Recruitment agency contract template: what to keep, what to cut

Search for a recruitment agency contract template and you'll find hundreds, free, and most of them are serviceable. The structure is standard because the deal is standard: you find a person, the client hires them, the client pays a percentage of salary.

So this isn't a lecture against templates. Use one. But understand that a template's job is to look complete, and your job is to find the three places where money either moves or doesn't. Those clauses deserve ten times the attention of everything else on the page.

Keep: the fee trigger, written as an event

The single most important sentence in the agreement is the one that says when the fee is earned. Good: "the fee is earned on the candidate's first day of employment." Bad: "upon successful completion of the engagement." One is an event you can point at on a calendar. The other is an argument.

If the template's trigger is vague, fix that one sentence and keep the rest. And make sure the invoice terms hang off it: invoice issued on the start date, due in fourteen or thirty days, in writing.

Keep: the ownership window

Every template has a clause saying a candidate you submit remains "yours" for some period, usually six to twelve months. This is what stops a client from waiting you out and hiring your candidate in month seven for free. Keep it, keep the period long enough to matter, and make sure it survives the end of the agreement. A window that dies when the contract does is no window at all.

Keep: the guarantee as a schedule, not a promise

"We offer a 90-day guarantee" is a promise, and promises get reinterpreted. What you want is a schedule: if the hire leaves in days 1 to 30, X happens. Days 31 to 60, Y. Replacement or pro-rated refund, either is fine, but pick one and write it down. The worst guarantee clauses are the ones that sound generous and say nothing.

Cut: anything that moves the money through a person

Some templates, especially older split agreements, assume one party invoices, collects, and passes on the other's share. That clause is the most expensive sentence you'll ever sign, because it turns your fee into someone else's payable. Cut it.

The replacement is one line: the client pays a neutral escrow account, and the money splits from there on the schedule in the agreement. Same invoice, same client experience, no trust required. On PlaceRail that line is built in, the remittance block on every invoice points at the escrow account, and both sides watch it fund in the deal room.

Cut: exclusivity you didn't price

Templates aimed at agencies sometimes carry exclusivity or non-circumvention language that is far broader than the deal you're doing. If a clause stops you working with a client, a candidate, or a whole industry beyond this one placement, it has a price, and you should either charge it or delete it. Broad non-circumvention is where template agreements quietly cost you your next deal.

The honest summary

A template gets you eighty percent of the way for free. The last twenty percent is three clauses: when the fee is earned, how long your candidate stays yours, and where the money lands. Get those right and almost any template works. Get them wrong and no template saves you.