Yes, on one condition: treat it as placement income, not a salary. One hire at a $140,000 base with the fee set at 20% is $28,000, and $22,400 of that is yours after the marketplace takes its 20%. It lands months after the work, in pieces. Five months of applying has paid $0, so the comparison is not close.

Going independent with no clients after a layoff

Eight years in-house, five months of applications, nothing back. That is not a verdict on you. In 2025 the number of human resources specialists in the United States fell for the first time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began the series in 2012. The drop was 0.5%, or 5,030 people, per ERE's 2026 review of the data. In my experience recruiting is the part of HR that gets cut first, because recruiter demand tracks everyone else's hiring plans.

James Hornick wrote in 2023 that recruiting is on the path to gig work, and that after a layoff wave it is the recruiters who have the hardest time getting back to work. Three years on, the mechanism has not changed. The seats you are applying for are the ones that got cut.

Independent recruiting is two trades in one: finding candidates and finding clients. Eight years in-house taught you the first at a level most agency juniors never reach. You have run intakes, lived in the hiring manager's calendar, closed against counteroffers and made the comp conversation less awful. What you have never done is sell the service. That is the only new thing, and every guide puts it first.

The client book is the part you can rent

The standard advice, from agency owners and from most of what LinkedIn says on the subject, is that you cannot go independent without a book of clients. Spend six months on business development before you count on any income, keep six months of expenses in the bank to survive it, and then start recruiting. The part about the six months of expenses is right.

That is where my agreement ends. The client book is the one part of the trade you can rent. A recruiter marketplace holds the client agreements, invoices the company and pays you a share of the fee, so the client step becomes an application rather than a sales call. The rent is the platform's cut, shown on the role card before you apply, and the other recruiters on the role, which I come back to at the end.

Sourcing, screening and closing took you eight years to get good at, and there is no shortcut through that. Business development is a real skill too, but renting the book makes it optional in year one. You can add it in year two, once a fee has cleared and you know the contingency side from the inside. The worked example below is one placement against five months of applications: $22,400 against $0.

What one placement pays and when

Take a role with a $140,000 base, a fee of 20%, and a hire that is yours. The fee is a percent of the hire's first-year base salary, and the company sets it when it posts the role. Here that is $28,000; on a $180,000 base at the same percent it would be $36,000. Chosen keeps 20% of the placement fee and the placing recruiter keeps 80%, on every role. Your share is $22,400.

Every candidate of yours who reaches the final interview stage earns $200, hired or not, and it is never repayable. Two of them in this example is $400, the only money here that does not depend on the hire. The year's total is $22,800, and the "when" is the part that decides whether you survive it.

The share is pay when paid. Nothing is owed until the hire starts, the company is invoiced once, and your 80% is released once the company's money reaches the platform in cleared funds. Then it pays in four pieces: a sixth of it within 3 business days of the money clearing, another sixth after day 30, a third after day 60 and the last third after day 90.

Month What happens Placement share to you
1 Approved, on two roles in your lane $0
2 Sourcing, first packets in review, first declines $0
3 Interviews, one offer accepted $0
4 The hire starts, the company is invoiced once $0
5 The payment clears, first sixth within 3 business days about $3,733
6 Day 30 after clearing, second sixth about $3,733
7 Day 60, one third $7,467
8 Day 90, the last third $7,467

I assumed the company pays about a month after the start. The terms sit in the company's agreement and are not published, and nobody guarantees that a client pays on time. Whatever is still owed pays out early once the guarantee to the company ends. If the hire leaves inside that guarantee and the company is refunded, you repay in proportion to what was refunded, never more than you were paid, and the remaining pieces stop.

The shape matters more than the total: four months of nothing, then $22,400 over the next four. A salary hid the waiting for eight years. It was always there.

What in-house experience does and does not carry over

More carries over than the guides admit. Sourcing and the first call are the same work. The intake is easier, because you have run a hundred of them from the other side of the table and know when a brief is underspecified. Closing is the same conversation with a different email signature. And you can tell when a hiring manager is stalling, which takes an agency junior years to learn.

Four things do not carry over, and each is about money or time rather than craft.

  • Working to a fee, where a $120,000 hire and a $180,000 hire at the same 20% fee pay you $19,200 and $28,800 after the split.
  • Several searches at once, on your own calendar, with nobody to cover the interviews you cannot make.
  • Waiting with no paycheck, which is not new, only newly visible.
  • A brief you did not write, from a hiring manager you have met once.

So the rule for year one: pick roles where the carried-over half does the most work. Your own function, your own seniority band, the company stage you hired for. Eight years in one lane is a lane. Do not spend the first year leaving it.

The first ninety days on a marketplace desk

On Chosen the client step is an application. You need a LinkedIn profile, a personal Gmail is fine, a person reads it, usually within 3 business days, and Nhat emails every applicant with a link to book a call. Approvals are capped, so there are more live roles than approved recruiters, and a good recruiter can be waitlisted; the waitlist shows your position. Once you are approved there is nothing to buy, because the ATS you work in is free.

Approved, you apply to roles, three pending and ten active at a time, and a person reads each application, usually within a business day. Before you apply, the role card shows the company's name, the comp band, your percent and what it is worth in dollars at both ends of the band, plus the $200 finalist bonus and the company's record on the marketplace: hires, median days to hire, median days to respond.

Read the track record before the fee. A company that has hired twice and answers in two days is worth more to you than a higher percent from one that has done neither. The higher percent only pays if the role fills, and roles fill where someone is answering.

Adding a candidate to a role is the submission. A person reviews the packet, usually within a business day, and either releases it to the company or returns it with what to fix. The company commits to decide on every released packet within 5 business days, and a decline arrives with a structured reason and a written note.

That five-day commitment is kept by a person following up, not by an automated rule. Expect declines in month two. Each one tells you what the brief left out.

Then the interviews, and the wait that comes with them. A candidate who reaches the final round earns you the $200 whether or not the offer follows. If it does, the start date is usually two to four weeks out, and the fee is owed on the day they start, with nothing owed at offer. Month three ends with a signed offer and no money, which is the plan working.

What I would not promise you

A placement in the first ninety days. The table puts the first money in month five, and that is the version where the first search fills. Some do not. The company can hire from any source, other recruiters may be on the same role, and the whole recruiter share goes to whoever submitted the hired candidate. A role that stays open pays nobody.

A salary. Placement income is lumpy by design. The first placement can take six months, and the second is not promised by the first, so keep the six months of expenses the consensus asked for. And keep applying for in-house roles while you build the desk. The marketplace is non-exclusive both ways, so an offer in month four costs you nothing, and neither does turning it down.

We are small. There were 13 approved recruiters in September 2026, we publish no placement stats, and there are no third-party reviews yet. We do not guarantee that any role fills, and settlement is done by a person, with no payout dashboard. Treat us as one source of roles while you get the desk running, and not as the plan.

Apply to a marketplace this week, keep the in-house applications going, and count the money when it clears, not when the offer is signed.