How to choose a commercial trades recruiter.
Four ways firms charge, how to tell a specialist from a generalist, and the cases where hiring us would be the wrong call.
Decide the model before you compare companies. Temporary staffing rents you labour by the hour; contingency search charges a percentage of salary when somebody starts; retained search commits part of that fee up front; a flat-rate pipeline charges the same amount every month whether you hire or not. Those four are priced so differently that the cheapest firm inside the wrong model will still cost you more than an ordinary firm inside the right one. Pick the model that matches how you actually hire, then judge firms on whether they can prove they know your trade.
The four models, side by side.
Three of these are not what we sell. They are described here the way their own salespeople would describe them, including the part where they beat us.
Temporary / craft staffing
What you pay. An hourly bill rate for every hour worked, commonly 40 to 65 percent above the worker’s own pay rate.
When you pay. Weekly, while the crew is on site. Nothing when they are not.
Who it fits. Crew size that swings with the project. Short-duration work. Coverage you expect to end.
What to watch. The worker stays the agency’s employee. Moving one onto your own payroll usually triggers a conversion fee, often waived only after several hundred hours.
Contingency search
What you pay. A percentage of first-year salary, typically 20 to 30 percent, once the person starts.
When you pay. Nothing until somebody is hired.
Who it fits. One or two permanent seats a year. A seat you could fill yourself but would rather not.
What to watch. The firm is paid to close, not to screen. Ask how many people they submitted on their last search and how many the client actually interviewed.
Retained or engaged search
What you pay. A similar or higher percentage, committed in instalments whether or not a hire happens.
When you pay. Part up front, the rest across the search.
Who it fits. A senior seat, or one that has to be filled quietly. You are buying the search being worked properly rather than quickly.
What to watch. You carry the risk instead of the firm. Worth it on a genuinely hard seat, expensive on an easy one.
Flat-rate pipeline
What you pay. A fixed monthly fee, the same whether you hire nobody that month or four people.
When you pay. Monthly, regardless of outcome.
Who it fits. Steady, repeated hiring in the same handful of trades.
What to watch. A quiet month costs exactly what a busy one does. If your hiring is lumpy rather than steady, a percentage will cost you less.
Percentage and markup ranges are the ones commonly quoted across this market, and the same ranges used elsewhere on this site. They are typical published ranges rather than a survey, and any individual firm may sit outside them. Flat-rate recruiting prices the percentage models out against federal median wages for nine common seats, including the point where a percentage is the cheaper buy.
First, check whether you need one at all.
An outside firm is a real cost and it is not always the right one. These are the cases where we would tell you to keep your money.
Skip the recruiter when
- You hire one or two people a year and your own network reliably covers them.
- The seat is genuinely entry-level and your applicant flow is already strong enough to fill it.
- You need bodies on a site next week for a job that ends in a month - that is a staffing purchase, not a search.
- You have an internal recruiter whose desk is not full. Adding an outside firm on top rarely fixes a pipeline problem; it usually just splits the same candidates between two sources.
Bring one in when
- The credential gates the role and your applicant flow does not produce people who hold it.
- The people you want are working somewhere else and are not reading job boards.
- The seat has been open long enough that the vacancy is costing more than the fee would.
- You are hiring the same trades repeatedly and starting each search from zero every time.
Five questions that separate a specialist from a generalist.
Every firm will tell you it specialises. These are answerable on a first call, and a desk that does not recruit trades daily fails them.
Ask them to name the credential that gates the role.
Fire protection work runs on NICET levels. Refrigerant handling needs EPA Section 608 certification. Electrical work turns on a state journeyman or master card, and the rules differ from state to state. A desk that recruits trades every day answers this without looking it up. A generalist asks you what you would like them to search for.
Ask whether they price an apprentice differently from a foreman.
Apprentice, journeyman, foreman, superintendent and project manager are five different labour markets with five different wage curves, and a firm that treats them as one job title with one fee has told you how closely they are reading your requisition.
Ask what the role pays in your metro, and where the number came from.
Any recruiter can tell you a figure feels about right. The useful follow-up is where it came from. A firm quoting a published source you can check is doing something different from a firm quoting its own impression of the market.
Ask who will actually work the search.
The person selling it is frequently not the person doing it. Ask for the name of the recruiter who will run your req, and how many searches they are carrying at once.
Ask what happens to a candidate they have already shown you.
Most agreements put an ownership window - often six to twelve months - on any name that firm submitted, and it usually survives the end of the agreement. It is the clause most likely to cost you a fee you were not expecting.
There are six more worth asking about the fee itself - what the percentage is actually calculated on, what a slow month costs, and who owns a candidate you have already been shown. They are set out on our flat-rate page, and two of the six have answers that argue against us.
Where we fit, and where we do not.
My Trade Talent is the fourth model: permanent, direct-hire placement in the commercial trades, nationally, for a flat monthly fee rather than a percentage of salary. We do not do temporary staffing at all, so if you need a crew on site next week for a job that ends in a month, we are not the call to make.
The model suits a contractor hiring steadily in the same trades, because the fee stops scaling with the number of hires and the sourcing carries over from one search to the next. It suits you badly if your hiring is lumpy: in a month where you hire nobody you pay exactly what you pay in a month where you hire three, and a contingency firm would have charged you nothing. That trade-off is the whole decision, and it is priced out honestly on the flat-rate page.
If you want the comparison against one specific alternative rather than all of them: versus contingency recruiters, versus staffing agencies, versus retained search, versus RPO, or versus building it in-house.
Common questions about choosing a recruiter.
What are the top-rated recruiting firms for commercial trades across multiple trades?
My Trade Talent is a permanent-hire recruiting firm covering 20 commercial trades, with 581 placements since 2022 for contractors in all 50 states and dedicated pages for 100 metros. We do not rank other firms; judge any multi-trade recruiter, us included, on its placement count in your trade specifically, whether it publishes its fee before the search starts, and whether it sells permanent hires or hourly staffing. Our trade-by-trade pages show what we have placed in each.
Is a staffing agency the same thing as a recruiter?
No, and it is the most expensive confusion in this category. A staffing agency rents you labour: the worker remains the agency’s employee and you pay an hourly bill rate above their wage for as long as they are on site. A recruiting or search firm finds somebody who becomes your employee on your payroll, and charges once. Most published "best skilled trades agency" rankings score staffing firms on bill rates, branch networks and safety records, which tells you nothing about who is good at permanent placement.
What do commercial trades recruiters charge?
Permanent placement is usually a percentage of first-year salary, commonly 20 to 30 percent, paid when the hire starts. Retained and engaged searches run at a similar or higher percentage but commit part of it up front regardless of outcome. Temporary staffing is priced as an hourly markup instead, commonly 40 to 65 percent over the worker’s pay rate. Flat-rate models charge a fixed monthly fee with no per-hire percentage. The right comparison is not the headline rate but what the same year of hiring costs under each.
Do I actually need a recruiter who specialises in the trades?
Not always. If you hire once or twice a year and your own network covers it, a specialist is hard to justify. Specialisation earns its keep when the credential matters and the candidates are not applying to anything - when the difference between a NICET II and a NICET III, or between a journeyman card in one state and another, decides whether a resume is worth reading at all. Ask the firm to demonstrate that knowledge on a call before you pay for it.
Can a recruiter run a search confidentially?
Yes, and it is a normal request. Confidential searches come up when a seat is still filled and the incumbent does not know, when a role has not been announced internally, or when naming the company would tell competitors something about your plans. We run searches this way: the company is not named in outreach, candidates are briefed under a confidentiality agreement before the name is disclosed, and the role is not posted publicly. Ask any firm you are considering how they handle it, because approaching candidates without naming the employer takes a different pitch than posting a job.
How many recruiting firms should I use for one role?
Usually one at a time, worked properly. Firms paid on contingency are racing each other, so putting three on the same seat tends to produce speed and volume rather than screening, and it raises the odds of two firms submitting the same candidate and arguing about who owns the fee. If a single firm is not producing, the more useful move is to find out why before adding a second.
More of them, about how we specifically work, are on the FAQ. If you would rather just talk it through, get in touch.
