Recruiters have been urged to ensure they are transparent as possible with clients on their terms and conditions by John Miller, director at Recruitment Enforcement.

Miller works with employers and recruiters as an intermediary aiming to recoup introductory fees on behalf of agencies, as well as providing an audit on contractors to see if they have been re-engaged with clients after placement by an agency.

He told Recruiter agencies should send their terms with every CV or have an email autosignature that links to terms of business and have these terms on their website so there is a link to their signature.

This, Miller said, would help ensure any potential client could go to their website and view terms of conditions so they could not argue they had not seen an agency’s terms of business.

Miller said he works on the assumption that the recruiter has tried to settle the case themselves, providing a ’no-win, no-fee’ service, which in some cases recoups all of the fee or part of it, as well as additional business for the recruiter involved.

But he warned that the agency must have a restrictions clause within their terms of business to ensure that a case is enforceable.

“There have only ever been one or two I have ever worked with where I have had to say ’you don’t have a clause here you will have to revamp your terms’,” he explained. “If they request further information such as references or skillset and experience, then at that point I believe an introduction has taken place.”

He added: “You should not send a candidate to a client with the name of the candidate unless that is an agreement between you and the client. If you do that, you run the risk of the client receiving the CV, looking at it and trying to do a search themselves to save themselves £5k, for instance. A good HR or line manager would put two and two together and headhunt the guy.”