Many candidates will incorrectly continue that line of logic and get upset when asked to pay a franchise fee or a distributor's fee when they aren't actually being considered for a job but are instead buying a business. Every legitimate franchisor and distributor charges a fee. Unfortunately, so do the scum who try to scam those looking for business opportunities.

Headhunters / third party recruiters will almost always collect their well deserved placement fees from the employers, but not always. While some employment experts will counsel candidates that they should never pay a fee to a recruiter, I do not agree. In fact, if I were looking for a new position, I would be very open to paying the fee. The reason is that if I'm paying the fee, I truly am the client of the recruiter.

While most recruiters can separate out the issue of who is paying their fee (typically the employer) from who is their client (typically the candidate), some can't or won't. These recruiters struggle because they know that the employers butter their bread. While a recruiter may place the candidate more than once, it is very unlikely that they'll do so more than a few times over the course of the candidate's career. But a recruiter may place dozens of candidates a year with one employer. So if a struggling recruiter is faced with a choice of being loyal to the candidate who they'll likely never see again or being loyal to the employer who send enough business to the recruiter so that the recruiter can afford to pay for college education for his kids, guess who ends up winning out? The successful, ethical recruiters understand that they must be loyal to the interests of the candidate in order to succeed. It is difficult for them to do so and easy to stray, yet they know that their own long-term success depends upon them being loyal to their true client: the candidate.

So what's a candidate to do when asked to pay a fee? Research. Just like you'd research an industry, employer, department, and job opportunity if applying for an employment position directly. Talk with others in the same industry. Talk with others who used to be in the industry. Contact the Better Business Bureau and your state government to see if the organization has a long history in your area and if they have any unresolved complaints. And remember that if it sounds like it is too good to be true, it is.