Bad behaviour from a big multinational

This was a big multinational. You’ve heard of them. You probably own something they make.

And they’d approached me.

At the time I was dealing with another huge multinational and placing people all over their business. That company did absolutely nothing wrong – I love them to this day and they were one of my favourite ever clients – so I don’t need to change their name – it was Microsoft.

The Company Who Shall Not Be Named had asked Microsoft where they were finding their people – and been referred to me.

So I took the brief, and I sent them a candidate. And it suddenly turned a bit nasty.

One morning a couple of days later, I got a call from their HR team.

They wanted a word – apparently I was in breach of contract. They’d discovered that the candidate had already been represented to them by another agency, and that not only didn’t I have permission to represent him, but that he’d never heard of my company.

It’s hard to describe the amusement I felt when I took that call, because by sheer dumb luck, the candidate was in our office at the time.

Of course I had permission to represent him – and permission in writing which I immediately shared with them.

And of course he hadn’t been represented by anyone else – they were just trying to pull a fast one.

And of course he’d heard of us – I’d known him for a couple of years.

But the joy! The sheer delight of being able to reply “Oh that’s odd, because he’s here at the moment, hang on – I’ll put you on speaker” and then listen to the person at the other end of the phone squirm around trying to explain that it was all a mistake – that was deeply amusing.

Meanwhile the candidate and I silently fell about laughing.

Eventually we let them off the hook and the call ended. About 2 minutes later my phone rang again and it was the hiring manager who had clearly just had a call from HR. He was ropeable. Would the candidate still be keen to meet with them (represented by us, of course).

Well, yes he would. You don’t cut your nose off to spite your face.

He got the job.

We got paid.

I never worked with them again.

The lesson here I think is that in a people business – and I dare say in any other kind of business – you need to have both your contracts and your relationships nailed down.

In that instance it was a bit ham fisted because of course I could prove that I wasn’t in breach of the contract. But could I have got paid if they’d have dug their heels in?

It’s debatable. It probably would have depended on the willingness of my (very small) company to go legal with their (very large) company. That’s probably why they thought they could throw their weight around.

Of course, with the candidate and the hiring manager on side, I was all set.

The name of my substack is “names have been changed to protect the guilty”, and the point of it is really to share mistakes that I’ve made and experienced in my career – so that other people can avoid them, as much as anything else.

In this instance the mistake was on the client side.

But really, I’d already learned from the mistakes of others. My boss was absolutely insistent that we had everything in writing at all times – because he’d been stitched up himself in the past.

And the hard reality of recruiting is that there is a moment of vulnerability in an introduction because you’re always having to step out.

What reminded me of this story was something I was pointed to on linkedin of a young lad, relatively new in recruitment, who placed someone – only for the customer to decide after the fact that they’d already known the candidate and so wouldn’t pay the fee.

I felt for him. It sounded like he’d done most of it right. And it’s hard to come up with a foolproof scheme that can protect you from bad actors actively trying to do the dirty on you.

But one way or another – you learn these lessons. You can learn them the hard way, or the easy way.

Every new interaction with a new person is an opportunity but also a risk. People will not necessarily act in good faith.

You’ve got to work out who you can trust. You’ve got to test and validate that. You’ve got to be trustworthy yourself. You’ve got to get it in writing.

And sometimes – and this was one of those glorious times – you’ve just got to get lucky.