The agency quoted 30% of base salary on the call. The draft agreement on your desk charges 30% of theoretical annual salary. Same headline rate, a bigger invoice, and no one lied.
That gap is the reason to slow down. The percentage you are bracing to negotiate is the least important number on the page. The terms that decide what you actually pay sit in clauses you haven't opened yet, and every answer that made you confident during selection arrived by voice, with nothing behind it in writing.
The Contract Sets the Real Economics
The questions to ask before signing a recruitment agency in Japan come straight off the draft service agreement: the fee basis behind the percentage, the placement event that triggers the fee, the guarantee carve-outs, whether exclusivity binds both sides, and how the term auto-renews. All five answers sit in the draft you already hold.
The agency has read this agreement a hundred times, and you're reading it once.
The fee-basis switch is what that gap does to one term, and any of the other four can move the same way. Asking will surface language that needs to change, and fixing a bad term is drafting work. Where a clause has to be rewritten, the exclusive contract template supplies the wording; the questions stay pointed at whether each term is settled or still moving in the agency's favor.
You can force structured answers with an RFP before a draft ever reaches your desk, and you should. An RFP governs the format of the answers; the contract governs the money. When the two disagree, the contract wins.
The Fee Trigger Behind 30%
A spoken answer is not enforceable. The first one to test is the one with the most money behind it.
Two terms in the fee clause decide the invoice, and neither is the percentage. The first is the base the rate multiplies. The agency said "30% of base" on the call; the draft reads "30% of theoretical annual salary," which is monthly pay, base plus fixed allowances, times twelve, plus the expected bonus. Same headline rate, bigger number, and the components that count toward that figure, fixed overtime, housing, family allowances, are negotiable, so the draft defaults to the agency's favor unless the clause names what is excluded.
The same 30% headline costs ¥750,000 more on theoretical annual salary than on base, and 30% on that basis costs ¥250,000 more than 35% on base, which is why the basis is the number to read, ahead of the percentage. This is why agencies quote different fees and still sound reasonable: the rate holds steady while the basis moves underneath it.
(On AirTA the target fee percentage sits on the listing before the first message, so it is on the table from the opening screen rather than surfacing on the invoice.)
The second term is the trigger. Read the definition of "placement" in the draft. An offer signed, a start date reached, probation cleared: these are three different events, and the clause fires the fee on exactly one of them. A draft that bills on the signed offer rather than the start date is written to collect before the hire is real, so when the candidate withdraws between offer and day one, the fee has already fired. Find the word "placement" in the contract and read what event the sentence attaches it to.
The three events are not interchangeable, and the gap between them is where the money sits. An offer can be signed and then rescinded. A start date can be reached and then abandoned in week one. Probation exists precisely because the first ninety days fail often enough to need a name. A fee that fires on the earliest of the three transfers every one of those risks from the agency to you, and the contract states which event it chose in a single clause you can read in ten seconds once you know to look for it.
Lock the basis and the trigger in writing first. Once the structure is fixed, then negotiate the number if you still want to, but the number was never the fight. The clause was.
Replacement Guarantee Carve-Outs
Every guarantee names a window, and the window is the wrong thing to read first.
Every draft quotes a guarantee window, 30 to 90 days, and the window is the part you will read first and the part that matters least. The variable that decides whether you are covered is not how long the guarantee runs but which departures it counts. A clause reading "voluntary resignation only" silently excludes the two failures that actually happen: a layoff or redundancy on your side, and a candidate who turns out to be missing a skill that never made it into the job description. The guarantee evaporates at the exact moment you would reach for it.
Then read how it pays. A guarantee that pays out as credit toward your next search functions less like protection and more like a coupon for the failure you just suffered, redeemable only by buying from the agency that failed you. The clause that returns money and the clause that returns a future search are two different instruments that share one name in the contract, and the draft will not flag the difference for you.
A cash refund leaves you free to take the budget to a different agency, or to stop searching entirely if the role no longer needs filling. A credit chains the next search to the one that already failed, at the precise moment your confidence in the agency is lowest, and it expires, so the clause that looks like protection is a clock counting down toward a second engagement you did not plan. Read whether what you are owed is money or a future search, and read whether it carries an expiry date.
Do not try to draft the carve-out language yourself from these questions; the exclusive contract template carries the clause text. The job here is narrower and sharper: find the guarantee clause, read which departures it covers, read what it pays out, and confirm both say what the call said.
Who Exclusivity Actually Binds
Exclusivity has to run both ways to mean anything. Check whether it does.
The clause will commit you to using no other agency on the role. The question is whether the same clause commits the agency to anything in return. A draft that binds you to one agency without binding that agency to a delivery obligation, a timeline, or an exit is one-way exclusivity: your switching cost goes to zero for them, and theirs goes to zero for you. The tell is not in the partnership language the agency added to the cover note. It is in whether the sentence that restricts you has a matching sentence that restricts them.
(On AirTA exclusivity is one-to-one by design, one company to one agency per accepted proposal, so "who else is working my shortlist" is not a question the structure leaves open.)
The single question that exposes the clause: what happens if they do not fill it inside the window. Refund, fee reduction, auto-termination, or nothing. Find that line before you find the signature line. A clause that grants exclusivity with no non-performance exit hands the agency a locked role and no consequence for sitting on it. The only version of "who else is working the role" that belongs here is the one confirmed in writing, as a term of the contract rather than a read of the agency's tone.
Exclusive search runs at roughly 80% success against contingency's 20% (AirTA first-party data), which is exactly why the exclusivity is worth having and exactly why the exit terms matter. Know what exclusive search commits the agency to before you sign away the alternative, and compare search models so you know which one the clause describes.
The Auto-Renewal Trap
A renewal clause sits in the gap between two numbers most readers check separately, and it is easy to miss there.
The draft states a term, and a few lines down it states a renewal. A term that renews unless you cancel inside a short notice window is built so the lock-in outlives the search you signed it for. Read the two numbers as one sentence: a 30-day term with a 60-day cancellation notice never ends, because the window to cancel closes before the term you are trying to cancel begins. The renewal mechanic and the notice period are a single trap split across two clauses, and reading either one alone misses it.
The cost of missing it is not abstract. The search you signed for a single role becomes a standing relationship: the window you would have used to walk closed weeks before you thought to look for it, and the role you filled, paused, or killed three months ago is still under an exclusivity you no longer want and cannot exit until the next notice window opens. Nothing flags the renewal in advance. The charge just appears.
The exclusivity question asked who the clause binds. This one asks how long, and whether the contract renews itself while you are not looking. Find the renewal sentence, find the notice sentence, and read the gap between them. Read the contract template's termination provisions to see what a clean version looks like; the draft on your desk may not match it, and the only way to know is to read the two numbers against each other.
Who on Your Side Can Sign
The last risk on the page sits on your side of the table, outside the contract altogether.
The off-limits window comes first, because it bills you for your own pipeline. A candidate-ownership clause claims six to twelve months during which any hire of a candidate the agency once "introduced" owes a fee, even a candidate already sitting in your applicant tracking system before the agency named them.
The length is negotiable, so the length is one tell. The definition of "introduced" is the other, and it decides how much of your own funnel the clause annexes. Does a name in a spreadsheet count, or does the clause require a documented submission the candidate consented to? A twelve-month window on a loose definition turns your existing pipeline into the agency's inventory. Define what counts as the introduction before the window can be invoked rather than after.
The second risk in this section is one no agency wrote: it is the gap on your own side of the table. Exclusivity holds only as far as your weakest internal actor honors it, and if no single person has authority to sign and enforce the contract, a hiring manager who engages a cold agency mid-search voids the exclusivity you paid for. The exclusivity clause is only as exclusive as the person who guards it. Name that person before you sign, in writing, with the authority to hold the line.
(The same naming discipline is structural on AirTA: standardized proposals name the consultant and their relevant placements upfront, so the thing under evaluation is the person who will actually run the search rather than a logo on a deck.)
One line on the license, and require it in writing: the fee-charging placement license (有料職業紹介事業) named in the contract is a floor, not a guarantee, because the license is a floor not a filter once you see how many licensed offices never place a single hire.
Three Questions to Read Off the Draft Contract
What Triggers a Recruitment Placement Fee
The fee fires on the event the contract names as the placement: a signed offer, a reached start date, or a cleared probation. These are three different moments. A clause that bills on the signed offer collects before the hire is real, so read which single event the placement definition attaches the fee to.
Is the Fee on Base Salary or Theoretical Annual Income
Read the fee-basis clause. Many Japan agreements bill on theoretical annual salary, which is monthly base plus fixed allowances times twelve plus expected bonus rather than base salary. At the same headline rate, that basis produces the larger fee, so the basis decides the invoice, not the percentage.
Does the Guarantee Cover Voluntary Resignation
Only if the clause says so. Guarantee carve-outs often exclude layoffs, redundancy, and skills missing from the job description, and some pay credit toward a future search rather than a refund. Read which departures the clause counts and whether it returns money or another search.
Score the Terms, Not the Agency
Five clauses, five tells, and not one of them is the percentage. The structure is the fight, not the number, and filing the structure under paperwork is exactly what makes it easy to overlook.
Five answers are now on the table: the fee basis, the guarantee trigger, the exclusivity terms, the renewal window, and the named consultant. Weight each one by how much money it moves, then score what the recruitment agency contract in Japan actually commits them to rather than what the call said.
A low score is not a reason to walk; it is the punch list of clauses to fix before the pen moves. Take the worst-scoring line items back to the agency and make the contract say what the call said.
Signing doesn't end the work; the next task is enforcement: once signed, hold them to it, because contract terms hold only as long as both sides follow them. The favorable terms you fought into the draft mean nothing if no one reads them again until the invoice arrives. The agency has read this contract a hundred times. You read it once, before you signed it, which is the only reading that ever changed a term.
The agencies you are about to sign in Japan still make you ask for every one of these terms. We are building AirTA so the fee basis, the exclusivity, and the named consultant arrive before the conversation does, with contact details released only after you have accepted.
Want the terms before the next contract? AirTA lets companies receive agency proposals with the fee basis, the exclusivity, and the named consultant stated upfront. Post a Job free and compare proposals that arrive with terms attached.