Playbook, recruitment agency
The word fees means two opposite things on a recruitment site
Half the people typing what do you charge are jobseekers, and the correct answer to them is nothing, ever. The other half are hiring managers asking about a percentage of a first year salary or an hourly charge rate with employment costs and margin inside it. An assistant that leads with a fee schedule has just told somebody looking for work that they are about to be billed.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Only one of the two audiences pays anything at all, so the first job of any pricing answer here is working out which of them is asking, and getting it wrong loses a candidate outright.
- Permanent and temporary pricing are not two tiers of one product: a permanent fee is a percentage applied to a salary, and a temporary charge is an hourly figure that already carries holiday and employer costs before any margin is added.
- The client's real question is what the percentage is at their salary band, because fee schedules in this trade slide with seniority, with volume and with whether the agency is working exclusively.
- A published fee is an opening position in a market where terms get agreed client by client, so a figure quoted without the words standard schedule attached becomes the number the hiring manager expects on the invoice.
How it arrives
- do you charge candidates a fee
- what percentage do you charge for a permanent placement
- is your fee based on basic salary or the whole package
- what is your hourly charge rate for temps
- do i have to pay anything to register with you
- does your fee change if we hire more than one person
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your permanent fee schedule, with the basis stated | Whether the percentage runs on basic salary or on the total first year package including guaranteed bonus and allowances, and where the bands sit. The basis is what gets argued over after the invoice, not the percentage. |
|---|---|
| One sentence saying candidates are never charged | It costs nothing to publish on the candidate side and it stops a jobseeker reading a client terms page and concluding you are an outfit that takes money from workers. Some of them have met one. |
| What is inside a temporary charge rate | The elements the hourly figure already contains and the ones added on top. A client comparing a charge rate with an annual salary is comparing two things that were never the same shape, and this is the paragraph that fixes it. |
| Which parts of the schedule move | Exclusivity, retained work, multiple hires, agreed discounts. Publish the shape of the schedule rather than one number, or every hiring manager quotes back the lowest figure on the page as though it were theirs. |
The reply
Nothing at all if you are looking for work: we are paid by the employer and never by the candidate, and registering is free [1]. If you are hiring, permanent placements are charged as a percentage of the first year salary on the basis set out in our fee schedule, and temporary workers are charged at an hourly rate that already includes holiday and employer costs with our margin on top [2]. The percentage depends on the role and the terms we agree, so I cannot commit to a figure here. Leave your name, an email and the role and a consultant will send the schedule.
It answers the candidate first without being asked which audience is typing, because the cost of a jobseeker believing there is a fee is that they close the tab. Naming what sits inside an hourly rate stops a client comparing it with a salary. The refusal is narrow: it declines the number while offering the document.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor names a salary, a job title or a headcount and wants the fee for it, or says another agency has quoted them a percentage.
I can tell you how our schedule is built but not what your rate would be, because it depends on the role and the terms. Leave your name, an email and the role and a consultant will come back with it in writing.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never quote a fee before the visitor has said whether they are hiring or looking for work, because half of them are candidates and a percentage frightens those people off the site.
- Never suggest a percentage is negotiable, since the hiring manager will open every later conversation at whatever the assistant implied.
- Never present a charge rate as though it were the worker's pay rate, because the two figures are far apart and the gap is what workers feel misled about.
- Never state a fee for a sector or a salary band that is not on your published schedule.
Questions
- Candidates ask what we charge them. Is that really a question?
- It is one of the commonest on the candidate side, and it comes from people who have encountered outfits that do charge for training, certification or overseas placement. One published sentence saying the employer pays settles it permanently.
- Can it quote our permanent percentage?
- It can quote what you publish, with the basis attached. What it must not do is imply movement. A number given in a chat window becomes the client's opening position, and your consultant then has to negotiate upward from a figure nobody authorised.
- Should it explain the margin on a temporary rate?
- It should explain what the charge rate contains, not what the margin is. Composition is a fair question from a client budgeting a shift pattern. The margin on a named assignment sits between you and that client and does not belong in a widget.
Keep reading
- Everything for a recruitment agencyTwo audiences on one website. Process, payroll and compliance questions are answerable, application outcomes never are.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- Why a hiring manager cannot get a number out of one messageA recruitment quote is arithmetic on a salary nobody has settled yet. What may be said about contingent, exclusive and retained work.
- Nobody got back to me, and the three complaints hiding in itThe commonest complaint here is hearing nothing after applying, and it is the one an assistant cannot resolve. What it can honestly do.
- Two buildings, and one of them is not the agency'sA branch you control and a client site you do not. What a recruiter may say about access, and where an adjustment request has to go.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.