01How-to · Recruiter vetting
How to Evaluate a Recruiter Before You Sign with Them.
The six-move vetting the desk uses on its own brief — specialization, placement track record, comp transparency, communication cadence, red-flag behaviors, and the confidential-search lever. Written up by the recruiters who run those searches end-to-end.
02Specialization
The right vertical, stage, and city — in that order.
The first move in vetting any recruiter is to test the fit at three levels — vertical, stage, and city. Recruiters who do their best work run narrow desks: a creative-tech search firm that places only into senior IC creative roles in New York has read on the room a generalist does not. A search firm that places into both creative and tech, at multiple levels, across the country, is reading off a different playbook — and the playbook is the thing you're hiring.
The vetting ask is direct: which subspecialty has the desk placed into in the last ninety days? What verticals sit on the live brief list right now, and how do those map against the recruiter's stated focus? Where the live brief list and the recruiter's stated verticals diverge, the room that opens next week is the room the recruiter is least ready to read. A vertical mismatch at the front end almost always reads as a comp mismatch at the back end.
The desk publishes its vertical list alongside the live brief list — the recruiting mandate and the role read from the same set, which is the first consistency check a candidate can run.
03Placement track record
Four numbers the desk reads closing instinct against.
A recruiter's track record reads on four numbers: the placement rate, the average comp on the placements, the offer accept rate, and the offer acceptance timeline. A desk-mediated search converts at two to three times the candidate-direct rate, so the recruiter's rate against the candidate-direct baseline tells the candidate how the desk reads comp, and how the desk will read the candidate's counter.
Average comp on the placements is the second tell — a desk placing into $180k–$240k roles cannot credibly reach a $340k anchor for the next candidate, and the recruiter who stops short of naming the band in dollars is the recruiter whose comp reads do not match the brief. Offer accept rate is the third tell — a desk with a 60% accept rate is running searches the room is ready for; a desk below 40% is running searches the room is not, or running them with a comp read that misses the candidate by enough to lose. Acceptance timeline is the fourth. A desk that closes within fourteen days of the sourced shortlist is reading the room the candidate would read; a desk still in negotiation thirty days in is reading a different room.
The desk reads every brief against the same four numbers — the same way the candidate reads them back to the recruiter across the first conversation. Rate, comp, accept, timeline: the four reads line up and the brief opens.
Mid · Read in the roomBook a Halftone consultation
The criteria are the opening frame. The desk is the closing one.
Walk through the vetting criteria with the desk before the conversation is live. Two business days from message to written response, and the conversation is read by the recruiters who run those searches — not a generalist inbox.
04Comp transparency
The fee structure belongs in the first conversation.
The third move in vetting any recruiter is the comp transparency read. Disclosure of fees, who pays them, and when they trigger belongs in the first conversation, not the second. A recruiter who refuses to disclose the fee structure, or asks the candidate to sign before the comp band is articulated, is signalling an incentive structure the candidate cannot read — and the read the candidate cannot run is the read the recruiter is unable to write.
The test the candidate can run on the first conversation: ask who pays the fee, on what trigger it pays, whether it scales with the comp band, and whether the recruiter is willing to write down the disclosure. A recruiter who answers cleanly on all four points and writes the disclosure down is the recruiter whose comp reads line up with the candidate's. A recruiter who deflects on any one of the four is the recruiter whose reads will not line up later — not because the recruiter is dishonest, but because the room they're reading has a different set of incentives than the candidate can see.
Pairs with the compensation data the desk publishes alongside the bands — the figures name the comp-axis conversation so the fee structure can be read against it.
05Communication cadence
The recruiter who goes silent after the brief is the recruiter who ghosts the candidate.
The fourth move in vetting any recruiter is the communication cadence read — the first-response window, the weekday-vs-weekly briefing cadence, and the frequency of substantive updates versus acknowledgements. A recruiter who replies to the candidate in under twenty-four hours, writes a substantive update at least once per business week, and writes acknowledgement notes within the day is the recruiter who reads the desk's room the way the candidate needs it read.
A recruiter who takes five business days to reply, sends weekly status in a single paragraph, and writes no acknowledgement notes between updates is the recruiter whose reads are not running on the same room. The recruiter who goes silent after a brief is the recruiter who ghosted the last candidate — the silence pattern is the same read, and the read the candidate reads first is the read the recruiter is least likely to correct before the resume gets sent.
The desk treats cadence as the first read on every brief — two-business-day response on every email, weekday reading only. The desk reads the cadence the candidate would read back, which is the only cadence that closes.
06Red-flag behaviors
Three moves that signal the wrong incentive structure.
The fifth move in vetting any recruiter is the red-flag behaviors read — the three moves that signal the wrong incentive structure. The first red flag is the recruiter who carries the candidate's resume to a company not on the candidate's list. The candidate has not authorised that move, the candidate has not briefed the search, and the recruiter is no longer running the candidate's search — they are running the recruiter's pipeline through the candidate's resume.
The second red flag is the recruiter who "leverages" the candidate's process by floating the candidate's name to other mandates to force a counter — at which point the candidate is no longer a candidate, the candidate is a lever the recruiter is pulling against the candidate's own current search. The third red flag is the recruiter who pressures the candidate to sign before the comp cadence is clear — at which point the candidate's comp reads are being pulled forward by a deadline that exists for the recruiter's incentive, not the candidate's. Any one of the three is enough to walk; all three together is the room the desk never sends a resume into.
The red-flag read is the move most candidates skip and most senior panics miss — the desk reads every brief against the three signals before the candidate's resume is sent, and only sends when none of the three are present.
07Confidential-search lever
How a Halftone confidential mandate reframes the vetting ask.
The sixth move, and the one that closes the room the five earlier moves opened, is the confidential Halftone mandate. The desk is its own inquiry — it has already passed the five tests the candidate is running: it has a vertical, stage, and city list, it has a track record with named placement rate, comp band, and accept-rate reads, it has the fee structure written down in the first conversation, it reads the candidate's updates on a two-business-day cadence, and it carries none of the three red-flag moves. The desk is also incentive-aligned: every search the desk opens is a search the desk wants to close, in comp terms the candidate can credibly read.
A confidential Halftone mandate changes the candidate's room the same way the five-move vetting framework changes the recruiter-vetting room — the candidate is no longer answering one comp question, they are answering two or three simultaneously, the counter is mediated by a desk that has read both sides, and the recruiter's framing is part of the ask. The candidate walks into each offer conversation with the comp band the desk is placing into and the comp band the candidate already has in hand — and the recruiter is incentivised to land the candidate at the desk that already passes the five tests. Together, the shifts are the lever that is hardest to build from the candidate side alone — the reason confidential search reads as a different category of move, not just a different channel.
For candidates considering the conf-search entry, the confidential mandate is most often the right entry point — the desk briefs it against the same band the direct mandate sits in, with the framing drawn from the search itself.
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ClosingVet the recruiter with the same care
The criteria land hardest when the desk is on the other end of the conversation.
Six moves — specialization, placement track record, comp transparency, communication cadence, red-flag behaviors, and the confidential-search lever — are the same moves the desk uses on its own brief. Run them against any recruiter who pitches your search; run them in the first conversation, in writing where the reads carry. The closing move is the same in every case: the desk that already passes the five tests is the desk the candidate briefs; the desk that doesn't is the desk the candidate walks. Open a candidate file to start the conversation; the desk reads every message within two business days.
Halftone desk
halftone-talent@polsia.appCareer-resources desk — read every weekday by the recruiters who write the guides and run the searches. Two-business-day response, weekday reading only.