The client-side fee agreement: what it must say before you send a resume

Everything in your agreement with a split partner is a dispute between recruiters. Everything in your agreement with the client is a dispute between you and the money. The client-side fee agreement is the more important document, and it is the one recruiters most often send out half-read.

No resume should move before this agreement is signed. Not because clients are dishonest, but because unsigned paper turns every later disagreement into a negotiation about what was implied.

The three clauses that carry the money

If your agreement gets these three right, the rest is housekeeping. If it gets them wrong, no amount of good faith fixes it.

• The fee trigger, as an event. "Earned on the candidate's first day" beats "upon successful placement" every time. You want a calendar, not an interpretation.
• The ownership window. A candidate you submit stays yours for a stated period, usually six to twelve months, and the clause survives the end of the agreement. This is what stops the polite version of theft: the client waiting you out.
• The fall-off terms. Refund or replacement, a pro-rated schedule, and what triggers it. Written before the hire, not negotiated after the resignation.

Where clients push back, and what to hold

Clients rarely object to the fee. They object to the window ("six months is too long"), the guarantee terms ("we want a full refund at ninety days") and the payment terms ("we pay at sixty days, company policy"). Each of these has a fair middle: a window that matches your real risk, a graduated guarantee instead of a cliff, and invoice terms that start at the offer or start date rather than drifting.

What you should not soften is the mechanism of payment itself. The money should land somewhere neutral, not in an account you control alone and not, on a split, in your partner's. This is where the remittance block does quiet work: the invoice points the client's payables team at the escrow account directly, so the payment instruction is the same whether the client likes you or not.

Escrow makes the agreement easier to sign, not harder

Recruiters sometimes worry that asking a client to fund escrow adds friction. In practice it removes the client's two biggest fears: paying for a hire that falls apart, and paying a stranger. Escrow gives the client a refund path that does not depend on your solvency, and a payment destination that is not your personal bank account.

A client who hesitates at escrow but was fine wiring money directly to an agency they met last month is telling you something worth hearing.

The pre-send checklist

• Fee trigger written as an event with a date you can point at.
• Ownership window of at least six months that survives termination.
• Fall-off terms: refund or replacement, pro-rated, with named triggers.
• Invoice issued at offer or start, due in fourteen to thirty days.
• Remittance block routing payment to escrow, not to a person.
• Signed before the first resume moves.