How do you verify a recruitment agency in India?
Run five checks before you brief anything. Confirm the company registration and GST number, which are public. Ask for two client references you can actually call. Ask for placement evidence at your seniority rather than aggregate numbers. Get the fee structure in writing before any CV arrives. Read the replacement terms and ask specifically what voids them. A firm that answers all five without friction is behaving differently from one that deflects on two of them.
"We are a US company hiring in India for the first time. We have no way of telling whether the agency we are speaking to is a real search firm or three people with a job board subscription. What do we actually check?"Head of Talent, Series A fintech · first hire outside the US
The five checks, in order.
Knowing how to verify a recruitment agency in India matters most when you are hiring into a market you do not know, because the usual signals you rely on at home are missing. These five checks take under an hour combined and they filter the field hard.
How to verify a recruitment agency in India, check one.
Every legitimate recruitment firm operating in India is a registered company with a corporate identification number, and any firm charging for services at scale will be GST registered. Both are public records. Ask for the numbers and check them.
This is the cheapest check available and it is the one most foreign buyers skip, usually because it feels slightly rude to ask. It is not. Any real firm supplies both without comment.
References you can actually call.
A logo wall proves a conversation happened at some point. A named client who will take your call proves the firm delivered something worth defending.
Ask the reference what went wrong during the search, not whether they were happy. Every search has a difficult moment. How it was handled is the information you want.
Placement evidence at your seniority.
Twelve hundred placements across all levels tells you the firm is busy. It tells you nothing about whether it can close a VP of Engineering in Bengaluru for a Series B company.
Fee structure in writing, before any CV.
The moment a shortlist exists, your leverage drops. Whatever is unclear about the commercial terms at that point tends to resolve in the firm's favour, not because anyone is dishonest but because you now want the candidate.
Get every stage, every trigger and every number in writing first. A firm that will not do this before sending CVs has told you something useful.
Replacement terms, and what voids them.
The headline is usually a 90 day replacement guarantee. The exclusions decide whether it ever applies to your situation.
Red flags that should end the conversation.
Profiles arriving within hours of a first call means the firm is forwarding a database, not running a search. Nobody can calibrate a senior brief that fast.
If nobody will tell you who personally runs the search, the answer is usually that it has not been decided, or that it will be whoever is free.
How we answer all five.
We answer how to verify a recruitment agency in India by answering it about ourselves. Registration and GST on request. References who will take your call, at your stage. Comparable closes with the detail of what made each one difficult. Fee structure in writing before a brief is taken, on milestone-based fees rather than a single placement percentage. Replacement terms in the agreement, including what voids them.
Ask us all five on an introductory call. We answer them in writing.
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