Paid on the Thirtieth Day, Not the First

Most recruitment contracts pay on joining. This one did not.

Under our agreement, part of our fee only became payable once a candidate had completed thirty days in the seat. It is a well-designed term , it aligns the agency's interests with the client's from the first day, and we think more companies should ask for it.

In practice it meant raising an invoice, withdrawing it, and reissuing it a month later once the person had settled. We did exactly that for one hire in April 2020. We also split a batch that March into separate invoices rather than bundling them, because the candidates had joined on different dates and a single invoice would have billed for some of them ahead of the term.

Nobody asked us to do that second part.

THE FIRST PHASE , SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS

Between late 2019 and late 2020 we hired subject matter experts at volume across mathematics and the sciences, including batch hires through that autumn.

SME hiring is a distinctive discipline. You are not looking for career specialists; you are looking for people with real subject depth who can explain things clearly and want to do it as a job. That pool does not sit on job boards under a convenient title, and much of it does not know the role exists.

We ran this through the first year of the pandemic, when the whole edtech sector was scaling at once and competing for the same people.

THE SECOND PHASE , ENGINEERING

In November 2020 the brief changed completely. The client came back asking for full stack developers, mobile app developers, DevOps engineers and web developers.

This is the part that matters. A client who has watched you hire content specialists has no particular reason to assume you can hire engineers. Different networks, different screening, different conversations. They gave us the chance anyway, and we think that decision says as much about them as about us.

We ran it through to mid-2021 across dozens of submissions. Their feedback was specific and direct, which we valued , when a profile did not match on a particular framework, they told us precisely why, and we went back for the detail rather than arguing the point.

Partway through, the company rebranded and became part of a larger listed group. Email domains changed mid-engagement. The work carried on.

A DETAIL FROM THAT YEAR

In April 2021 one of our candidates tested positive for Covid the weekend before an interview. We cancelled it ourselves and explained why, rather than letting him miss it unexplained. A small thing. It is also the difference between a candidate who stays in a process and one who quietly falls out of it.

THE POSTSCRIPT

In mid-2022, a year after the work ended, a candidate we had spoken to during the pandemic wrote asking for help finding a role. We had nothing in gaming for him, so we introduced him to our former client contact and passed on his details.

No fee. No arrangement. Just the obvious thing to do when you know a good candidate and a good employer and they do not know each other.

"The client who trusts you with a second discipline is the only real review you ever get."