Back door hire

Back door hire cases are probably the most common recruitment debts that we deal with. These being when the customer engages the candidate without informing the recruiter, thus avoiding the fee.

Sterling deal with these cases at various points in the collection process. Some of our clients will hand the case over to us as soon as they find out the back door has occurred, instructing us to examine the evidence and approach their customer. Other clients instruct Sterling after they have billed the customer and have failed to collect themselves.

Sterling also provide a service to search for back door hire cases, our HireChecker service. In the case below Sterling discovered the back door case by analysing our client’s data, then collected after the customer refused to pay the invoice.

Finding a back door hire and getting it paid

Our client, a UK based firm of head-hunters specialising in the commodity and private banking sectors, engaged Sterling’s HireChecker service to analyse their data for back door cases. This was the first time they had used the service, so they started with a small trial batch of a few months’ data (records of CV submission to customers). Within a few hours Sterling found one back door case where a candidate had been employed by a US customer 11 months after introduction, just within their 12 month fee period.

Our client had not been successful in getting similar back door cases paid in the past and were not optimistic about collecting, particularly since the customer was overseas. Sterling persuaded the client to proceed so they raised an invoice based on the initial advertised salary and handed it to Sterling to pursue. Sterling sent the invoice to the customer along with an explanation letter, evidence of the engagement and details of the terms applying. The customer initially refused to recognise the debt, saying that the candidate had been hired in a different role, but after significant toing and froing with the customer’s in-house counsel, the debt was finally admitted. The customer disputed the candidate’s salary and did provide evidence of the actual salary which was lower, however this still meant a £7500 fee was paid to our client. A very positive result from an engagement our client didn’t know they had made.

Sterling carried out both the HireChecker search and the debt collection on a commission only basis with no up-front fee, so the additional revenue to our client was earned without any financial risk. Sterling’s fee in this case was £1800, giving the client an additional £5700 in their account.

A note on our case studies:

You’ll notice that we do not publish the name of our clients on most of our case studies testimonials. Sterling’s debt recovery service is provided in a confidential manner, in most cases our client prefers that we do not use their name due to the customer relationship sensitivities involved.

Sterling are happy to arrange reference site calls on request, usually with a client working in the same or similar sector. If you would like to speak to one of our clients please contact us to discuss your requirements.