Cheezhead

Any HR professional will tell you that each day they are inundated with phone calls from recruiters with “just the perfect candidate.” And while many corporate recruiters would love to hand off those loathsome phone screens and outsource some of their vacant positions to search firms, they aren’t willing to give up a significant portion of their day going over job specs and possible candidates with every independent recruiter that calls.

A relatively nascent idea that has been quickly catching the attention of both recruiters and HR professionals seeks to drill down some of those cold calls and high-priced agency fees. Dayak.com is a recruiting exchange that allows corporate recruiters or other HR professionals to post a position they are looking to fill with the appropriate specs (job description, salary, how long they have until the CEO starts thinking that his daughter might be great for that position after all).
They also have the option of tacking on what fees they are willing to pay, with the average being about 10-20% of the candidate’s first year’s salary. Recruiters then peruse the posted vacancies, select which ones they have the resources to fill, and begin prospecting or presenting candidates to the HR contact. Best of all, HR reps don’t even have to give out their contact info. Everything can be submitted via email, with phone numbers exchanged only when necessary.

Dayak’s team decided in the beginning phases of the website that they wanted to save companies billions of dollars by proposing easier-to-swallow fees that might make even the most frugal president of HR more apt to utilize independent recruiters.

“We encourage our employers to set fees at about half of what they would normally pay with a traditional recruiting firm,” explains Sal Cepeda, Dayak COO. “Our goal is to save corporate America $4 billion annually, which is about half of what corporations spend on contingent recruiting firms each year.”

Dayak.com works a lot like eBay, except that instead of selling that old VW bug parked on stilts in your backyard, you are buying and selling job candidates. Recruiters get to pick and choose what jobs they will work on, and employers get to pick and choose what candidates they’ll interview. Whenever a candidate is selected, a safe transaction takes place on the website between company and recruiter.

Dayak is also the first site to publicly offer a 60 day, 100% refund guarantee to employers. The vast majority of recruiting firms offer a replacement guarantee, not a refund guarantee. There are also no fees for either party to register for the site.

Think about it: HR has the job openings, but in many cases they lack the amount of resources a third-party agency can provide. When budget time comes around, HR is usually thinking about whether or not they are going to keep that Facebook-obsessed intern who skips out at 4:00 every day rather than considering a high-priced ATS or an application like ZoomInfo. So if they really want to get that IT spot filled with a high-caliber candidate for a less than terrifying fee, websites like dayak.com are going to be a great source for many companies.

A possible drawback to recruiters would be the lower fees. Often recruiters won’t budge on their typical 25-30% fee, usually because although the money seems high, significant portions of this go to maintaining an ATS, purchasing new and expensive software, and everything else that goes along with sourcing and courting their most sought-after candidates.

Recruiters who accept a lower fee are often treated like pariahs for lowering the industry standard. Dayak.com will still be an excellent resource for HR departments with a tight budget and recruiters who have a few extra candidates that they are willing to market for a lower price. Potentially, everyone wins in the end.