Recruitment introduction fee dispute

Question

I have been working with this client for 3 years and recruited a number of permanent staff for them (recently there has been changes in their management). A month ago I submitted a candidate cv to the hiring manager, at the time they had no vacancies. Last week I spoke with my candidate who informed me that she had an interview with the same client the week before and accepted an offer via another recruitment agency!

Our Terms and conditions state: An introduction fee will be charged in relation to any Candidate engaged as a consequence of or resulting from an introduction, whether direct or indirect, within six months from the date of our introduction.

Therefore my thought process is I introduced the candidate first to the client and she has been engaged within 6 months of my submission so I should be entitled to a fee?

One of the managers from my client contacted me and advised I am not entitled to a fee for this candidate as there was no vacancy at the time & it was unsolicited.

Any advise or help on this would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This is the reason why many companies will simply not invite candidates for interviews if they have received their CV from more than one recruiter, as the red tape on deciding who introduced who is more hassle than it is worth.

If your question is regarding the legal aspect, you are probably best addressing this on the law exchange.

If the question is whether it is ethical, I would side with the hiring manager, at the time you sent the CV it was unsolicited. Time passed on and a vacancy opened up and they received the CV again by a different agency, now properly addressed to that vacancy. As they have submitted it for an open vacancy, I would agree that the introduction fee should be theirs, or else as brhans says, you could simply forward all CV's you receive to all companies in the area and claim introduction fee for any hires they do.

If the hiring manager had contacted you, to arrange through you the interviews with the candidate and THEN saw the CV through a different agency, then the fee would be yours as it was your email/CV that introduced the candidate, if they saw the other agencie's application to this role first and only after you brought up the fact that you had introduced that candidate they noticed the application you had sent for an non-existing vacancy, then they are correct in what they are doing.

Otherwise, you would be claiming income for passive work, when possibly the other agency spent time talking to the candidate, preparing the CV for that specific vacancy, sent an email to hiring manager and discussed it with him and then called the candidate to arrange the interview.

Answer 2

-- A month ago I submitted a candidate cv to the hiring manager

Do you have any kind of evidence (email, contract) with the candidate that specifically states the client and the candidate?

If not, then you have no rights to a referral fee.

If yes, likely for the submission a month ago, then you do have rights and can pursue it.

'I am not entitled to a fee for this candidate as there was no vacancy at the time & it was unsolicited.' seems pretty thin. Perhaps a reduced fee can be negotiated.

This also begs the question (and the ethics behind it) why you are submitting candidates for unsolicited positions and not updating the candidate to gain consent. As a candidate if this happened to me I would strongly consider blacklisting the recruiter from future searches.