A construction recruiting agreement is read carefully exactly once: when something has gone wrong. The clauses that decide the outcome are the fee base, the guarantee conditions, candidate ownership, and what happens when the search stalls. None of them are the headline percentage.
The construction recruiting agreement arrives as a two-page PDF with a percentage in the third line, and it gets signed because the percentage is the thing you were comparing. Nobody reads clause 7.
Clause 7 is where it says the guarantee is void if the role is materially changed after placement, which sounds reasonable until your project executive’s scope shifts eight weeks in because you won a job, and the replacement you now need is not covered.
What should a construction recruiting agreement define about the fee?
The base, precisely, and the trigger. A percentage means nothing until the agreement says what it is a percentage of and when it becomes payable. Selah Talent Partners charges on first-year cash compensation: base salary, plus any contractual or target bonus stated in the offer letter, plus any signing bonus.
Read that definition against whatever you have been sent, because the variations are where the disputes live.
- What is included. Discretionary bonus, commission, equity, vehicle allowance and benefits are excluded from Selah’s base. An agreement that includes “total compensation” without defining it can produce an invoice materially above what you expected.
- When it is payable. On the candidate’s start date, on offer acceptance, or on some earlier trigger. Payable-on-acceptance means you can owe a fee for someone who never starts.
- What happens on a salary change. If the candidate negotiates up between shortlist and offer, is the fee recalculated. It should be, in both directions.
The rate itself is the easy part, and it should be stated plainly. Selah’s Contingency Search is 20 percent of first-year cash compensation, payable on placement. The Anchor Partner model, for contractors hiring three or more times a year, is a US$3,000 monthly retainer plus 10 percent per placement, on a twelve-month term with thirty days’ notice available once month three has passed. Both are published, which is itself a term worth insisting on: a firm that will not put its rate in writing before the search has told you something.
Then read the clause that decides what happens when the hire does not last, because that is the one you will actually rely on.
What should the guarantee clause actually say?
It should state the window, the remedy, and every condition that voids it. Selah’s guarantee is 120 days, replacement only rather than a refund or credit. The conditions matter more than the number, and there are three of them.
In full: the guarantee is void if the role is filled from any other source; if the candidate is made redundant, the role is restructured, or the candidate is terminated other than for cause; or if the role is materially changed after placement. Those conditions are not unusual and they are not hidden. What is unusual is a client who reads them before signing rather than after a departure, and the difference shows up in the questions they ask.
| Clause | What to check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Guarantee window | The day count and when it starts | A window running from offer, not start date, is shorter than it looks |
| Remedy | Replacement, credit, or refund | A credit is worthless if you do not intend to hire again |
| Void conditions | Restructure, material change, cause | A GMP win that changes scope can void cover |
| Payment condition | Whether cover requires the fee paid in full | Late payment can suspend the guarantee entirely |
The fourth row surprises people. Under Selah’s terms the guarantee is live only once the placement fee is paid in full, and late payment suspends cover, reviving from the date payment clears. That is a term worth knowing before the accounts department decides to run the invoice out to ninety days.
One more thing belongs in this section, because it is the term most agreements omit. Define how a replacement request is made and how long the firm has to deliver it. Selah’s terms give the client thirty days from the departure to request the replacement and give the firm ninety days to run the search, once. An agreement with no timetable on either side is an agreement where the replacement obligation quietly evaporates.
Who owns a candidate, and for how long?
Whoever introduced them first, for a defined period, with a written record. Without those three elements one candidate can generate competing fee claims: from the firm that sent the CV in March, the firm that sent it in September, and the candidate who applied directly between them.
This is the clause that produces the most acrimony and gets the least attention at signature. Three things fix it.
First, a stated introduction period, usually six to twelve months from the date the candidate was presented. After it lapses, the introduction no longer supports a claim.
Second, a source-of-first-contact rule with a written record. The firm presents the candidate by name in writing, you acknowledge receipt, and that timestamp settles any later dispute. Verbal introductions at a chapter event are not a record.
Third, an explicit carve-out for candidates already known to you. If someone in your own database applied last year, or works for a firm you have already approached directly, say so in writing within a short window of the presentation, or you have accepted the introduction by silence.
The carve-out matters more in construction than in most sectors, because a metro market is small and everyone has met everyone. In Texas and across the Southeast alike, the estimating community in any given city is a few dozen people. Your chief estimator worked with half the estimating leads in the metro. Some of them have applied to you before. A proper hiring brief written before the search starts often surfaces those names in advance, which is the cheapest way to avoid the argument entirely.
What should a construction recruiting agreement say about a stalled search?
It should say what happens at a date. Most agreements are silent on failure, which means a stalled search simply continues indefinitely with no obligation on either side and no trigger for a conversation. Put a review point in writing: a date, a deliverable, and what each party does if it is missed.
For a contingency arrangement this is straightforward, because you pay nothing until someone starts. The cost of a stalled search is time rather than money, and time is what you cannot recover. Ask for a stated shortlist timeframe. Selah’s operational baseline is a three-day average to shortlist, which is a baseline rather than a contractual commitment, but it is a number a firm should be willing to state and be measured against.
For a retained or partly retained arrangement it matters considerably more, because you are paying while nothing happens. Define what the retainer buys, what the deliverable is at each stage, and what happens to fees paid if the search is abandoned.
Two further terms are worth adding regardless of model.
Off-limits: which of your employees the firm agrees not to approach, and for how long. A recruiter who places a project manager into your firm and recruits two of your superintendents eighteen months later has done nothing your agreement forbade, unless it did.
Confidentiality: whether the firm can name you as a client, and whether the search itself can be disclosed. For confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, where the incumbent is still in the seat, this is not a courtesy clause. It is the whole engagement, and it should say so in terms specific enough to be enforceable.
None of these clauses is exotic and none takes long to negotiate. They take about forty minutes, once, before the search that goes wrong. If you would rather see what a plainly written version looks like before you compare it to anything, our terms are published rather than produced on request.
Sources and further reading
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Construction Managers 11-9021: BLS OEWS
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Cost Estimators 13-1051: BLS OEWS
- AGC of America and NCCER, 2025 Workforce Survey, national results: AGC survey PDF
- AGC of America, construction data and industry surveys: AGC data