And I valued that information so much that I was like, I'm totally doing that with anyone that works with me because they understand that I value what they're doing for me on my positions.

And I want them to continue to be informed about it. So I think the misconception is you don't trust people you don't know. But personally, I feel very confident and protected because I'm in a network like this that... Other partners may have worked with them.

I can get, you know, like background information, have you work with this person? You know, there's lots of people to talk to about it. So I think that to me is probably the misconception is like, you don't really know someone, you don't want to really share the information. Are they a good recruiter?

Like, I want to give everybody a chance. I love it. So a question coming to you, Heather, is I think what Jen just shared would be my, like, I'm trying to imagine myself in the recruitment business owner's shoes is, I feel like I would be worried about the loss of control, right? Because recruiters like to have control.

And if you have both sides of the deal, then you know everything that's going on, all the things that could go wrong. You know, you know what, like you can read between the lines with the candidate, what they're telling you, what they're not telling you, you know, and likewise with the client. Now in this scenario, you have to really collaborate with someone in order to have the full picture. Heather, you've done six splits already this year, which is fantastic.

How have you overcome that issue of, you know what you know, but you don't necessarily like either you have access to all the candid information, but not the client or vice versa? How do you kind of make that work? You partner... I mean, yes.

So my company, it's just me. But when I partner with another MPA person, it's like we're on the same company. When I'm talking to the candidates, if I'm working one of Jen's roles, I'll tell them. My partner, Jen, though you'll notice two different companies, we're essentially...

Think of us as the same company. You don't have to worry about it. Both of us will be in contact with you. And then Jen and I will have...

conversations on the side if we need to. I mean, I wish every partner would do the blind CC, but most people don't. So they'll just send you an email, send you a text, say, hey, submitted them or called them. They're great.

But you're always in contact. If you don't have that contact, I mean, I'm probably not going to work with that partner, but most, almost every single person that I've worked with in, in MPA, if I have someone going through the interview process, I'm getting an email every single step of the way we're having conversations. If there's an offer on the table, we're having multiple conversations so that we both have all of the information that way I can relay it to the candidate. They can relay it to the client.

You just partner as if you are in the same company. Yeah, I wanted to mention that when she just talked about how the collaboration of work, everybody likes to work differently. So there's not like a standard rule here that you have to do a certain thing a certain way. Everybody's different.

And so you kind of learn what the ways are to work with someone. So some client recruiters in our organization want full control. So if someone hands me a candidate personally, I'm... I don't necessarily want that candidate recruiter talking to them all the time because I need to be the face because my client knows me, not Heather.

But I always keep Heather informed. So if I ever needed her to step in to help out with something with communication or I can't talk to the candidate about something, that's when I would want that partner to still obviously be involved. But some other partners will say, hey, I need you to follow this candidate through the entire process, interview, make sure they're going to show up like everybody works very differently. So you have to make sure that you want to work like that with those people.

That makes total sense. Jeff, do you have any other from your experience with MPA, any other tips on the do's and don'ts of having a successful collaboration? So I wanted to just circle back perhaps to the the idea of less control or more control. And what kind of came to mind for me was immediately that it's kind of like the one plus one does equal two.

And so in a lot of circumstances, when you have two, there's more control. And especially when you bring in a partner, you know, that may be helping you on a search, on an assignment that falls a little bit outside of what you do normally, right? And so you're bringing more firepower to the table. And a real life example that again came to my mind was, I had a client who randomly called me and they needed to hire an optics engineer.

I'm like, okay, great. And at first I was going to go on the intake call all by myself and worry about, well, what am I going to ask? Am I going to sound like an expert? And what do I need to know?

But I just immediately turned around and called our trading partner. I'll shout out for Howard. And he came on the intake call with us together. At the end of a 45 minute call, we spoke and he's like, Jeff, I got the guy.

I'm like, really? I got the guy. Guess what? That's who they hired.

So again, there was more control whenever you come in with more firepower, in my opinion. So yeah. Okay, so it's interesting that you actually brought Howard onto the intake calls.