RPO, Retained, or Contingent: Choosing the Right Recruiting Model for Your Agency

There are three ways to buy recruiting, and the right one depends almost entirely on how often you hire. Getting this wrong is the quietest budget leak in an agency.

Contingent search: pay on success

You pay only when a hire lands, with fees starting around 15 percent. It fits a role you need filled now, with no ongoing commitment. The trade-off is cost per hire and priority, since contingent work competes for a recruiter's attention.

Retained search: the affordable middle

You retain a partner monthly and pay a much lower success fee per hire. For agencies hiring several people a year, the all-in cost lands well below contingent. It also removes friction: you open a role by asking, not by signing anything new.

• ◆Best when you hire more than two or three people a year
• ◆Gives you an always-on recruiting partner without an in-house hire
• ◆Makes small, fast roles worth running properly instead of posting and hoping

RPO: embedded talent function

Recruitment process outsourcing puts a dedicated pod inside your workflow, owning sourcing, screening, coordination, and reporting across many roles. It fits funded startups and growing agencies scaling five to fifty hires in a year, and it replaces the need to build a talent team from scratch.

A simple way to decide

• ◆One urgent role and no forecast: contingent
• ◆Steady hiring across the year with unpredictable timing: retained
• ◆High volume across functions with reporting needs: RPO

Run the math on your last four hires

Add up placement fees, job board spend, and the hours your senior people spent screening. Agencies who do that exercise usually find they paid a retained price for a contingent experience. We are happy to run the comparison with you before you commit to anything.