Do Recruiters Get Commission?

One of the most commonly asked questions in the recruiting world is do recruiters get commission or do they get a flat fee.

It is the first question someone asks when deciding if they want to work as a recruiter. The answer will determine how much potential money a recruiter can make.

In some companies recruiters do get commission. In other companies recruiters do not get commission and are only paid a flat base salary. And in other companies, recruiters are only paid commission. Finally, there are recruiters who are paid a draw (a common financial structure for recruiters).

But it’s not enough to know that a recruiter can get commission, it’s important to know what sort of commission and also what sort of salary.

All of these are factors when deciding whether or not the recruiting job is for you.

Much of the minutia and specific details in this article is designed for people who either work in recruiting or who want to work in recruiting.

However, there is a also a benefit in knowing if your recruiter is receiving a commission when they work with you. It can help you decide if they are motivated to work with you, how they are compensated, and if they are really acting in your best interests when sending you to jobs.

The topic of recruiters and commissions is completed, but we are going to spend some time here breaking this down so that you can understand it and come out with a clear understanding of how the entire process works.

But first, before we get any further into the rest of the article, let’s briefly review the different ways in which recruiters can get compensated. Some of these involve commission, others do not.

The 4 Main Ways Recruiters Are Paid

• Base Salary no Commission
• Base Salary with Small Commission
• Commission Only
• Draw Against Commission

Now, let’s review some detailed questions as well as review some of the more detailed questions about recruiting, commission, and the different parameters that are involved in all of this.

Do Recruiters Get Commission If You Quit?

It depends on what sort of work situation you are in. If you’re working as a temporary working through a recruiting agency that handles temp assignments, then the recruiter will be paid if they are normally compensated.

Some recruiters only work on a flat pay structure, but if they do work on commission, and you have worked hours as a temporary employee, then yes they will be paid.

If you were working with a permanent placement recruiter, and you quit the job that they connected you with, then no they won’t be paid. This is why recruiters want to vet people before they connect them with full time work.

If you quit a job, it’s not just a fact of the recruiter not being paid their commission, you’re also putting the company in a bad spot with the client.

People who quit jobs that recruiters find for them, unless it’s 12 months or more since the placement, risk making themselves a Do Not Call.

People who are listed as do not call, or do not contact, will never find work again with that recruiter. And in most cases, the fire itself will not use the person. In some extreme cases, you might find that you’ve been listed as a troublesome candidate in multiple recruiting databases.

This is only an issue for people who quite full time placements within a short time of starting them and who do not let the recruiter know before hand.

So, if you are planning on quitting a job that a recruiter has found for you, it is in your best interest to let them know. If you are planning on quitting a job then you should give two weeks notice and also contact your recruiter.

By keeping your recruiter informed of your plan, you are doing two things. First, you are letting them know your intentions. This allows the recruiter to know that you’re not a irresponsible person who can’t be trusted. Also, it gives the recruiter time to look for a replacement candidate and also to inform the company that they will be finding a replacement.

So, to review:

• Recruiters Make Commission if you are working as a Temp Worker Through The Staffing Agency
• Recruiters Make Commission if they have placed you a permanent employee through a headhunting process.
• Recruiters do not make commission if they work in-house.
• Only agency recruiters make commission, but not all agencies pay recruiters. Many staffing agencies outsource their recruiting work overseas to place like India or the Philippines. They pay these employees an hourly rate (anywhere from 1-4 dollars per hour  or they pay them a flat fee per x number of resumes).

Do Internal Recruiters Get Commission?

Not all recruiters get commission. There are some recruiters who only work on a base salary and others who are paid hourly.

This is common in situations where the recruiters are a hired by large companies to do internal recruiting.

Companies that have internal recruiters do not pay them a commission. They are salaried and on staff. The large companies all have internal recruiting divisions that work on openings that the company has.

An internal recruiter who works for a particular company is either paid a flat salary or an hourly wage. They might have a bonus contingent written into their hiring papers, but they will not be on commission.

Here’s an example:

A recruiter who is working in an consultant agency that handles executive recruitment in the tech space  This recruiter might be paid a flat salary of 60k. They then might make a commission that can put them over 100k. However, that is dependent upon the amount of work they perform.

That same person might interview and find a job within the tech space at a firm located in NYC or San Francisco; Silicon alley or silicon valley. They would do a very similar thing, except they would only be recruiting for that single firm. Perhaps it would be developers for a search engine, or perhaps marketing and Ad Ops for a Social Media platform. They might have a flat salary of $150k with no commission.

As a rule, internal recruiters are only paid an hourly rate or a yearly rate. There is almost never a case where a recruiter is paid a salary and commission if they are working as an internal recruiter.

Part of the reason is that the job of an internal recruiter is much easier than the job of an agency recruiter.

Agency recruiters work on the most difficult roles. The companies that use recruiting agencies are doing so because they find it too difficult to find people themselves. If the internal recruiters could successfully find candidates for the openings they had, there would be no use for external recruiting agencies.

I’ll cover internal recruiting elsewhere, and devore more space to it, but as a rule that is the commission program and compensation structure.

The salary for an internal recruiter will vary widely. For instance, a look online right now and you’ll see the following job postings:

• Campus Recruiter for a Financial Firm (NYC)- $80k yearly
• Hospital Recruiter-Non-Nursing (Brooklyn) – $75k yearly
• Fashion Designer Recruiter – (Manhattan) – $95k yearly
• Labor Recruiter (Las Vegas) – $20hr
• Diversity Recruiter (Manhattan) – $130k yearly
• University Medical Recruiter (Las Vegas) – $79k yearly
• Non-Profit Recruiter (Chicago) – $20hr
• Retail Recruiter (San Diego) – $19hr

As you can see, the salary and compensation range varies greatly depending on what sort of role you find. Another thing to be mindful of is that not all internal recruiters will be able to get the same salary as advertised. Many companies advertise a particular salary but don’t end paying their employees the advertised rate. This is an issue with smaller companies and especially if you’re working with a staffing firm that operates in the temporary staffing field, not normally a problem with major fortune 500 companies.

Do Company Recruiters Get Commission?

The term company recruiters is not very specific. If what you are asking about is internal recruiters who work in a company, then we’ve already discussed this.

For instance, a recruiter who works at one of the big FANG tech firms is going to work off of a base pay with some bonus written into their hiring terms.

However, sometimes people use the term company recruiter a bit more loosely and instead are referring to someone who is working as an agency recruiter. In that case, the recruiter will almost always get some sort of commission. However, this can vary greatly depending on the type of agency.

Most temporary placement staffing agencies have recruiters working for commission. This commission ranges from 5% to 30%.

Recruiters who work for executive search firms have higher commission structures: between 30-50%.

These numbers are not hard and fast, but they are a good gauge of what is out there. You can also use sites such as Glassdoor to review what actual former employees have to say about the pay range.

If you are working in certain industries, such as social services, a company recruiter is only going to be paid a flat rate.

For instance, many people who work as in-house recruiters for non-profits that staff case managers, CSACSs, direct care workers, and even per diem nurses , are all paid a flat hourly rate. In certain cities such as NYC and Chicago where there are hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year for social services the hourly rate might be $20-$25. In cities where there is not as much need for homeless shelter staff or welfare case managers, the rates might be less.

Temp vs Permanent Placement Recruiters: Difference in Commission

There is a significant difference in how recruiters are paid for temporary placements and for permanent placements.

Let’s take a look at how the two different commission structures work and use examples to illustrate the point.

Also, for any people looking to work as a recruiter, the recruiting agency that you work with will determine what sort of roles you work on.

Some recruiting agencies handle both permanent roles and temporary positions, but most recruiters will focus on one type and most agencies only specialize in a single type of role: either a temporary role or a permanent role.

Temporary Roles and Responsibilities and Commissions

The roles themselves tend to be different in nature. Temporary roles include all roles in the Medical Field. These might range from travel nursing to Oncology and NICU nurses. All medical staffing, for the most part, is either temporary or temporary to permanent.

In addition, many government funded programs including all social welfare programs and non-profit roles: case managers, case planners, social workers, and all welfare program officials will be hired through temporary agencies. These roles become permanent after the applicant proves that they are a responsible person and can pass numerous background checks and repeated drug testing. All of this legwork is one of the main reasons companies use recruiters to find staff.

There are also many low skilled roles including manual labor or temporary administrative work that recruiters will work on.

The recruiters will receive a percentage of the profit for each hour the person works, or in some cases a percentage of their weekly check. This depends on how the recruiting and staffing department is setup.

Here are two examples. One is going to be a travel nurse, the other will be a temporary office worker.

Shante is a Travel Nurse with 2 years experience. She signs up with a nurse recruiting agency and tells her recruiter that she is looking to leave her hospital job and make money as a nurse Traveler. Shante is a full time union nurse at a city hospital. She makes 115k a year and works 3 nights per week. She responds to the travel recruiter because she is excited about the higher pay for a travel nurse. The travel firm will sign up Shante with a Travel contract where she is pay $140 dollars an hour and also paid a tax free stipend.

Shante is able to take a leave of absence from her union job to travel for 13 weeks. She will make almost 3 times as much money working as a travel nurse.

The recruiter who works with Shante will receive a percentage of the profit. Here’s how that works.

The hospital that is hiring travel nurses is paying staffing agencies to find, credential, insure, and coordinate housing and travel for the nurse and their family. The travel nurse agency is paid a flat hourly rate. In the case of Shante it would be anywhere from $200-$210 an hour.

The agency that the recruiter works for takes the lion share of the profit. The 60 per hour is not all profit. There are expenses such as burden, labor costs, insurance, and other issues.

Most nurse staffing firms have an agreement where a recruiter makes 2-6% of the profit, with the agency making 94-98%.

So, in this instance, the nurse recruiter will make around $3.50 per hour on Shante’s schedule. This can improve if the hospital improves the cost they will pay per hour.

• So, on a 40hr week, the recruiter makes: $140
• The staffing agency makes:  $2,260
• And the nurse makes:  $5,600

The same basic math applies with all other temporary roles. Let’s take a look at Kelly, who works as an administrative assistant.

Her recruiter has a client that needs a receptionist. Rose starts working. She is paid $15 dollars an hour and the company pays the staffing agency $27 an hour.

• On a 40hr week, the recruiter makes: $24
• The staffing agency makes: $456
• And Kelly makes: $600

As you can see, nursing is extremely lucrative and this is one of the reasons why investment firms are involved in buying up staffing firms, particularly nursing agencies. The sky high rates for nurses are only going to rise as the population in need of support grows. Nursing is such a lucrative investment that private equity firms are even buying nursing homes.

Do Recruiters Get a Lot of Commission aka a lot of Money!

Whether or not recruiters get a lot of commission depends on a few things.

• Is the recruiter working at an agency or in-house?

As we’ve already discussed, in house recruiters don’t make commission.

• How many openings does the agency have?

The best recruiter can’t make placements if the staffing agency does not openings. Likewise, an average recruiter can make a ton of placements if the staffing agency has a contract for easy to fill.

• How Easy Are the Positions To Fill?

Are the job openings that the recruiter will work on something simple such as administrate, or data entry? Or are the roles medical positions such as Nursing? Nursing staffing pays more, but nurses are well known the be the most difficult roles to work on. Administrative roles do not pay as much, but the people seeking administrative work tend to be easier to deal with.

An entry level recrutier at a modest firm might come in at 35k base plus comission. That commision might range from a few hundned a year to several thousand.

A more sophisticated recrutier, particulary one that works with high volume or nursing, mighht clear 5 figures in comission.

And executrive search recrutiers can easily make 100k if they are working on hard to fill coroprate C-level roles.

Agency recrutiers can make great money, into the 6 figures, if they find the right firm with the right clients. However, working as a recrutier is not easy and recruiting agencyes are struglging to find quality recrutiers in recent years accoridng to reports from places like the Wall Street Journal.