Backdoor Hires: The Placement Fees Agencies Never Know They've Lost

Every recruiter has a story like this. You introduce a strong candidate to a client. The client says they're "not moving forward right now." Six months later you notice on LinkedIn that the candidate has started there.

Nobody told you. Nobody paid you.

That's a backdoor hire, and it's one of the quietest ways agencies lose money.

Why it happens

Sometimes it's deliberate. A client would rather not pay a fee, so they go direct to the candidate you introduced. Sometimes it's more innocent: the process stalled, the role was put on hold, the candidate got in touch with the company again, and by the time it moved, nobody thought about your terms.

Either way, most agency terms of business say that if a client hires someone you introduced within a set period, the fee is payable. That protection only works if you actually find out.

The problem is noticing

Here's the awkward part. Nobody at your agency is watching for this. You'd have to remember every candidate you sent to every client over the past year, then check where each one works now. On a busy desk that simply never happens, so fees you're owed go unclaimed without anyone noticing.

It isn't laziness. It's that the task is tedious, needs doing regularly, and has no deadline until it's too late to claim.

What we built to deal with it

We built the Backdoor Hire Checker for exactly this. You give it the candidates you've introduced and to which clients. It then checks whether those people have since started work at the company you introduced them to, and flags any matches.

It doesn't send accusatory emails and it doesn't decide anything on your behalf. It gives you a short list of "worth a look" cases, and a person, you, decides what to do about each one.

What to do when something flags

Treat it as a lead for a polite conversation, not a legal battle.

1. Check your paperwork. Was there signed acceptance of your terms, and are you inside the protected period?
2. Confirm the facts. A matching name isn't always the same person, and a start date matters.
3. Raise it calmly. Something like: "I noticed [candidate] joined you in [month]. As they were introduced by us in [month], I wanted to check how you'd like to handle our fee." Most clients respond reasonably to a calm, factual note.
4. Keep the relationship in mind. A client who pays after an honest reminder is often a client who keeps using you.

Prevention is cheaper than recovery

Some habits make backdoor hires much less likely:

• Make sure terms of business are signed before CVs go out, not after.
• Log every introduction with the date and the client contact.
• Follow up on "on hold" roles, because that's often when it happens.
• Check in on candidates who were shortlisted but not placed.

None of this is glamorous. But for an agency placing regularly, it's money that was already earned.

If you'd like a checker set up around your own candidate and client records, get in touch and we'll talk it through.