Every recruitment agency has them. Candidates who were brilliant in interview but didn’t quite fit. Vacancies that have been open for weeks because the right person hasn’t come through the door.

They sit in your CRM. You tell yourself you’ll get to them. And then they’re gone. The candidate takes another job, the client gives the vacancy to a competitor.

Most agencies treat this as an inevitable part of recruitment. It isn’t. It’s a revenue leak, and it’s bigger than you think.

What dormant candidates actually cost you

A “dormant” candidate is someone you’ve sourced, screened, and qualified but can’t place. You’ve already spent the time and money to find them. The sunk cost is real:

Sourcing time: Job board fees, LinkedIn outreach, screening calls
Interview time: Your consultants’ hours spent assessing and qualifying
Opportunity cost: While you were working this candidate, you weren’t working others

According to the CIPD, the average cost per hire in the UK is £6,125. Even a fraction of that is sunk into each candidate your consultants source and qualify. If that candidate doesn’t place, that investment generates nothing.

Now multiply that across every unplaced candidate in your database. The sunk costs add up fast, and every one of those candidates is potential revenue sitting idle.

What unfilled vacancies actually cost you

An unfilled vacancy isn’t just a missed fee. It’s a relationship risk.

When a client gives you a role and you can’t fill it, several things happen:

The client’s confidence drops. They start questioning whether you have the reach to deliver.
They brief other agencies. Your exclusive becomes a multi-agency listing. Your odds of placing drop from near-certain to one-in-three.
They remember. Next time they have a role, you’re not the first call.

The placement fee you lose is quantifiable: £10,000, £15,000, £20,000. But the lifetime value of a client relationship you damage is worth multiples of that.

The maths of doing nothing

Here’s a simple way to think about it. Take the last 12 months and ask:

How many qualified candidates did you not place?
How many vacancies did you not fill?
What was the average placement fee for similar roles?

If you had 30 unplaced candidates and 20 unfilled vacancies, and even 10% of those could have been matched with another agency’s inventory, that’s 3–5 additional placements. At £15,000 each, that’s £45,000–£75,000 in revenue your agency left on the table.

Why this problem persists

Recruiters know split fees exist. Many have done them informally: calling a contact, posting in a LinkedIn group, hoping someone has what they need.

But informal split fees are painful:

Discovery is slow. You post a candidate description and wait. Maybe someone replies, maybe they don’t.
Trust is uncertain. You’re sharing candidate details with someone you might not know. What stops them going directly to the client?
Admin is manual. Separate agreements, manual invoicing, chasing payments. For a busy recruiter, the hassle often isn’t worth it.

So most agencies default to doing nothing. The candidates stay dormant. The vacancies go unfilled. And the revenue disappears.

Turning dead inventory into placements

The agencies that will pull ahead are the ones that systematically monetise their unplaced candidates and unfilled vacancies, not through ad-hoc networking, but through a reliable, repeatable process.

That means:

Automatic matching across agencies, rather than posting and hoping
Anonymised data sharing until both parties agree to connect
Platform-managed payments, so nobody is chasing invoices

Half of a placement fee is infinitely better than none of it. The candidate gets placed. The client gets their hire. And both agencies earn from a deal that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Learn more about what split fee recruitment is and how the platform works for agencies.

That’s what Split Fee does. Your dormant candidates and unfilled vacancies find their match — across every agency on the network, automatically.

Join the waitlist to be first in line when we launch.