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Strategy
Published: April 2026 · 7 min read
Every recruiter has them. Candidates sitting on your desk, fully screened, interview ready, genuinely good. But there is no matching role. Maybe the client hired internally. Maybe the brief went cold. Maybe you specialise in a sector where timing is everything, and the timing just was not there. Whatever the reason, those candidates are earning you nothing. And most recruiters leave it at that.
An unused candidate is anyone on your database who you have already sourced, screened, or spoken to, but who you cannot currently place. They might be second or third choice candidates from a recent shortlist. They might be strong professionals in a niche you cover who just do not have a live role to go at right now. They might be people who came to you speculatively and you had nothing suitable. The point is: you have done the hard work. You know they are good. But they are generating zero revenue because you do not have the right vacancy.
The recruitment industry runs on a simple model: win the role, find the candidate, make the placement. When you have the candidate but not the role, the default behaviour is to do nothing. You might log them on your CRM and set a reminder to check back in three months. You might send them a speculative CV to a few clients and hope something sticks. But most of the time, nothing happens. The candidate moves on, takes another role, and you never bill from them.
This is not laziness. It is a structural gap. Individual recruiters and small agencies simply do not have visibility of every live role in the market. You know your clients and your patch. But there are thousands of roles being worked right now, by other recruiters, that your candidate would be perfect for. You just cannot see them.
Split fee recruitment is the mechanism that turns this dead inventory into revenue. Here is how it works: you share your candidate with another recruiter who has a live, matching role. They present your candidate to their client. If the candidate gets placed, you split the fee. You earn from a candidate you were otherwise earning nothing from. The other recruiter fills a role they were struggling to fill. The client gets a better candidate, faster.
This is not a new concept, but historically it has been difficult to execute. Finding the right recruiter, negotiating terms, protecting the deal. Platforms like RecXchange remove these barriers by matching your candidates to live roles automatically, generating split agreements before any data is shared, and handling the commercial side so you can focus on what you do best.
The process is more straightforward than most recruiters expect:
The numbers depend on the role, the fee percentage, and the split arrangement. But to give you a realistic picture: the average split fee placement generates around $7,000 per side on a 50/50 split. On a 70/30 arrangement where you hold the candidate, your share is higher. Even on a 50/50 basis, two split placements per quarter adds $56,000 to your annual billings. From candidates you were earning nothing from. That is not a rounding error. For independent recruiters and smaller agencies, it can be the difference between a flat year and a strong one.
This is the concern that stops most recruiters from trying split placements, and it is a valid one. Your candidates trust you. They gave you their details in confidence. You do not want them being blasted across the market by someone you have never met.
The right platform handles this properly. On RecXchange, candidate details are not shared until a split agreement is in place. Before that point, the role holder sees only an anonymised profile: sector, level, location, key skills. No name, no CV, no contact information. You retain full control over your candidate throughout the process, and you can withdraw them at any point. Your relationship with the candidate stays exactly where it should: with you.
Tom Andrews
CEO and Co-Founder, RecXchange
Tom has spent over 14 years in specialist recruitment across building materials, industrial engineering, M&E, and mental health sectors. He co-founded RecXchange to give independent and specialist recruiters a better way to collaborate, split fees, and make more placements without the politics of traditional agency networks.
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