If a company were to interview a candidate from a recruiting agency, but is unable to hire that person until a year later, what is the company's responsibility to the recruiting agency? Are there legal ramifications if you would hire that person and the recruiting agency later found out you bypassed them?

-tmk

This situation would be covered in the contract with the agency.

What does the contract say?

Unfortunately, I don't even know... here's the situation...

A higher-up in my company did all the negotiating with this, and the first I knew of it (I'm the office manager) was when he started sending resumes to me to print and contact for interviews, sometime last summer or so. We really liked one guy, but were unable to hire him at the time because of $$ issues. The only correspondence I knew of was the e-mails coming from the recruiter, with resumes.

Now, we want to hire the candidate... and my immediate boss, who has been on maternity leave, says "wait, didn't we get him through a recruiter?" I replied that we had, and provided his e-mail address to her, but accidentally left it in the CC: line of the e-mail (I'd pulled it up through autocomplete) so he got the e-mail. I come to find out that the higher-up here had remembered the recruiter all along, and was trying to go around the outside and not let it get back to the recruiter.

I got an e-mail from the recruiter this morning saying "that's great news!" and I had all of five seconds to realize what I'd done, CC'd him by mistake, before the higher-up was storming out here asking who had gotten in touch with him. I've been devastated for making such a stupid mistake, but part of me feels that it is shady and not ethical to not reward the recruiter for finding us the right candidate.

I realize this may not help with the contract question, but I am literally sick to my stomach over this. :(

Oh, I feel sick to my stomach on your behalf! Oh my gosh! Well, we all do it (send an e-mail to the wrong person, copy the wrong person).

My feeling is that the contract is open ended - if you EVER hire this person there is a commission to be paid. Otherwise, people would delay hiring, then hire or hire when another position opens.

I really feel so bad for you - what a nightmare. And the embarrassment...

Thank you so much... your sympathy, if nothing else, has made me feel better. I agree with your opinion... I don't think there should have been any QUESTION of whether we paid the recruiting agency! I definitely feel horrible about making this mistake, but I don't think it is one I would have made if this higher-up had been more straightforward in the beginning...

He already told me not to worry about it, that we'd move forward and just adjust. But of course, the recruiter calls up five minutes ago like "Oh, I'm so happy! Can you give me more details???" And I had to be like "I don't know anything about this, I think our executives were going to talk it over then contact you" just so I don't make things worse.

Ugh... What a Monday, and it's barely lunchtime. Thank you for your help, Judy. :)

Thanks for coming back with the update - and I agree with you. "Somebody" tried to skirt the agency and got caught. It would have happened sooner or later, anyway.

Enjoy lunch - if you can swallow!