Oh the wonderful land of agreements between clients and recruiters...I am not sure the yellow brick road is paved in gold on this journey. To respect the identity of those involved no names will be used, but this story I am sure is more common then we recruiters like. The “fingers crossed behind the back” handshake on exclusive recruitment contracts – oh joy of joy!

Picture this...you have just spoken with a corporate client who assures you they are giving you exclusive access to a number of their openings. That’s right, you and you alone get to recruit to these positions. Perfect, time to rock and roll. You reach out to your networks and 3^rd party recruiters, rev your engine and the rubber starts hitting the road. Yes! You keep going about your business, new clients here, new placements there. Word on the street about a week later, the exclusive positions that you have a 3^rd party recruiter working on, well they have contacts they can bounce these positions off to and get them mass marketed in the specific professional field that is being targeted. Sweet! Even better, you get notice that the word has gone out across the community and interest in all ready rolling in – ride the wave baby!

Then you hit the wall.

Your 3^rd party recruiter gets a call from head office of the corporate client you have the agreement with... the message goes something like, “Don’t know who you are, or if your postings are ours, but who heck authorized this?” *Shock* Here comes the best part, looks like their local HR department decided they should look at positing the same positions, but your 3^rd party recruiter beat them to the punch due to their connections/networks. So HR isn’t looking so good, and well they aren’t happy about it. And it gets better! Through the private yet not so private grapevine, word reaches you that this “exclusive” agreement to recruit to these positions, yes well it’s exclusive across endless recruiters and agencies – even international. SMACK! Ouch, that hurt.

So here’s my question, now what?