Backdoor hires are not new. Neither is the frustration that comes with them. A candidate placed, a fee agreed and then six months later you find out the client went around you.
But here is the part most recruiters do not stop to consider.
They may have made it happen themselves.
This is not about blame.
It is about understanding the commercial logic from the other side of the table. When a client weighs up whether to cut you out of the fee, the calculation is simple.
Best case, they save the full placement fee.
Worst case, they get caught and pay what they owed anyway. No penalty. No uplift. No consequence beyond settling the original debt.
So you can see why they try it.
Now add a discount into that picture. A client pushes back on your standard 25% rate and you agree 18% to win the business. That feels like a reasonable compromise in the moment. But what you have actually done is reduce the stakes even further. If they do not pay, they are losing less than they would have before you discounted and, in a market, where fees are already being squeezed, that matters.
Discounting is not the problem. Discounting without conditions is.
Every reduced rate should come attached to clear conditions.
- Payment within agreed terms.
- Notification of the hire within a set timeframe.
- Transparency on the candidate’s starting salary.
If any of those conditions are not met, the discount falls away and the full standard rate is payable.
That single clause changes everything because, if they chance their arm, the client is no longer taking a low-risk gamble. Instead, they’re choosing between paying the discounted fee or your standard fee. The incentive structure finally works in your favour.
Discounts are for good clients and good clients play ball.
Most terms of business in recruitment do not include this. Discounts get agreed informally, written in at a flat rate with no trigger clauses and no mechanism to reinstate the full fee. So, when something goes wrong, there is no legal basis to recover anything beyond the discounted amount.
Which means the problem was never the client. It was the paperwork.
Your terms of business should reflect the deal you actually agreed. If they do not protect your margin, nothing else will. Get them right first and everything else will follow from there.
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