Split Placements ROCK!

A Melbourne, Australia based retail specialist recruitment agency shared this story with me. They recruit retail management roles all over Australia in metro, regional and remote locations. They have been a member of NPAworldwide since 2010.

From time-to-time their clients list with them their “VERY” hard to fill vacancies. These vacancies are often in regional towns where the pool of local suitable candidates is small, and often due to higher unemployment rates and therefore lower confidence, seducing high calibre, employed candidates to move is challenging.

Earlier this year, after attending the monthly Melbourne Networking meeting, they were having a random chat with Amy from another member firm focused on retail. She was telling them about a retail management role that she was recruiting for in Canberra, and asked if they had any suitable candidates in their database to add to her shortlist. They did a database search, but were not able to refer anyone to her.

About 1 month later, one of their clients rang them up with a vacancy in Queanbeyan, a town just outside of Canberra. They had been searching for several months, had undertaken their own advertising campaign, but had had no success with securing the right candidate. This vacancy was a critical role for them, as the store is a high profile, high volume business which was suffering significantly without having a strong leader in place.

Remembering the conversation, they immediately called up Amy and asked if she had any overflow candidates from the recruitment that she had done the month before. She referred to them one fellow who they immediately knew was going to be “the one”. He was the squarest peg for the squarest hole they had ever seen! Needless to say, he got the job!

There were many obvious benefits to making this placement:

1. They exceeded the client’s expectations by quickly filling a role they had struggled with for a long time
2. They exceeded the candidate’s expectations by placing him into an exceptional role
3. The firm was happy because they had strengthened the relationship with their client whilst also being able to enjoy making a split placement with Amy
4. Amy was happy because she had the pleasure of making a split placement with them, whilst generating some revenue from a candidate she otherwise may not have placed

There’s an interesting story behind every split placement that is made. I really like this one because it highlights to me the true power of being networked with spilt placement partners. It’s about making the effort to network, communicate, and collaborate. It’s about building trust, building relationships, enjoying the partnership approach, and therefore being able to satisfy your clients and candidates in a way that you never could alone.

…and for me, this is why split placements ROCK!