Recruiting fees, in plain contingency terms

What does contingency mean when you hire through us?

Contingency means our fee is earned only when you hire a candidate we introduced. If the search ends without a hire, you owe nothing. There is no deposit, no retainer by default and no charge for the calibration call, the market mapping or the outreach that happens before you meet anyone.

The American Staffing Association describes contingency search in the same terms: the client pays a fee when the employee is hired. That definition matters because a lot of recruiting is sold under loose labels. Some arrangements are called contingency and then ask for an engagement payment, a posting fee or a minimum charge that is due whatever happens. We do not do that. The first invoice you could ever receive from us follows an accepted offer from a candidate we introduced, on the terms in the agreement you signed.

For a site manager or owner this changes the risk. You are not paying for activity, hours or a promise of effort. You are paying for an outcome you chose. That also shapes how we work. Because we only earn when someone starts with you, the economics push us toward a short list of people who fit the brief rather than a long list that looks busy.

What do you not charge for?

We do not bill hourly, we do not charge to post or repost your job and we do not take a retainer unless you ask for a retained structure and both sides agree it in writing. Calibration, research, outreach, live qualification and candidate briefs are all part of the contingency service.

Hourly billing makes sense for consultants who sell time. It makes little sense for a hiring search, where the time spent says nothing about whether you end up with the right Critical Facilities Engineer or commissioning lead. We would rather carry the cost of the work and be judged on the result.

Reposting is a different issue. Job board fees, sponsored listings and refresh charges are a common line item in some staffing arrangements. We do not run your search through postings, so there is nothing to repost and nothing to charge for it. The people we approach are mostly working today and are not reading job boards.

Retained search exists for good reasons, usually confidential executive appointments where a client wants a dedicated, exclusive process with payments tied to milestones. If you want that structure, we will talk about it openly. It is never assumed, and it is never slipped into a contingency agreement.

Where are the actual terms written down?

Every term lives in the signed recruiting agreement: the fee basis, when it becomes payable, the replacement guarantee period and any exclusivity. We send the agreement before the search starts, you read it and you sign it. Nothing on this website replaces or overrides what that document says.

We keep a fee figure off this page on purpose. Searches differ in level, location and difficulty, and a single headline number would either mislead you or force a conversation about exceptions later. The agreement gives you the precise basis for your search in writing, before any outreach happens.

If anything in the agreement is unclear, ask before you sign. A clause you only understand after the invoice arrives is a failure on our side, not yours. We would rather spend time on a question now than leave a hiring manager surprised later.

The replacement guarantee works the same way. It applies to standard search agreements, and the period and conditions are set out in the agreement itself, not in marketing copy. Read that clause alongside the fee clause, because together they describe what you are buying.

How does a contingency fee compare with the cost of an empty seat?

The fee is a known amount payable once, after a hire. The empty seat is an unknown amount that grows every week: delayed commissioning, overtime for the people covering, deferred maintenance and the risk of a mistake during a change. Comparing the two honestly is the best way to judge any recruiting spend.

Data center sites are unforgiving about gaps. A missing shift lead means someone else carries the escalation phone. A missing commissioning manager can push a level of testing to the right and hold up turnover. Those costs rarely show up on one budget line, which is why they are easy to ignore.

Our cost-of-vacancy calculator lets you put your own numbers against the problem. Nothing is pre-filled, and nothing leaves the page. Use it before you decide whether to run the search yourself, use a staffing partner or bring us in.

Is contingency the right model for every hire?

Not always. Contingency works well when you need a specific data center specialist and want to pay only for a result. If you need dozens of short-term contractors on someone else's payroll, a staffing agency fits better. If you want to outsource your whole recruiting function, look at RPO. We will tell you plainly.

We place people onto your payroll. We do not employ contractors and lease them back to you. If that is what your site needs this quarter, a staffing provider is the more honest recommendation, and we would rather say so on the first call than take a search we cannot serve well.

Our comparison page sets the four main models side by side, including the cases where hiring in-house is the better call. Read it if you are deciding how to staff a whole program rather than a single seat.