Flat-rate recruiting, with the math shown.
A fixed monthly fee instead of a cut of each hire's salary. Whether that is cheaper than a percentage comes down to one number you already know: how many people you hire in a year.
Of first-year salary, per hire, every time.
$4,000 a month on the 12-month rate, hire as many as you like.
Below that a contingency recruiter can cost you less. We show that too.
What flat-rate recruiting actually is.
A fixed monthly fee for an agreed volume of screened, qualified candidates, with no charge when you hire one. The fee does not move with the salary, the seniority of the seat, or how many people you end up hiring. A contingency recruiter does the reverse: paid nothing until you hire, then paid a share of whatever you agreed to pay that person.
Three things follow from that, and between them they are the entire reason the model exists.
The line item stops moving.
Recruiting becomes a number you budget like rent instead of a charge that lands the month you can least afford it. Nobody has to explain a $27,000 invoice in a quarter that was already tight.
Hiring more makes each hire cheaper.
Under a percentage, the eighth hire costs exactly what the first one did. Under a flat rate the annual cost is fixed, so every additional hire divides it further. The curve runs the right way.
Nobody profits from a bigger offer.
A recruiter paid a share of salary earns more every time you pay more. Ours does not, which takes one quiet conflict of interest out of the offer conversation entirely.
What a percentage costs once you put a salary behind it.
A fee of "20 to 30 percent" stays abstract until it has a wage attached. These are the national median annual wages the Bureau of Labor Statistics published for May 2025 for the seats we are asked to fill most, and what one hire costs at each end of that range.
| Seat | Median wage | Fee at 20% | Fee at 30% | Hires to beat $48,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Construction manager Construction Managers | $114,990 | $22,998 | $34,497 | 2 |
| Foreman / field supervisor First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers | $79,920 | $15,984 | $23,976 | 3 |
| Estimator Cost Estimators | $78,740 | $15,748 | $23,622 | 3 |
| Plumber / pipefitter Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters | $63,800 | $12,760 | $19,140 | 4 |
| Electrician Electricians | $63,190 | $12,638 | $18,957 | 4 |
| HVAC/R technician Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers | $61,010 | $12,202 | $18,303 | 4 |
| CDL driver Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers | $58,640 | $11,728 | $17,592 | 4 |
| Roofer Roofers | $55,440 | $11,088 | $16,632 | 4 |
| Welder Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers | $53,750 | $10,750 | $16,125 | 4 |
Median annual wage, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national. The bars are each figure drawn against the largest in its column. The last column is the number of hires of that seat in a year before $48,000 - the Talent Pipeline Light package at its 12-month rate of $4,000 a month - costs less in total than paying 25 percent per placement, the midpoint of the range. Wages in your market run above or below the national figure; the market pages carry the local number for each of the 100 metros we recruit in.
30.0%
At two hires a year, our flat rate costs you exactly what a 30 percent contingency fee would.
That is the worst end of the range a percentage recruiter charges, and it is what you pay us if the pipeline sits idle. At 3 hires it matches the best end of that range. From 4 up it is cheaper than any percentage anyone will quote you, and the five-to-ten-percent figure on our pricing page is six to twelve hires a year - the middle of the table below, not the top of it.
So if you expect to hire a couple of people this year and then stop, pay a percentage. We would rather say that on our own website than have you work it out in month seven of a six-month term. The model earns its keep when hiring is continuous - which, for most commercial contractors carrying turnover in the field, it is.
What you actually paid per hire.
A fixed fee is only cheap if you use it. Same package, same $48,000, and the only thing that changes is how many people you hired.
| Hires in the year | What each one cost | Same as a placement fee of |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | $24,000 | 30.0% |
| 3 | $16,000 | 20.0% |
| 4 | $12,000 | 15.0% |
| 6 | $8,000 | 10.0% |
| 8 | $6,000 | 7.5% |
| 12 | $4,000 | 5.0% |
$48,000 a year divided by the hires made, expressed against $79,920 - the BLS national median for first-line supervisors of construction trades, the seat we fill most often. Orange is inside the 20-to-30-percent range a contingency recruiter charges, gold is better than that but not by much, and teal is the five-to-ten-percent effective fee our pricing page quotes - which is exactly what six to twelve hires a year works out to.
The same year, priced both ways.
Percentages and break-even points are easier to argue with than a year. So here is one: 7 seats filled across five trades, every one costed at the federal median for its occupation, with no thumb on the scale. Put a percentage against it, then put our smallest package against it.
| Seat | Hired | Median wage | Contingency at 25% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Construction manager | 1 | $114,990 | $28,748 |
| Field supervisor | 2 | $79,920 | $39,960 |
| Electrician | 2 | $63,190 | $31,595 |
| HVAC/R technician | 1 | $61,010 | $15,253 |
| Welder | 1 | $53,750 | $13,438 |
| The year | 7 | $515,970 | $128,994 |
At 25 percent, the midpoint of what they charge.
$6,857 a hire, or 9.3% of the payroll added.
Enough to put another field supervisor on the payroll for a year.
Median annual wages, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, national. The mix is illustrative; the wages are not. A year with two hires instead of 7 reverses this result entirely - that is the table further up the page, and it is the one to read first if your hiring is lumpy.
And what the empty seat was costing while you shopped.
A seat nobody is filling is not saving you the salary. It is costing you the work: at the federal median for a field supervisor, roughly $1,537 a week of budgeted payroll producing nothing, before you count the overtime covering it or the job that slipped.
That is deliberately the conservative number - the wage itself, divided by fifty-two, with no multiplier on top. Your real figure is higher and depends on the seat. The cost-of-vacancy calculator will work out yours.
What the monthly fee covers.
The same list every month, regardless of how many seats are open or how senior they are. There is no setup charge on any Talent Pipeline package and no per-placement cost at any point.
- Two assigned recruiters, cross-trained so a vacation does not stall your search
- Job posting written, formatted, and distributed across the major platforms
- Sourcing into the roughly nine in ten qualified people who never apply to anything
- A real phone screen on every candidate before you ever see the resume
- Interview scheduling, feedback collection, and candidate follow-up between rounds
- Offer benchmarking, and offer extension on your behalf if you want it
- Background, reference, drug, and motor-vehicle checks
- Your own portal with the live pipeline in it, and a weekly call on the program
The one thing that is not in it.
The optional careers-page plug-in - a branded jobs page and central portal bolted onto your existing website - is priced separately at a $600 one-time setup and $450 a month. It is the only add-on with a price anywhere on this site, and it is listed here so that "flat" means what it says. Nothing in the recruiting itself carries a separate charge. Details are on the services page.
How it lines up against the other ways to hire.
Flat rate is not the right answer to every hiring problem, and the honest comparison for each of the other four models is already written out in full. Each one includes the case for the other side.
Six questions worth asking any recruiter.
Including us. Two of these have answers that favour a contingency firm over our model, and they are in here for the same reason the losing rows are in the tables above: you are going to find out either way, and it is better for both of us if you find out now.
What is the fee actually a percentage of?
Base salary, total first-year cash, or a figure that quietly includes the signing bonus and the truck allowance? The same "22 percent" can differ by thousands depending on the answer, and the definition lives in the agreement, not the pitch.
What happens if the hire leaves in sixty days?
A contingency firm usually offers a replacement guarantee, which is a genuine advantage of that model and worth having in writing. Ours works differently: the pipeline is already running, so the next shortlist is part of the fee rather than a credit you have to claim.
Who owns a candidate you have already been shown?
Most contingency agreements include an ownership window - typically six to twelve months - on any name that firm submitted. It is the single clause most likely to cost you a fee you did not expect, and it survives the end of the agreement.
Am I being sold the candidate, or screened for?
A recruiter paid per placement is paid by you but earns from the hire, which is a real tension. Ask how many people they submitted for the last search and how many the client actually interviewed. A wide gap is a sign of volume, not of screening.
What does a slow month cost me?
Under a percentage, nothing - and that is a genuine strength of that model. Under ours you pay the same fee whether you hire or not. If your hiring is lumpy rather than steady, that is an argument against us, and it is the reason the tables above exist.
Can you show me the market data behind the offer?
Any recruiter can tell you a number feels right. Ask where it comes from. Every wage figure we quote traces to the federal Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics series, published nationally and by metro, and we will show you the source for your city.
Questions we get about the model itself.
Questions about the packages, the commitment, and billing are answered on the pricing page. These are about how a flat rate works.
Is flat-rate recruiting the same thing as a retainer?
They are close cousins, and the difference is what the money buys. A classic retainer is an advance against a placement fee: you pay a third up front, and the rest is still owed when the hire lands. A flat rate is the whole price. There is no back end, so the monthly number you agree to is the number you pay whether you hire one person that month or four.
Does a flat rate mean unlimited hires?
It means unlimited hires out of the candidates we submit. What is capped is the submittal volume, not the hiring: a package is 6, 12, or 18 qualified, screened candidates a month, and you can hire every one of them at no additional cost. In practice the cap that bites is your own interview capacity, not ours.
What happens in a month where I hire nobody?
You pay the same fee, and the pipeline keeps building. That is the honest downside of the model and the reason the cost-per-hire table on this page exists. If a quiet month is your normal month, a percentage recruiter will cost you less and we would rather tell you that here than at the end of a six-month term.
How do you make money if I hire ten people in a quarter?
On that quarter, less than a contingency firm would have. The model works because most of the cost of a search is the sourcing and screening we were doing for your pipeline anyway, and because a contractor who hires steadily renews. A recruiter paid per placement has to win the same argument from zero on every seat.
Does the fee change for a $200,000 director versus a $60,000 technician?
No. The monthly rate is set by submittal volume, not salary, which is why the savings get larger the more senior the seat is. At the national median wage the federal government published for construction managers, a 25 percent contingency fee on a single hire is already more than half the annual cost of our smallest package.
Can I switch over in the middle of a search a percentage recruiter is already running?
Yes, and it is worth reading your agreement first. Most contingency agreements include an ownership window on candidates that firm has already submitted to you, typically six to twelve months. We work around those names rather than through them, and we will ask you for the submitted list at kickoff so nobody ends up owing a fee twice.
Run your own numbers before you commit.
Tell us the seats and the market and we will show you what the local wage actually is, what the pool looks like, and whether the flat rate beats a percentage for the way you hire. If it does not, we will say so.