Terms of Service

1. Who we are

RecruitFractional is a curated marketplace where companies find and hire fractional and interim executives, executives publish profiles and pursue engagements, and third-party recruiters submit candidates to open searches. The platform is operated by Cobalt Glacier LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company.

We are a marketplace and software provider. We are not an employer, an employment agency of record, a staffing firm, a professional employer organization, a law firm, or a party to any engagement between a company and an executive. Scope, deliverables, rates, invoicing, intellectual property, and confidentiality between a company and an executive are agreed directly between those parties.

2. Eligibility and accounts

• You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into contracts.
• You must provide accurate registration and profile information and keep it current.
• You are responsible for the security of your credentials and for all activity under your account.
• Each account operates in a single workspace type: company, executive, recruiter, or administrator. You may not use one account to act in two roles. If you need a second role, create a separate account with a separate email address, and do not use it to obtain access you are not entitled to.
• If you register on behalf of an organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind that organization to these Terms.
• We may refuse, suspend, or close accounts at our discretion, including for inaccurate information or breach of these Terms.

3. Terms by role

3.1 Companies

• You are responsible for the accuracy of the roles, scopes, budgets, and timelines you publish, and for the lawfulness of your hiring criteria.
• You conduct your own diligence, interviewing, reference checking, and contracting. You alone decide who to engage and on what terms.
• You engage executives directly. We do not set rates, supervise work, or guarantee performance, availability, or fit.
• You are responsible for classifying and contracting with the executive correctly under applicable law, including independent contractor and tax rules.
• A confirmed placement carries a flat placement fee as described in section 5, unless a recruiter sourced the executive.
• You will not use candidate information for any purpose other than evaluating and engaging that person for the role disclosed.

3.2 Fractional executives

• You use the platform as an independent professional. Nothing here creates an employment, agency, partnership, joint venture, or exclusive representation relationship with us.
• Your profile, work history, credentials, references, rates, and availability must be truthful and your own. Do not misstate titles, tenure, outcomes, or client names.
• You are free to accept or decline any opportunity, to work with clients found outside the platform, and to set your own rates.
• You are responsible for your own taxes, insurance, licenses, business expenses, and compliance with any obligations you owe to current or former clients and employers, including non-competes and confidentiality duties.
• You may not solicit companies to contract off-platform in order to avoid a placement fee owed by that company or a recruiter, and you may not charge a company a fee on our behalf.
• You control what is published on your profile. Understand that paid subscribers can view your unmasked profile and contact you through the platform.

3.3 Recruiters

• The recruiter plan is for third-party recruiting firms and independent recruiters. When you create a recruiter workspace you attest that you are an independent third party and not an internal employee, contractor, or agent of the hiring company for the searches you work.
• You may not submit candidates to a search run by your own employer or an affiliate, and you may not use a recruiter workspace to browse the directory on behalf of a hiring company that should hold its own subscription.
• You must have each candidate's informed consent before submitting their information, and you must have the right to share the information you submit.
• You keep 100% of the fees you negotiate with your own clients. We take no revenue share, commission, or percentage of your placement fees.
• Where you sourced and submitted the executive, the flat placement fee described in section 5 is invoiced to you rather than to the company.
• Submitting fabricated, duplicated, or unauthorized candidate records, or misrepresenting your relationship to a candidate or a company, is grounds for immediate termination without refund.

4. Subscriptions and billing

Paid plans are billed monthly in advance through our payment processor, Stripe.

• Subscriptions renew automatically each month until cancelled. You may cancel at any time from your billing settings; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period.
• Fees already paid are non-refundable, in whole or in part, including for partial periods and unused access. We may make exceptions at our discretion.
• There is no free trial. Access to paid features begins when the first payment succeeds.
• If a payment fails, we may retry it and may suspend paid features until the balance clears.
• We may change plan pricing or features with at least 30 days' notice by email or in-product notice. Continued use after the change takes effect is acceptance of the new price.
• Prices are in US dollars and exclusive of taxes. You are responsible for any sales, use, VAT, GST, or similar taxes and for any withholding.
• We do not receive or store your full card details. Card data is handled by Stripe under its own terms.
• Chargebacks initiated without first contacting us may result in account suspension until resolved.

5. Flat $1,000 placement fee

A flat placement fee of $1,000 USD per confirmed placement is payable in addition to your subscription. The fee is a single flat amount. It is never calculated as a percentage of the executive's compensation, retainer, or contract value, and it does not change with the size or length of the engagement.

5.1 When a placement is confirmed

• A placement occurs when a company engages an executive who was introduced, submitted, shortlisted, messaged, or otherwise surfaced through the platform, on any basis: fractional, interim, advisory, project, contract-to-hire, or full-time.
• A placement is confirmed when both parties confirm the reported engagement in the platform, or automatically seven (7) days after a hire is reported if the counterparty neither confirms nor disputes it within that window.
• Reporting an engagement accurately and promptly is required of both parties. Failing to report a placement, or reporting it inaccurately, is a breach of these Terms.

5.2 Who is invoiced

The fee is invoiced to the party that sourced the placement. Where a recruiter submitted the executive for the role, the recruiter is invoiced. In all other cases the hiring company is invoiced. The executive is never charged a placement fee.

5.3 Payment terms

• The invoice is issued when the placement is confirmed and is due within thirty (30) days of the invoice date (Net 30).
• We may send reminders before and after the due date.
• Unpaid balances past the due date may result in a billing hold that suspends directory access, messaging, new searches, and candidate submissions until the balance is settled. Your data is retained during a hold.
• You are responsible for any applicable taxes on the fee and for any collection costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees, that we incur recovering an undisputed past-due balance.

5.4 Disputes, waivers, and cancellations

• If a reported hire is disputed inside the confirmation window, no fee is charged until our team reviews the dispute. Provide the facts you rely on when you dispute.
• We may waive, void, credit, or extend the due date of a fee at our discretion, for example where an engagement is cancelled before it starts or where a report was made in error.
• A placement fee is not refundable because an engagement later ends early, is shortened, or does not meet expectations. We are not a party to the engagement and do not guarantee outcomes.

5.5 Non-circumvention

Contracting off-platform to avoid a placement fee is a breach of these Terms. If a company engages an executive it first encountered through RecruitFractional within twelve (12) months of that introduction, the flat $1,000 fee remains payable whether or not the engagement was reported here. The same applies where a recruiter routes a submitted candidate around the platform. Encouraging another party to circumvent the platform, or asking an executive to accept an off-platform introduction to avoid the fee, is also a breach.

6. Directory access and confidentiality

The executive directory is not public. Visitors and unpaid accounts see masked profiles: initials and a photo rather than a full name, and no external links or contact details. Unmasked profiles, contact routes, and messaging require an active paid subscription in good standing.

• You may use directory and candidate information only to evaluate and pursue a specific engagement.
• You may not scrape, crawl, bulk-export, cache, resell, syndicate, republish, or feed platform data into a competing database, list, or AI training corpus.
• You may not share your login, seat, or masked-profile workaround with anyone outside your workspace, or use automated tools to de-anonymize masked profiles.
• Messages, search briefs, budgets, and candidate submissions you receive through the platform are confidential to the parties involved. Do not forward them outside the engagement.
• Violating this section may result in immediate termination without refund, in addition to any fees owed.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Misrepresent your identity, employer, credentials, experience, authority, or role type.
• Post or transmit unlawful, discriminatory, harassing, defamatory, misleading, or infringing content, or content unrelated to fractional executive work.
• Send unsolicited sales, recruiting-for-hire, investment, or marketing messages to other users.
• Post job listings that are not genuine, that conceal the identity of the actual employer without cause, or that require candidates to pay to be considered.
• Probe, scan, overload, or interfere with the platform or its security controls, or attempt to access data you are not authorized to access.
• Use bots, scrapers, or automated agents against the platform without our written permission.
• Reverse engineer, resell, sublicense, or white-label the platform.
• Use the platform to violate employment, privacy, export, anti-discrimination, or anti-bribery law.

We may investigate suspected violations, remove content, moderate reviews, and suspend or terminate accounts. We may cooperate with law enforcement where legally required.

8. Your content and reviews

• You retain ownership of the content you submit, including profiles, listings, documents, media, and messages.
• You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, adapt for display, and distribute your content as needed to operate, secure, and promote the platform, including showing masked versions of your profile to visitors and unpaid accounts.
• You represent that you have the rights to the content you submit and that it does not infringe or breach any obligation you owe a third party.
• Reviews and ratings must reflect a genuine engagement conducted through or reported on the platform. Incentivized, traded, retaliatory, or self-authored reviews are prohibited.
• Reviews are subject to moderation. We may hold, edit for personal data, decline, or remove a review, and we may remove content that violates these Terms. We are not obligated to monitor content.
• Feedback and suggestions you send us may be used without restriction or compensation.
• If you believe content infringes your copyright, email legal@recruitfractional.com with the material, its location, and your contact details.

9. Intellectual property

The platform, including its software, design, taxonomy, content libraries, and the RecruitFractional name and marks, is owned by Cobalt Glacier LLC and its licensors. You receive a limited, revocable, non-transferable right to access the platform for its intended purpose during your subscription. No other rights are granted. You may not use our marks in a way that suggests endorsement or partnership without written permission.

10. Third-party services and AI features

We rely on third parties for hosting, database and authentication, payments, email delivery, and AI model inference. Their handling of data is described in our Privacy Policy and subprocessor list.

AI matching, shortlist scoring, and drafting features produce probabilistic suggestions from the information available to them. Output is advisory only, may be incomplete or wrong, and is not a hiring decision, an assessment of a person, or professional advice. You remain responsible for every hiring decision you make and for reviewing AI output before acting on it. We do not use your private workspace content to train third-party foundation models.

11. No verification guarantee

We review profiles for plausibility and may show verification indicators for items such as an associated LinkedIn profile or a submitted resume. We do not perform background checks, criminal record searches, credit checks, employment or education verification through a consumer reporting agency, immigration or right-to-work checks, or licensing checks. We are not a consumer reporting agency and the platform is not a consumer report.

Any diligence beyond what a profile shows is your responsibility, must be conducted lawfully and with the candidate's consent where required, and should be performed before you engage anyone.

12. Suspension and termination

• You may stop using the platform at any time and may close your account from settings or by contacting us.
• We may suspend or terminate access immediately for breach of these Terms, non-payment, fraud, abuse, legal risk, or platform-security reasons, and with reasonable notice for any other reason.
• On termination, your right to use the platform ends and your public profile is removed from the directory. Placement fees and subscription amounts already accrued remain payable, and the non-circumvention obligation in section 5.5 survives.
• We retain records as described in the Privacy Policy, including what is needed for tax, accounting, dispute, and anti-abuse purposes.
• Sections covering fees owed, content license for retained records, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, dispute resolution, and general terms survive termination.

13. Disclaimers, liability, and indemnity

The platform is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and any warranty about accuracy, availability, or results. We do not warrant that you will find a suitable executive, a suitable engagement, or any particular outcome, or that the platform will be uninterrupted or error-free.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, lost business opportunity, or the cost of substitute services, even if advised of the possibility. Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the platform or these Terms is limited to the greater of (a) the total amounts you paid us in the twelve (12) months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars ($100). Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Cobalt Glacier LLC and its members, officers, and personnel from third-party claims, losses, and expenses arising from your content, your use of the platform, an engagement you enter into, your classification or treatment of a worker, your diligence or hiring decisions, candidate information you submitted without proper consent, or your breach of these Terms.

14. Dispute resolution and arbitration

Please read this section carefully. It requires most disputes to be resolved by individual arbitration and waives your right to a jury trial and to participate in a class action.

14.1 Informal resolution first

Before starting an arbitration, you agree to email legal@recruitfractional.com with a description of the dispute and the relief you seek, and to allow sixty (60) days for a good-faith attempt to resolve it. This step is a condition to filing.

14.2 Binding individual arbitration

If informal resolution fails, any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the platform will be resolved by final and binding arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Consumer or Commercial Arbitration Rules, as applicable, before a single arbitrator. The seat of arbitration is Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and the proceeding may be conducted by documents, videoconference, or in person by agreement. The arbitrator decides arbitrability and may award any relief available in court to the individual party, but may not award relief affecting other users. The Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this section, and judgment on the award may be entered in any court of competent jurisdiction.

14.3 Class action and jury trial waiver

Disputes will be arbitrated only on an individual basis. You and we waive any right to a jury trial and to bring or participate in a class, collective, consolidated, or representative action. If this waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim proceeds in court and the rest of this section still applies.

14.4 Exceptions

Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies, and either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in court to stop unauthorized access, scraping, misuse of confidential information, or infringement of intellectual property.

14.5 Thirty-day opt-out

You may reject this arbitration agreement by emailing legal@recruitfractional.com with your account email and the words "arbitration opt-out" within thirty (30) days of first accepting these Terms. Opting out does not affect any other part of these Terms.

14.6 Time limit

Any claim must be brought within one (1) year after it arises, to the extent permitted by law, or it is permanently barred.

15. Governing law and general terms

• These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Carolina, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules. Where a dispute proceeds in court under section 14, the parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.
• We may update these Terms. Material changes will be announced by email or in-product notice at least 14 days before they take effect, and the last-updated date above will change. Continued use after that date is acceptance.
• You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets.
• If a provision is found unenforceable, it is limited or severed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in force.
• Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
• These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Cookie Policy, and any Data Processing Addendum in force, are the entire agreement between you and us about the platform.
• Neither party is liable for delays caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
• Nothing in these Terms creates a third-party beneficiary right.
• Notices to us go to legal@recruitfractional.com. Notices to you go to the email on your account.