Clients Treat You Like a Resume Service

A resume service competes on who submits first, so every search becomes a race with the other agencies on it.

Clients pay for judgment. Without it, your fee is the first thing they push back on.

And with no evaluation behind them, few of your submissions turn into interviews, so you need far more of them for every placement.

Under pressure to move fast, it’s tempting to skip the interview: find a resume that matches, ask the candidate if they’d like to be submitted, and send it.

But the interview is where your value comes from. It’s where you find out whether the candidate can do what the role needs, and whether they really want it.

Skip it, and the send-out is a resume with your name on it. The hiring manager does all the evaluating, and you get credit only for the search.

If you never interviewed the candidate, the client is right: you’re a sourcing service, and your fee should be a sourcing fee.

• You submit candidates you’ve only asked whether you can send their resume.
• Clients compare you with other agencies on speed and fee.
• Your send-out is the resume, with a line or two on top.
• Hiring managers ask basic questions about candidates that you can’t answer.
• Candidates are surprised by what the role involves at their first interview.

• You did interview, but the send-out doesn’t show it. The evaluation happened; the send-out is still just the resume.
• The client buys volume. Some clients run every search as a race between agencies and only want resumes fast.
• The role is high volume. For some roles, screening by resume really is the norm.