The first search you are offered will be a race

When you go independent, the first searches that come your way rarely arrive on your terms. A former contact calls, says they have a role open, and asks if you can send a few people over. Then, almost as an aside, they mention that two other agencies are working on it too.

At the agency you may never have had to think about that sentence. The firm's name, its terms and its account managers sat between you and the client. On your own there is nobody in between, and the first race you say yes to tends to set the terms of the next ten.

Here is what a contingency race actually costs, and what to ask for instead.

What the race costs

On an open contingency search with three recruiters, you are paid only if your candidate is the one hired. Everyone is sourcing from the same market, often calling the same people, and a candidate who hears about the same role from three recruiters in a week trusts none of them.

The client is not doing anything wrong. From their side, three recruiters is three chances. From yours, it is a search where you do the full work for something like a one in three chance of a fee, and where speed of submission counts for more than the quality of the shortlist. That is the opposite of the reason anyone should hire an independent.

It also costs you something less visible: the hours that would have gone to the clients who would have given you a search outright.

What to ask for instead

You do not have to refuse the race. You do have to ask, before you start, for something that changes the odds. Any one of these is a reasonable request from a recruiter who knows the market.

A short exclusive window. Two or three weeks where you are the only recruiter on the role. If you have not produced a shortlist by then, the client opens it up. It costs the client nothing if you are good, which makes it the easiest of these to agree to.

A small engagement fee. A modest amount at the start, credited against the placement fee. It is not really about the money. A client who pays something up front has decided the role is real and that you are the partner on it.

A cap on the race. If exclusivity is off the table, ask how many recruiters are on it and ask them to keep it there. Two is a very different search from five.

An agreed process. A set turnaround on resume feedback and interview slots. Plenty of contingency searches die not because the candidates were wrong, but because nobody replied for two weeks.

Say why you are asking. "I will put my best candidates forward, and I need to know they will not hear about this role from three other people first" is a sentence most hiring managers understand.

When to say yes anyway

Sometimes the race is still worth running. The client is new to you and you want to show what you can do. The role sits squarely in your niche and you already know the three people who belong on the shortlist. Or the hiring manager is someone you expect to work with for years.

That is a decision, not a default. Take the race when it buys you something specific, and write down what that is, so that when the next search comes from the same client you can ask for better terms on the strength of the last one.

The record that makes the ask easy

The ask is easiest when you can point at evidence. How many of your placements came from exclusive searches, and how quickly they filled. How long this client's contingency roles sat open before anyone called you. Which past clients came back to you directly after the first search.

Most newly independent recruiters do not have any of that written down yet, so every conversation about terms starts from instinct. Start the habit now. For every search, note the terms you agreed, how many recruiters were on it, how long it ran and how it ended. A year from now, that log is the strongest argument you have for working the way you want to.

That is part of the desk we are building Memorova for: an advisor that knows your own clients and searches, works out how to win the next client and the next candidate, and then does the work you approve. It is on a waitlist while we build it.

If you went independent in the last year: what terms did you accept on your first search, and would you accept them again?