Right to represent, explained for recruiters

The right to represent is the smallest document in recruiting and the one that decides the most arguments. One signed page answers the question that starts nearly every fee dispute: whose candidate is this?

If you work splits, it's also your ticket in. No serious partner shares a client name with a recruiter who can't show signed candidate permission, and you shouldn't either.

What it is

A right to represent, usually called an RTR, is the candidate's written permission for you to put them forward for a specific role at a specific client. That's all. It isn't a contract with the client, it isn't an exclusive with the candidate, and it doesn't guarantee you anything by itself. It proves one thing: on a date, this candidate chose you for this job.

That proof matters because candidate ownership is decided by timing. If two recruiters submit the same person, the one holding the earlier signed permission wins. Not the one who called first, not the one with the longer relationship. The one with the paper.

What it has to say

Write it in language the candidate understands on first read. A candidate who actually read what they signed doesn't get surprised by a second submission, and surprise is where withdrawn candidates come from.

• The candidate's full name and signature, with a date. Anything unsigned is a memory, not a document.
• The client named in full. "A fintech startup in Austin" protects nothing.
• The specific role or requisition. A blanket RTR for "any suitable position" falls apart the first time someone challenges it.
• An expiry date. Ninety days is common. Open-ended permissions invite fights about whether the candidate's yes from last year still counts.
• What happens to the candidate's data, in one plain sentence.

When to send it

Before you share anything that identifies the candidate, and before you learn anything that identifies the client you didn't already know. In a split that means the RTR is signed before the partner reveals their client's name for the candidate's approval, because the RTR needs the client named in it.

The clean order in a split: agree split terms in writing first, then the candidate signs the RTR naming the client, then the submission goes out. Any other order leaves a gap where ownership is ambiguous, and ambiguity is all a dispute needs.

The mistakes that void it

None of this is legal complexity. It's hygiene, and it takes about two minutes per candidate when the process is built in.

• A text message or email saying "sounds good." Courts and arbitrators want a signature on a document that says the specific things above.
• Submitting before signing. If the candidate signs after the resume is already with the client, the other recruiter's earlier paper beats your later one.
• Recycling an old RTR for a new role. The document names a role; a different role needs a new signature.
• Keeping it in your inbox. If you can't produce it in five minutes during a dispute, you effectively don't have it.

Where it lives on the rail

On PlaceRail the RTR isn't a separate chore. The deal room generates the permission, the candidate signs it from a link on their phone, and the signed copy sits on the deal timeline where both partners can see it, timestamped and locked. Nobody can claim they never saw it, and nobody can lose it.

Sign the paper first. Every time. The recruiters who do this one thing almost never have the ownership fight at all.