How would a large agency bill this client? Please help.

by Glenn Huston
(San Diego CA)

I am an independent contingency recruiter. Have a %20 verbal agreement with a 5 year client company.

Company hired my candidate 11 months ago as a contractor to make sure it was a good fit. I have billed the client %20 of candidates earnings per month on a monthly basis. Have collected what would almost be the full time fee.

Company has made a full time offer to candidate through me and it has been accepted.

How should I bill this client? Should I simply charge a full %20 of the offer as if he was never a contractor? How would a large firm handle this?

Client does do some business with Apple One. They might run the situation past them.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Glenn H

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Hi Glenn,
This is a terrific question. I have two thoughts on this, first you have a verbal deal. I'm assuming you know someone pretty well to do that kind of business without a signed contract. The rub in answering your question directly is that the big companies don't do deals on a verbal basis so you are in uncharted territories.

Second, my advice to you, and you can run it by them but my first reaction is that your fee is 20% of the annual salary so what I would do is send them an invoice for the whole 20% and then show a credit for what they have already paid. This seems an equitable solution.

In the future, if this happens again, I'd let them know how your process works and that the total fee is a bit more (22%) to handle such things as back office processing for invoicing etc. Or alternatively, if this person was a contractor, then they must have been employed by someone else. Next time why don't you handle that as well. There is a terrific payrolling/employer of record company down your way (San Diego) called Innovative Employee Solutions.

They handle employer of record functions for most professional type positions at a very fair rate. You could run the contract through them and then at the end agree to a conversion fee from your client and get paid both ways. Just a thought, hope that helps and give IES a call to better understand their service for the future.