The new user agreement for Top Echelon goes into effect on Wednesday, December 1, but the agreement is already available for Preferred Members of the Network to view. The agreement has been available since Tuesday, and so far over 600 recruiters have “electronically signed” the agreement. I’d like to thank those recruiters who’ve already signed for taking advantage of the early opportunity to do so.
With this article, I’d like to review some of the information that we’ve published in previous blog posts, as well as address new issues. First, the new issues:
- There is NO price increase for any of our products due to the new agreement—This was brought up by a couple of recruiters, and it did not occur to us that there might be a question. The cost of all of products and services will absolutely be the same when the new user agreement goes into effect on December 1.
- Having every end-user sign an agreement is a standard practice for web-based software. This protects us as a corporation that end users will not reverse engineer our software in an attempt to take the data. Also, it protects the company owner from an employee who may act outside of the agreement as the employee has individually committed to the terms and conditions. Employees are not entering into a separate individual agreement, but they are acting as users under the company’s banner. The owner of the company is still the main contact and they own all data entered by all employees.
Now, for the review:
- On Wednesday, December 1, your electronic signature of the agreement must be on file with us before you’re able to successfully login to Top Echelon Network. You can sign the agreement well in advance of the deadline, as over 600 recruiters have done, or on December 1. Either way is acceptable.
- The new agreement is for every user in your office. In other words, every recruiter in your firm who uses our service will have to sign the agreement.
- When you login to Top Echelon, you’ll see a welcome screen with two buttons. You can click “View Agreement” to see the agreement, and then click “I Agree” at the bottom if you’d like to “sign” it. You can also click “Not Now” to bypass the screen and login to the system.
Also to review, below are the reasons for the creation and implementation of this new user agreement:
- To reduce complexity—Prior to this point, we’ve had separate agreements for Top Echelon Network, Big Biller recruiting software, and the Hiring Hook website plug-in. This new agreement consolidates everything and causes less confusion.
- To update the agreement with changes to our products and services—A lot has changed since the last time we updated our user agreement, which was several years ago. With the changes in business and technology, not to mention our products and services, a change in the agreement was inevitable.
Also to review, here are the major changes to the new user agreement:
- The addition of verbiage for our website services—Recruiting websites now constitute a larger part of our business than they have in years past.
- The addition of verbiage for our free trials—Top Echelon offers free trials for both the Big Biller recruiting software and the Hiring Hook website plug-in.
- New departure policy—In the past, Top Echelon could terminate a recruiting firm’s Membership at any time, without advanced notice. However, in our previous agreement, a Preferred Member firm was required to give Top Echelon 30 days’ notice before discontinuing their Membership. That is no longer the case. You can leave Top Echelon any time you would like, without advanced notice of any kind.
I’d like to thank you for your cooperation and patience during this time of transition and also for your commitment as a Preferred Member of Top Echelon Network.
If you have any questions about the new Top Echelon user agreement, please send them to MDemaree@TopEchelon.com.