Recruitment agency client onboarding checklist: from signed terms to first submittal

Onboarding a new client means settling five things before the first submittal: commercial terms signed (fee, guarantee, payment terms and how long a candidate introduction counts); compliance checked (licensing where your state requires it, insurance the client asks for, how candidate data will be shared); the client set up in your ATS with every contact's role; a written working agreement on feedback deadlines and decision makers; and a review at 30 days. The checklist below lists each item with an owner and a deadline, so nothing waits until a fee dispute or a silent hiring manager exposes it.

This is the once-per-client setup. Defining a specific role is a different conversation; for that, use the client intake call agenda and a job order form.

What has to be agreed before you work the first job?

The commercial terms. Agencies that start sourcing on a verbal "go ahead" find out what was actually agreed when the first invoice is queried. Get these in writing, signed, before a candidate's name goes to the client:

• Fee basis. Contingent percentage and what it is a percentage of (base salary only, or base plus guaranteed bonus); retained installments and milestones; contract markup or bill rate. Template: contingency recruiting agreement.
• What counts as an introduction, and for how long. The period during which a hire of a candidate you introduced earns your fee, including hires into a different role or through another route. Most fee disputes are about this clause; see candidate ownership disputes.
• Guarantee. Replacement or refund, for how long, and the conditions (paid on time, candidate not dismissed for redundancy).
• Payment terms. Days to pay, who receives invoices, whether a purchase order number is required on each one.
• Duplicate submissions. If two agencies send the same person, which counts: first submitted, or first with the candidate's documented permission? A right-to-represent confirmation from each candidate settles most of these.
• Off-limits and non-solicitation. Which of the client's employees you will not approach, and for how long. Keep the terms short and specific.
• Exclusivity, if any, and for how long before the client may brief other agencies.

This is practical guidance, not legal advice; have your standard terms reviewed by a lawyer in your state.

What compliance checks come before the first candidate?

• Licensing. Some states require a license or registration for employment agencies, and the rules differ for permanent placement and temporary staffing. Check before you work a role in a new state: employment agency license requirements.
• Insurance. Many clients ask for certificates of insurance at onboarding, especially for contract staffing. Know what you carry before they ask.
• Candidate data. Agree who at the client receives resumes and submittals, through which channel (your ATS's portal or a named work email, not a manager's personal address), and what the client does with candidates it does not hire. Get each candidate's agreement before you send their details to this client. If you recruit in or from Europe, the GDPR checklist for recruiters covers the extra steps.
• Background checks. Decide who orders them, who pays, and who handles an adverse result with the candidate.
• Recording. If you record or transcribe intake calls or candidate interviews, agree how you tell the client's people and the candidates.
• Fair selection. Agree in writing that requirements are job-related. If a client asks you to screen on age, family plans or another protected characteristic, the time to refuse is at onboarding, not mid-search.

How should you set up a new client in your ATS?

1. Company record with the signed terms attached and the key dates entered: fee, guarantee period, ownership period, payment terms. Whoever invoices or handles a guarantee claim in a year should find them in one place.
2. A contact for every person who matters, with their role in the process noted: hiring manager, HR or talent partner, approver for offers, interviewers, invoicing contact. The approver who never appears on calls is the one who stalls offers.
3. The first job order, linked to the company and contacts, with the intake notes attached.
4. Note conventions. Agree how client meetings and feedback are logged. In Bullhorn, for example, the knowledge base says, as of October 2026, that Standard Reports need a "Client Visit" note action; our guide to Bullhorn interview notes suggests a Client Feedback action logged on the hiring manager's contact record.
5. The submittal format. Agree what the client wants to read for each candidate and save it as a template; start from our candidate submittal template. If your submittals are drafted by a tool, load the format there too; Interview Signal, for instance, writes the client submittal in the agency's own template from the interview transcript.
6. Off-limits flags on the client's employees in your database, so no one on your team approaches them by mistake.

What should the working agreement cover?

Agree these on the first intake call, then send them as a one-page email the same day and ask the client to reply to confirm. The figures in the right-hand column are examples to adapt, not industry standards.

The feedback deadlines carry the most weight. A client who does not give feedback loses candidates to faster employers, and your written agreement is what lets you raise it without sounding like a complaint. When it slips, the follow-ups in client feedback request emails do the rest.

What happens in the first 30 days?

• Day 1: working agreement email sent; 30-day review booked in both calendars.
• Week 1: first shortlist presented, ideally by phone before the written submittals.
• Week 2: check the first feedback times against the agreement. Raise a miss now, gently, while it is still one miss.
• Day 30 review: submittals sent, interviews booked, feedback times met or missed, anything the client wants changed in the submittal format, and whether the role brief still matches what the client is accepting. Write the outcome into the company record.

Track the same numbers for every client so a struggling account stands out: submittal-to-interview ratio and feedback time are the two that show earliest whether an account is working. Count both from the first submittal.

The full checklist

Which onboarding mistakes lose agencies the client?

• Sending candidates on verbal terms. The first placement becomes a negotiation about the fee instead of a celebration.
• Meeting only the hiring manager. The approver or HR partner you never met vetoes the offer, or a second hiring manager briefs a different agency.
• No written feedback deadline. You cannot hold a client to a deadline nobody wrote down.
• A submittal format the client did not ask for. Ask what they want to read; do not guess.
• No review date. Problems found at day 30 are fixable; problems found at month six are usually why the client left.