Are Recruiters Responsible For Retention?

Are recruiters responsible for retention? Many wonder aloud about the answer to this question, but I always arrive back at the same answer. No. Emphatically, no.* Recruiters have no real ability to ensure the retention efforts of their clients are being carried out. It's for this reason that recruiters should never, ever agree to refund fees. Read on.

I'm often presented with contracts or requests from potential clients for the inclusion of verbiage around the complete refunding of recruiting fees if a candidate leaves or is terminated within 90 or 120 days of employment. Each and every time I state that I do not give refunds. Never. Ever. This news is most often met with a bit of surprise until explained why. Post-explanation, it's business as usual and what was a seemingly big deal breaker for working together disappears like it never existed in the first place.

As I said before, retention is not the responsibility of recruiters. Retention begins where the recruiting road ends. Recruiters are third party service providers hired to deliver a product: a candidate. This candidate is screened by the client, interviewed by the client, poked, prodded, brain-teased and background-checked by the client before an offer is extended, accepted and a start date agreed upon.

Upon completion of the search, (technically the hired employee's first day on the job) the recruiter has completed the service they were hired to perform. The responsibility of ensuring a new employee receives a clean desk, work area, key cards, parking space, benefits orientation, proper meet-and-greet of internal staff and a 90-day road map lies with the company. This is a lion's share of the onboarding process, which is a vital part of retention.

If you ask a company when retention begins they will respond “with an employee's first day of employment”. If a recruiter gets a call 90 days after placing a candidate and the hiring company says the employee they provided a recruiting service for (not a retention service) is not working out and they don't need another and want a refund, what are you to do at that point? If this employee says after their first 90 days they have barely met any of the internal staff, have not been provided a permanent work area or computer, have not been reimbursed for moving or their boss has not made them feel welcome, is that the recruiter's fault? All of the aforementioned items are directly related to retention, not recruiting. These employees don't report to the recruiter. Recruiters have no ability to ensure proper retention is being carried out for new and existing staff.

As non-internal, non-staff, non-onsite service providers who were hired and paid to perform a specific function, recruiters have no ability to control how efficiently a company handles onboarding and retention. Thus, their recruiting service didn't fail the company. The company's retention strategy failed the employee.

Recruiting, especially at a senior and specialty technical level, is no easy task. It requires years of expertise and countless hours of research, cold calling, conversations, career counseling and trust building. That is why nine out of ten new recruiters fail within twelve months. How could all of that hard work be liable for a complete refund when the recruiter's role only extends so far? At some point a company has to take responsibility for the retention of their employees. This includes the ones recruiters are hired and paid to provide for them.

The next time a company says they want a refund if an employee doesn't work out at 90 or 120 days ask them who's responsibility is it to retain their employees and when does that responsibility typically begin. I guarantee they won't say at three months.

* If a candidate ends up not being the proper fit, always protect everyone’s best interests by offering a replacement policy.