Recruiting guides

A split-fee placement is a placement where two parties share one fee. Usually one side owns the relationship with the client and the job order, and the other side supplies the candidate who gets hired. When the client pays the placement fee, it is divided according to whatever the two recruiters agreed in advance — most commonly fifty-fifty, though splits weighted toward whichever side did the harder half of the work are common too.

The appeal is obvious. A recruiter with a great client and no candidates, and a recruiter with a great candidate and no client, both make nothing on their own. Together they make a placement. The risk is equally obvious: two people now have to trust each other about money that has not arrived yet, and about who did what.

Get these five things in writing

Before you send a single resume into a split, agree on the split percentage, on what triggers payment, on how long your candidate is protected, on who talks to the client, and on what happens if the placement falls through. Verbal splits work fine right up until the moment they do not.

Payment trigger matters more than percentage. "Paid when the client pays" is the honest standard, because the fee does not exist until the invoice clears. Be wary of any arrangement that promises payment on start date but is funded by an invoice nobody has collected on. Ask directly how long invoices typically take and what happens if a client pays late.

Candidate protection — the window during which a candidate you submitted is credited to you — is the clause people forget. Ninety days from submission is a common, defensible period. Without it, a candidate you introduced can quietly reappear six weeks later as somebody else's placement.

Fall-off and guarantees

Most placement fees carry a guarantee: if the hire leaves within thirty, sixty, or ninety days, the client gets a refund or a replacement search. That obligation flows through to the split. If you take a fifty percent share of a fee, expect to carry fifty percent of the refund risk. Read the guarantee terms on the underlying fee agreement, not just your split agreement, because the client contract is what actually governs the money.

Where splits go wrong

In our experience there are three recurring failures. The first is duplicate submission: the same candidate reaching the client through two channels, which almost always costs one recruiter the fee and sometimes costs both the client. Log submissions, with dates. The second is going around your partner to the hiring manager — it feels efficient and it ends the relationship. The third is over-promising on the candidate side. If the candidate is lukewarm, say so up front; a partner who trusts your assessment will send you more job orders than one who got burned by an enthusiastic write-up.

Screening a trades candidate is a different exercise from screening an office candidate. Resumes are shorter, less polished, and frequently understate the work. A twenty-year journeyman electrician may hand you half a page. Reading that as thin experience is the single most common mistake recruiters make when they move into the trades from corporate desks.

Verify the credential first

Start with whatever the role legally requires: the licence, the card, the certification, the medical card, the clearance. Check the number, the issuing state or jurisdiction, and the expiry date. An expired certification is not a small administrative problem — on many sites it makes the candidate unplaceable on day one, and you will not find out until the client's safety officer does. Ask for the document, not the reassurance.

Ask about the work, not the title

Titles vary wildly between employers, so ask what the candidate physically did. Which systems, which voltages, which materials, what size of crew, commercial or residential or industrial, new build or service and repair. Someone whose last four years were residential service calls is a genuinely different hire from someone who spent those years on industrial conduit, even though both are licensed electricians with identical resumes.

Nail down the practical constraints early

Trades placements fail on logistics far more often than on skill. Confirm the earliest genuine start date, the shift the candidate will actually accept, the commute they will tolerate in real traffic, whether they have reliable transport and their own tools, and whether they can pass the drug screen and background check the site requires. Ask these plainly in the first call. It feels blunt; it saves everyone a wasted week.

Test whether they are really available

"Available immediately" often means "available if this is better than what I have." Ask what they are working on now, when it wraps, what they are earning, and what number would make them move. A candidate who cannot answer the money question has not decided to leave. Recording that honestly protects your credibility with the client, which is the only asset you actually carry between placements.

The gap between offer acceptance and first day is where fees die. The candidate has said yes, the recruiter has mentally banked the fee, and attention moves to the next search. In the meantime the candidate's current employer counters, a competing offer lands, a spouse raises a concern about the shift, or paperwork stalls and the start date slides until enthusiasm cools.

Prepare for the counter-offer before it happens

Ask, before the offer goes out, what the candidate will do if their employer counters. Talk through the specific number they might be offered and why the reasons they wanted to leave will still be true afterwards. A candidate who has rehearsed that conversation resigns cleanly. One who has not tends to accept the counter and stop returning calls.

Shorten the gap

Every extra week between acceptance and start is another week for something to go wrong. Push for the earliest workable start date, get compliance documents moving the day the offer is accepted, and chase background checks and drug screens rather than waiting on them. Most delays are administrative and most administrative delays are somebody waiting for somebody else.

Stay in contact, with a reason

Contact the candidate at least weekly between acceptance and start, and again in the first week on site. Have a purpose each time: confirming paperwork, passing on site details, introducing them to their supervisor, checking the first shift went as described. This is also how you hear about problems early — candidates rarely announce that they are wobbling, but they mention it when someone is already on the phone.

Watch the guarantee period

Your fee is not safe until the guarantee period closes. Check in with both the hire and the hiring manager during it. A mismatch in expectations found in week two is usually fixable with a conversation; the same mismatch found in week ten is a refund. Track the guarantee end date somewhere you will actually see it, because nobody remembers a date that lives only in an email thread.