Candidate ownership (introduction period)
Candidate ownership is an agency's right to a fee if a client hires a candidate it introduced within a set period after the introduction, often 6 to 12 months in UK terms. It covers a hire into a different role, a later hire, or one made through another agency.
The clause exists because introductions have a long tail. A client might reject a candidate for one role in March and hire them for another in August, or wait until a contingent brief has gone quiet and approach the candidate directly. Terms of business usually say that any engagement of an introduced candidate within the period, in any role and on any basis, triggers the fee.
Ownership only works if the introduction can be proved. That means a dated record of what was sent, to whom, for which role, and evidence that the candidate agreed to be put forward. A CV mentioned on a phone call is hard to claim on. Where two agencies introduce the same person, clients and courts tend to look past who sent the email first and ask which agency was the effective cause of the hire.
A worked example. An agency submits a candidate for a senior analyst role on 3 February. The client hires someone else. On 20 July the client hires the same candidate as a team lead at £62,000, having found their CV on a job board. The agency's terms carry a 12-month introduction period at 20 per cent. With the February submission on record, the agency invoices £12,400 plus VAT. Without it, the client has little reason to pay.
Ownership has limits worth respecting. A candidate can apply to a client directly, and if the client can show it already had the candidate's details before the agency's introduction, the fee claim is weak. Terms usually ask the client to say within a few days if it already knows a candidate, which is why a prompt acknowledgement from the client when a CV arrives is worth more than it looks.
Inside an agency, ownership causes a different argument: two consultants who both claim a candidate. Clear rules about who owns the relationship, and a system that shows who introduced whom and when, settle most of these before they start.
How Vayora handles it
Every submission is stored with its date, client, role and the consultant who sent it, and appears on the candidate, client and contact timelines. Vayora will not submit the same person to the same role twice, or to the same client while an earlier submission is still live, and it checks every record sharing the candidate's email, phone or LinkedIn so a duplicate profile cannot slip through. A spec approach to a company warns if that candidate was pitched there in the last 90 days. Vayora does not calculate an introduction period or alert you when a past candidate joins a client; the dated record is the evidence you claim from.
ShortlistsThe longer answer: Why does a recruitment database fill up with duplicate candidates?