As a recruiter, I had 19 starts in 8 months. Anywhere else, these numbers would indicate success. However, the environment and management were extremely difficult to deal with and not worth the headache. Be very careful if you are considering an opportunity here, as the management will oversell you the opportunity. I was excited to come work here, but in the end was very disappointed with the company, their antiquated processes, and the unprofessional management.
Management micro manages the recruiting team to an extreme. Metrics are reviewed on a daily basis. For example, recruiters are expected to have 2 submittals per day. As a general rule of thumb, this is completely normal. However, in the event that you do not have your 2nd submittal by 2:00 that day, you must meet with management to explain why. It does not matter if you exceeded your submittal numbers from the day before, you are still expected to go in for a meeting if you do not have your daily submittals. Most other agencies review metrics weekly, and some others only review monthly numbers. This is a more efficient way of looking at metrics since no one can guarantee daily numbers when there are so many variables recruiters deal with on a day to day basis.
TSR does almost all VMO business with little to no manager relationship driven reqs or accounts. They still manage to have a good number of consultants on billing, but as a recruiter, submitting into the black hole of the VMO portal is never a good motivator since we can never guarantee our candidates feedback or interviews. The fixed markup contracts that TSR has with a lot of its clients are not favorable at all. Other agencies get much higher spreads with the same accounts.
Management holds daily req meetings with the recruiters that are longer than necessary and for the most part, ineffective. Meetings are at a different time every day (usually around lunchtime but as late as 4:30), and the manager announces the meeting anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours before the meeting. Then the manager is anywhere from 5 minutes to 3 hours late for the actual meeting, so this makes it extremely challenging to plan your day in terms of scheduling calls or even leaving for a quick lunch break. It is no problem if the manager is late for the meeting, but if one of the recruiters is late for the meeting, even due to a work related call, you should expect a long lecture/scolding.
I won't disclose the exact commission plan, but I will say that there is a huge discrepancy between the sales commissions and the recruiting commissions. TSR does make up for this in the base salary, so overall compensation is still decent. The biggest con for the commission structure is that the company does deals where the spread is so low, that they are "non-commissionable," meaning the company will still get paid for that consultant but the recruiter does not earn any commission. In an industry where the opportunity to earn more through making commissions is one of the biggest draws, this is completely backwards and does nothing for a recruiter's morale.
The division of responsibilities definitely favors the sales side. For TSR's larger accounts, there is a specific workflow diagram to be followed when a new requisition is released. This involves detailed instructions on what each person is responsible for when a req comes out. First, the admin enters the job into the ATS. Then the recruiter logs into the client portal to find the job description and tailor the online job posting. The recruiter sets up the search, calls/emails the candidates, and sends submittals to the admin. The admin then enters the submittal into the client portal. After submitting, it is the recruiter's responsibility to check the client portal for updates/interview requests. The recruiter handles all interview scheduling with the candidate and the VMO. The sales person is not even in the diagram, so that person has no responsibilities when a req is released. However, they still earn commission if the req gets filled. They're simply not a part of the work flow.
Lastly, as a best practice, I usually try not to work with 3rd party staffing agencies as that can be a bigger headache than it is worth, unless it is for a niche skillset or extremely low bill rate. This is not the norm at TSR, and often times, they use 3rd parties just to get a req covered quickly and for submittal metrics. Unfortunately, this is seen as a necessary evil at TSR, whereas at other agencies, it is something that management encourages their recruiters to avoid at all costs.
