Monday Morning Memo: Back Door Hire Excuses 7, 8 & 9

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Samantha Cole, in-house counsel and wearer of many hats for AER, finish their series on the top excuses for back door hires. On top of these podcasts, AER is also hosting a free webinar on the topic of back door hires. If you want more information about the webinar, feel free to send an email to [email protected]. Excuse number 7 is when the company says “we didn’t hire the candidate as an employee, we hired them as a consultant” and excuse number 8 is “we hired them for another position.” These two excuses are different, but at the same time very similar, so Wilson discusses them together.

For excuse number 8, Wilson has seen that sometimes it turns out to be an honest mistake due to poor communication or poor processes internally at a company, where a candidate was accidentally hired for another position. Of course he as has also seen where it was not an accident, but a company intentionally trying to avoid paying placement fees. For excuse number 7, Wilson says from his experience that companies using this excuse are more likely to be trying to avoid paying placement fees.

At that point, a staffing agency is free to try and make the company pay, but Wilson believes the company has already said they are not going to pay so the recommended course of action is to escalate the case to collections professionals, such as AER. As a reminder, a signed contract with high-quality, specific wording on when placement fees are owed is always a good defense against these two excuses and another one that is covered later in the podcast.

Samantha says that she has seen some companies put details in their job postings such as “sales manager in a specific city,” which gives them legal room to hire a candidate for the same position (sales manager), but in a different city, and claim it’s not the same position. Samantha has also reasoned against companies claiming a candidate they hired technically doesn’t work for them by citing labor laws that point to the reality that they do.

2 Key Quotes

· Excuse number 7 is when the company says “we didn’t hire the candidate as an employee, we hired them as a consultant” and excuse number 8 is “we hired them for another position.”

· Excuse number 9 is “yes we hired the candidate but a different candidate left prematurely so we’re taking this one as a credit.” Wilson says this scenario pops up in about 10% of AER’s cases