You do not need one. An agency year teaches the agency's terms; the craft you already have. Contingency work adds four things to in-house recruiting: fee terms, qualifying a job order, running several searches at once and living with a guarantee. A $120,000 placement runs through all four below. The fifth thing, clients, is the one you can rent.

Becoming a freelance recruiter without an agency on your resume

A freelance recruiter, as the question means it, works on contingency: you find the hire, and the company pays you a percent of first-year base once the person starts. Pin's freelance recruiter guide says a standard contingency fee runs 15 to 25% of the hire's first-year salary, and that recruiting experience is not strictly required, though two to five years of in-house or agency work shortens the ramp. Note the "or". The guide is more generous than the forums.

What in-house does not teach is the commercial half of the trade, and the four things above are the whole of it. The rest of what an agency would have given you is a desk, a phone and a client list that belongs to the agency.

One exception. New York licenses employment agencies, and per FoxHire's 2026 guide the license asks for two years of verifiable placement experience at a licensed agency, or a manager who has it. New York City's checklist exempts some employer-paid agencies that place professionals, so if you will place in New York, read both first and ask a lawyer whether the license applies to you.

An agency year teaches the agency's terms, not the craft

The standard advice on recruiter forums is to spend a year or two on an agency desk before going alone. The reasoning is fair: contingency is a different trade from in-house, agencies teach it, and you leave with a book of business. The careful guides soften it to a few years of any recruiting, as Pin's does, but the instinct is the same. Learn the trade somewhere with a safety net.

I think the year teaches less than it costs. What you learn on an agency desk is that agency's fee schedule, its guarantee, its job order sheet, its split with you and its call quota. Those are the agency's terms, and every agency's differ; the craft underneath, finding people, screening them and closing them, you already have. And the book you build there is the agency's book, which its employment agreement usually says in writing.

The mechanism that makes the year skippable: all four contingency skills are written down. A fee clause tells you what a fee is. A guarantee clause tells you what a fall-off costs. A job order form is the list of questions you should have asked. A contract is a syllabus, and the good ones are public. Read two end to end and you have the year's theory; the practice comes from the first search, as it would have anyway.

The four things contingency work adds to in-house recruiting

Take a $120,000 base and a 20% fee, and run them through each of the four.

Fee terms

A contingency fee is a percent of the hire's first-year base, owed when the person starts and invoiced once. On $120,000 at 20% that is $24,000. At 25% it is $30,000 and at 15% it is $18,000, which is why the percent is worth settling before anyone is sourced. With your own client you invoice the $24,000 yourself, on your own terms, and you collect it.

All four are written into any published agreement, and I will quote Chosen's because it is the one I helped write. Chosen keeps 20% of the placement fee and the placing recruiter keeps 80%, on every role. So the $24,000 fee is $19,200 to you, collected by the platform and paid in four installments once the company's money clears. Every candidate of yours who reaches the final interview stage earns $200, hired or not, and it is never repayable.

Qualifying a job order

In-house, every role that reached you was already approved, budgeted and owned by someone you could walk over to. A job order from a stranger is none of those until you check. Before you source a single person, confirm five things.

  • The role is approved and budgeted, and you know by whom.
  • The base band, in writing.
  • Who signs the offer, and how many rounds sit between a submittal and a decision.
  • How many other recruiters are on it.
  • Why it is open, and what happened to the last candidates they saw.

A job order that fails two of these is a wish, and wishes do not pay fees. The $120,000 role in the example passes all five, which is the only reason it is in the example. Some marketplaces answer most of the five on the role card before you apply; the ones that hide the company's name have failed the first question for you.

Three searches at once

In-house you carried a req load with a team around you, and someone covered the interviews you could not make. Independent, the load is the same and the team is you. The reason to run several searches is arithmetic rather than ambition: a single search that stalls, and many do, leaves you with nothing to bill. Three searches at 10 hours each is a 30-hour week and a real chance that one fills.

In the example, three run at once. One fills, one stalls when the hiring manager stops answering, and one produces a finalist who is not hired. Direct, the two that did not fill paid $0; on the marketplace the finalist paid the $200 above.

The guarantee

Nearly every contingency agreement carries a replacement guarantee: if the hire leaves inside a set period, you replace them or give money back. In-house, a bad hire was a problem for the team. Independent, it is a refund, and the refund arrives after you have spent the fee. Read the clause before the search, and read three things in it: the period, the remedy and the exclusions.

If the hire leaves in week six under a whole-fee refund clause, the $24,000 goes back and eight weeks were free. The proportional clause in the agreement quoted above has you repay what was refunded and no more, and nothing when the company cut the role, ran a layoff or ended the employment for reasons unrelated to the candidate. The period it runs for is the company's guarantee, which is not published, so confirm the current terms with a founder before you sign.

Where the clients come from when you have none

Four routes, in the order I would try them.

Your network first. In-house recruiters have a book they never count: every hiring manager they closed a role for, a good share of whom have since moved companies. Pin's guide says the first three to five clients usually come from your existing network. Write to the twenty managers you liked working with. Some have a role open, and the ones with budget will tell you what they paid the last agency.

Cold outreach second, and it is slow. Cold email to hiring managers and two or three LinkedIn posts a week is the standard playbook, per the same guide, and the honest timeline is months, because a company with a role open today already has an agency on it. Split networks third: another recruiter has the client, you have the candidate, and the fee is divided. It halves the money.

Marketplaces fourth, where the client step is an application. The platform holds the client agreements, you apply to roles, and the fee is on the card before you start. The cost is the platform's cut and the other recruiters you share the role with. The benefit is that month one has roles in it. Run the first and fourth from day one, and save the second for year two, when you have a placement to point at.

What the application actually asks for

What a marketplace application checks is craft: roles you have filled, the functions and levels you know, the company stages you have hired for, and a LinkedIn profile that shows the work. An agency on the resume is one kind of evidence for that, and years of in-house placements are another. Write your history as placements, with the function, the level and the stage, rather than as a list of employers.

Chosen's application asks for your LinkedIn, your placements and your specialties, and you sign as an independent business. Someone reads it, usually inside 3 business days, and every applicant gets an email from Nhat with a link to a call. Approvals are capped so that roles outnumber recruiters: you can be waitlisted with your position shown, or declined for fit today and reapply after six months. It is small, with 13 recruiters approved as of September 2026.

Whichever platform you apply to, the application is the first job order you qualify. Read its agreement the way you would read a client's: the fee, the split, the guarantee and who collects the money. If the terms are not published, that is the answer to your first question.

The first search, start to invoice

Here is the $120,000 placement as a calendar, with the other two searches running beside it.

Week What happens Money to you
1 Agreement and brief read, 40 people sourced, 12 first calls $0
2 Four submitted; the second search's hiring manager goes quiet $0
3 to 5 Interviews; the third search sends a finalist who is not hired $0 direct, $200 on the marketplace
6 Offer accepted $0
9 Start date after three weeks' notice; the fee is invoiced $0
10 onward Payment arrives on the terms in the agreement $24,000 direct, or $19,200 in four installments

Direct, the $24,000 is yours to invoice at the start date and yours to chase. Through the marketplace it is $19,200, on the installment terms above. Agencies often hold a recruiter's commission until the guarantee passes, so read that clause wherever you land.

The guarantee runs from the start date, and until it ends the money is provisional. Keep the reserve the clause implies and do not count the fee as income until the period is over. That is the fourth skill, and the one the agency year teaches worst, because the agency carried the refund and you only heard about it.

Read one published agreement end to end this week, pick three searches you can source for, and start.