At some point most recruiters become aware of and contemplate the concept of splits. A split in recruiting means one party either provides the requirement (job opening) and the other provides the candidate. Some recruiters advertise or contact other recruiters to let them know of an open job that they would be willing to accept candidates for. Other recruiters focus not on getting new job orders but just trying to locate candidates for other recruiter's jobs. If the planets align and the candidate is placed, the recruiter splits the fee (50%) with the recruiter who provided the candidate or the job opening.
You could consider splits in recruiting to be similar to that of a buyer’s agent or seller’s agent in real estate. Some agents are driven by obtaining new home listings, some focus on filling other agents listings, and many actually do both. It is not an apples and apples comparison between the two professions but you get the gist. The big difference between the two is that unlike obtaining new listings in real estate, finding job orders is very easy with some effort and skill.
At one point I got caught up in the splits mentality, not because I was convinced it would be a worthy endeavor, but because I am willing to try anything. If you don't try new things, you never know what it can lead to. My experience, which went on for a while, was mostly from the split scenario where I provided the reqs and other recruiters provided candidates. In the end, it was a good experiment and a complete waste of time.
The major problems with splits:
1. Time is money in recruiting. Time is precious and not abundant. Think about how fast a day goes by. I found that dealing with other people's candidates, candidates that rarely met my criteria of exceptional and placeable, was a waste. You're getting calls and emails regarding the candidates from recruiters, trying to fix resumes that were almost always broken, having to try and get answers to questions such as compensation, relocation willingness, skills, and many other items. Basically, dealing with other recruiter's candidates was a major time sink. Having a candidate supplier isn't the same as another business who get's their product, let's say steel, in order to market and sell to others. There are far too many variables with humans.
2. Getting quality requirements to work on is easy. In a course of a week with cold calls or client calls I can easily get 10-20 new jobs to work on using a contingency model. Many split focused recruiters hate this part of the job because it involves being a salesperson. It's about getting out of your comfort zone, researching who to call, and then making calls to people you do not know. I love that part of the job because I have a well rehearsed phone call conversation that works like magic. I can't think of one instance of being hung up on or someone being rude. Recruiters and salespeople hate rejection so they make plans to avoid it by using schemes like splits.
3. Another reason recruiters resort to splits is because they can't find candidates hiring managers deem as highly desirable on their own. Most recruiters have no idea how to locate, contact, and recruit candidates who are not in the job market. These are called passive candidates and hiring managers eat them up. Can you find a valuable candidate occasionally who is on the job market replying to job postings or posting their resume? Occasionally, but there is a whole set of issues and problems with these candidates often not associated with someone sitting at work at a high quality company and in a job they have been at for many years. That may be a little difficult to understand, but if you have been a headhunter for any length of time you get it.
If you want to make a serious go at headhunting, earn big money, and get the respect of your customers, you should leave splits to the other guy. The reason is you can get quality reqs to work on and quality candidates to place on your own. Thousands of recruiters will attest to this fact and are doing it. The deal is there is no easy route in sales and recruiting. You need to work hard, smart, and keep learning. I can locate any hiring manager, in any department, at any company, anytime with effective research. I can also identify any employee with any skill or experience at any company I have identified as relevant with creative sourcing techniques.
Instead of wasting all of that time with other recruiter's and their reqs and candidates, spend that time doing actual recruiting. It's not that difficult. It only becomes difficult when half your day is blown with other recruiters. The best part is that you keep all of the earnings for your hard work, versus giving half of it away. But you will take 1/2? It's better than nothing. Like I said early on, I found it far more time consuming engaging in splits than just doing it all myself, and the odds of you actually having a successful split deal is somewhere between slim to none.
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