Candidate submittal template for agency recruiters

A candidate submittal is the few paragraphs an agency recruiter sends a client alongside a resume, arguing that this person deserves an interview. Clients read dozens of them. The ones that get interviews booked are short, specific, and built on what the candidate actually said on the screen — not on adjectives the recruiter chose afterwards.

Below is a template you can copy, a filled example, and what goes into each section. It works in an email, in Bullhorn or JobAdder notes, or as a PDF cover page. For the conversation around it — when to call the client instead, and how to handle pushback — see how to present candidates to clients.

What a hiring manager actually reads

Watch a hiring manager open a submittal and the order is nearly always the same: the headline, the first reason, the compensation line, then the resume. Everything else is read only if those four held their attention. That order should decide how you write it.

1. The headline. Role, name, and the one-line reason they fit. If this is vague, the rest is not opened.
2. Why this candidate. Three reasons tied to the client's must-haves, not to the resume's headings.
3. Logistics. Compensation, notice period, location or visa. A great candidate the client cannot afford is a wasted slot on their calendar.
4. Risks. The gap you found and what you learned about it. Clients trust the recruiter who names it first.

The candidate submittal template

Copy this and replace the brackets. Delete any line you cannot fill honestly rather than padding it.

Subject: [Role] — [Candidate name], [one-line fit]

[Client first name],

[Candidate name] is a [current title] at [company type] with [X years] in
[the thing the role needs most]. I think they are worth an interview for
[role] because:

1. [Must-have #1] — [evidence from the screen, ideally a short quote]
2. [Must-have #2] — [evidence]
3. [Why now / motivation] — [what they said about why they would move]

What to probe: [the one gap or risk, and what you already know about it]

Logistics
- Compensation: [expectation, base/bonus, and how firm]
- Notice period: [weeks], earliest start [date]
- Location / work setup: [on-site, hybrid, remote; relocation]
- Work authorization: [status]
- Other processes: [interviewing elsewhere? stage?]

Availability for interviews: [days/times]
Resume attached. [Your name], [phone]

A filled example

An invented candidate, written the way a strong submittal reads:

Notice what is not there: "passionate", "rockstar", "great communicator". Each reason is something the hiring manager can check in the interview, and two of them are in the candidate's own words.

How to write each section well

The headline

Put the fit in the subject line, not just the name. "Senior Backend Engineer — Priya Nair" tells the client nothing they did not know; "ran the payments migration you described" connects the candidate to the intake conversation and gets opened.

Three reasons, mapped to the must-haves

Go back to your intake notes and pick the client's top requirements, in their words. Each reason should answer one of them. If you can only answer two, send two; a weak third reason dilutes the strong ones. Where you can, use a short exact quote from the screen. Quotes do something a summary cannot: they let the client hear the candidate before meeting them.

This is why notes matter. A quote you reconstruct from memory after five calls is a paraphrase with quotation marks around it, and a candidate who later says "I never said that" costs you the client's trust. Take notes you can quote from, or don't use quotation marks.

What to probe

Every candidate has a gap. Naming it does three things: it shows you screened properly, it pre-empts the objection the hiring manager was going to raise anyway, and it gives the interview a useful question. Say what you already learned about the gap so the client is not starting from zero.

Logistics

Compensation, notice period, location and work authorization are the four facts that kill a process late. Write the candidate's expectation and how firm it is ("flexible on bonus", "will not move below 180"). If the client has not agreed to see compensation in writing, say "discussed and within the range you gave me" instead of leaving it out.

Competing processes

If the candidate is in final rounds elsewhere, say so. It is the most useful line in the submittal for getting a fast response, and it protects you when the candidate accepts another offer next week.

Common mistakes and the fix

Variations by role type

• Executive search: lead with the business result the candidate owned (revenue, turnaround, team size) and add a line on how they describe their leadership style, in their words.
• Technical roles: name the systems and scale specifically. "Postgres at 40,000 writes a second" beats "strong database skills" for any engineering manager.
• Sales roles: quota, attainment for the last two years, deal size and sales cycle. If they could not give you numbers, that is your "what to probe".
• Contract and temp: availability date, rate, and how long they can commit come first; the reasons can be two lines.
• High-volume hiring: use the same three headings for every candidate so the client can compare them side by side, and keep each to a short paragraph.

A checklist before you press send

Run through this in under a minute. Each line catches a submittal that would otherwise come back with a question instead of an interview slot.

• The subject line says why this person fits, not only who they are.
• Every reason maps to a requirement the client named in the intake, in their words.
• Anything in quotation marks is what the candidate actually said, not your paraphrase.
• The gap is named, with what you learned about it.
• Compensation, notice period, location and work authorization are all present, or you have said why one is missing.
• Competing processes and their stage are mentioned.
• The candidate has agreed to be submitted to this client for this role. Double submissions are how agencies lose fee disputes.
• The resume attached is the version the candidate approved, with contact details handled the way the client's terms require.
• You have proposed interview times, so the client can reply with a slot rather than a question.

How long should this take?

With good notes, about ten minutes (the screen-to-submittal workflow breaks the whole hour down). Without them, it easily becomes half an hour or more per candidate spent reconstructing the call, which is why submittals get written at night and why they drift toward adjectives. The fastest way to a better submittal is not a better template — it is capturing what the candidate said while they are saying it, so writing becomes choosing rather than remembering.

If you interview across states or countries, tell the candidate at the start that you take notes with a transcription tool. Our consent guide has a line you can read aloud and the states where both parties must agree.