Flat-rate recruiting, with the math shown.
A flat-rate recruiter bills 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. Here is the whole calculation, against published federal wages, including the part where the flat rate loses.
What flat-rate recruiting actually is.
Flat-rate recruiting 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: they are paid nothing until you hire, and then paid a share of whatever you agreed to pay that person, usually 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary.
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. Below are the national median annual wages the Bureau of Labor Statistics published for May 2025 for the occupations we are asked to fill most, and what a contingency fee on one hire comes to 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 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.
And the point where a flat rate stops being a deal.
A fixed fee is only cheap if you use it. The number that decides the question is what you actually paid per hire at the end of the year, and that depends entirely on how many hires there were. Same package, same $48,000, five different outcomes.
| Hires in the year | What each one cost | Same as a placement fee of |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | $24,000 | 30.0% |
| 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.
Read the top row before the bottom one.
At two hires a year the flat rate costs you the same as a 30 percent contingency fee, which is the worst end of the range. At four it is no better than a typical percentage. It only starts winning at around six, and the five-to-ten-percent figure quoted on our pricing page is the middle of this table, not the bottom 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 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.
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.