Flat Monthly Recruiting vs. Contingency Recruiting for Commercial Trades

Short answer: Flat monthly and contingency recruiting solve the same hiring problem with different economics. Contingency fees are commonly tied to a percentage of first-year compensation and are paid on placement. A flat monthly model prices the recruiting work independently of the candidate's salary. Neither model is universally better. The right choice depends on search volume, urgency, role value and how much pipeline-building the employer wants.

Key takeaways

• Contingency pays on placement. Fees are commonly a percentage of first-year compensation, so the cost rises with the salary.
• Flat monthly prices the work. You pay a predictable amount for sourcing, screening and interviews, whatever the candidate earns.
• Occasional one-off searches can favor contingency, because there may be little or no upfront commitment.
• Multiple hires and higher-salary roles tend to favor flat monthly, because the fee doesn't climb with each salary.
• Judge a year, not one placement. Total cost across all your hires is the honest comparison.

How to read this comparison

There's no federal data on recruiter pricing, so this piece leans on the other two kinds of evidence: what My Trade Talent publishes about its own model, and recruiting analysis of how each fee structure changes incentives. Treat it as a framework to test against your own hiring plan for the year, not as a survey of what every firm charges.

Contingency model

The employer typically pays when a hire is made. That can be attractive for occasional searches because there may be little or no upfront commitment. If you fill one role every couple of years, that structure is easy to live with.

The tradeoff is that fees often rise with candidate compensation, and recruiters may prioritize searches based on placement probability and fee size. A hard search with a modest salary can sit behind easier or better-paying ones. We go deeper on the tradeoffs in retained vs. contingency recruiting.

Flat monthly model

The employer pays a predictable monthly amount for ongoing sourcing, screening and interview generation. The economics can become more attractive when the employer has multiple hires or higher-salary roles, because the fee does not automatically rise with each salary.

It also changes what you're buying. Instead of paying for a single outcome, you're paying for a running search that keeps producing candidates, which matters most when the talent is passive and the roles keep coming. For a side-by-side of the fee math, see flat-rate vs. contingency recruiting.

What My Trade Talent does

My Trade Talent uses a flat monthly direct-hire model. The public site describes multi-channel outreach, candidate pre-qualification and interviews placed on the employer's calendar, with the employer making the final hiring decision.

How to choose

Before you sign with anyone, work through these questions:

• How many roles do you expect to hire this year? One seat and six seats are different buying decisions.
• Is the talent passive? If the people you want aren't applying, a model built on posting and waiting won't reach them. That's the core of recruiter vs. Indeed for commercial trades.
• Do you need a one-time placement or an ongoing pipeline?
• How does the recruiter actually source candidates? Ask for the channels, not the promise.
• What happens when a hire leaves? Get the answer in writing under either model.
• What does total cost look like across a year? Add up every expected hire, not just the first one.

Don't leave the empty seat out of the math. A cheaper structure that fills the role weeks later can cost more than it saves. The cost of vacancy calculator puts a number on that, and what a 90-day vacancy costs walks through why the delay is usually the bigger line.

Why we price searches differently

Under a percentage fee, the price of a search moves with the salary, not with how hard the search is. We recruit across 20 commercial trades, and our 597+ completed placements since 2022 cover 240 distinct position titles, from commercial construction superintendents to HVAC service technicians to electrical project managers. That's why we work direct-hire on a flat monthly model, not a percentage-of-salary fee: an employer hiring across several of those seats gets one predictable cost instead of a fee that changes with every offer.

Bottom line

Choose the recruiting model that matches the hiring system you need. If the real problem is recurring access to hard-to-reach trades talent, evaluate pipeline economics across multiple hires rather than judging every search as a standalone transaction. Schedule a discovery call and we'll look at your hiring plan for the year, not just one seat.

About the author

Michael Carter is President of My Trade Talent. He has been building outbound hiring programs since 2014, and commercial-trades talent pipelines since 2021. His work focuses on helping commercial-trades employers build repeatable direct-hire pipelines for hard-to-reach talent.