Placement fee agreements for recruiters, built from the messages where you agreed them.
Independent recruiters and small agencies often agree fees with a hiring manager in a quick email exchange or a WhatsApp thread: "20% of first-year salary, usual rebate, fine." That works until a candidate leaves in week six, or a client says the introduction came from somewhere else. OfClause helps you turn what was actually said into a written record of your terms of business that the client can sign.
How recruitment terms usually get agreed
Many placement deals start informally. A client contacts you about a role, you send your standard terms as an attachment, they reply asking for a lower fee or a longer rebate period, and the final position is settled in a reply three emails later. On roles that move fast, the conversation may jump to WhatsApp or a phone call before anything is signed.
The result is that the version of your terms the client actually accepted may not match the PDF you first sent. If a dispute comes up, you need the negotiated position, not the starting one.
Terms that often go missing in recruitment deals
When OfClause reviews a recruitment conversation, these are the kinds of points worth checking were genuinely agreed rather than assumed:
- The fee basis — a percentage of salary, a fixed fee, or a retained fee paid in stages — and what salary figure the percentage applies to.
- When the fee becomes payable: on offer, on acceptance or on start date.
- Rebate or replacement terms if the candidate leaves early, and how long that period lasts.
- Ownership of an introduction: how long a candidate counts as introduced by you if the client hires them later.
- Whether the agreement is exclusive for the role, and when either side can withdraw.
How OfClause handles a recruitment conversation
Copy the email thread or WhatsApp messages where the fee and conditions were discussed and paste them into OfClause. There is no email or WhatsApp integration; it works from the text you provide.
OfClause lists each term it finds with its status — proposed, accepted, rejected, replaced or unclear — and links it to the message it came from. If the client asked for a 12-week rebate and you replied "we can do 8" with no answer, that term shows as unclear rather than agreed.
If the thread says "as per our attached terms", OfClause cannot read the attachment and blocks the draft until you deal with that term, so a record never silently relies on a document it has not seen.
Once you confirm the terms, OfClause produces a plain agreement record from those confirmed terms only, which you can send to the client to sign through a guest link without them creating an account.
Where OfClause is not the right tool
OfClause is for business-to-business terms between you and your client. It is not designed for employment contracts between the client and the candidate, or for contracts with temporary workers you supply. Those involve employment and agency-worker rules where you should use specialist documents and take advice.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I use OfClause for my standard terms of business?
- OfClause builds a record from the terms agreed in a specific conversation. If the client accepted your standard terms as an attachment, paste the relevant wording in so it can be reviewed, because attachments are not read.
- Does the client need an OfClause account to sign?
- No. You can send the agreement through a guest link and they sign in their browser.
- Can OfClause draft employment contracts for candidates?
- No. OfClause does not cover employment contracts. Use specialist documents and take advice for those.
Ready to try it?
OfClause is in private beta. Request early access or walk through the guided demo.