Playbook, recruitment agency
Why a hiring manager cannot get a number out of one message
Every other trade quoting from a website is estimating work it is about to do. A permanent recruitment fee is a percentage applied to a salary that will be settled at offer, with a candidate who has not been found yet, so the quote is a multiplication with a term missing. Temporary work has no single figure either, because the charge rate depends on a shift pattern nobody has written down.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for quotes and estimates holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The fee is derived rather than estimated: it comes out of a salary agreed at offer stage, so a client asking what this will cost is asking for a calculation that cannot be completed today.
- The commercial basis changes the answer before the percentage does. Contingent work paid only on a start, an exclusive period, and a retained search billed in stages are three arrangements, and clients use the three words as though they were one.
- Temporary cover cannot be quoted as a total at all, since the client is asking about hours nobody has counted, at a rate that moves with overtime, unsocial hours and how long the assignment runs.
- A candidate typing the word quote almost always means the rate on an advertised job, which is a question about what an employer pays rather than about anything the agency prices.
How it arrives
- can you send me a quote for hiring a warehouse manager
- how much would it cost to fill two roles at once
- what is the difference between retained and contingent
- do we pay anything if we do not end up hiring
- what would the hourly charge be for a forklift driver
- how much do you charge if we give you the role exclusively
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your fee bands and what moves between them | The seniority or salary bands, what an exclusive period changes, what a second hire changes. A hiring manager comparing three agencies wants the shape of the schedule, and the one that publishes it is the one that gets briefed. |
|---|---|
| How a retained assignment is staged and billed | What is payable at engagement, at shortlist and at start, and what happens if the search is abandoned partway. Retained terms are the ones clients least expect and dispute most, and the staging is the part they did not read. |
| The definition of a temporary charge rate | Which elements are inside the hourly figure, how overtime and unsocial hours are charged, and what happens to the rate if an assignment extends. Without this a client budgets from the advertised pay rate and is wrong by a wide margin. |
| A written statement of what is not a quote | That any figure given before a role is scoped is indicative. It reads like lawyering right up until the first time somebody holds you to a number typed into a chat box during a Friday afternoon enquiry. |
The reply
I can give you the basis but not the number. Permanent roles are charged as a percentage of the first year salary from the bands on our fee schedule [1], so the figure follows the salary you settle on rather than anything that can be worked out now. If you want the role handled exclusively or on a retained basis, the terms and the staging are different again [2]. Temporary cover is quoted as an hourly charge rate and it moves with the shift pattern, so it needs the actual pattern to mean anything. Leave your name, an email and the roles and a consultant will put figures against them.
It says what it cannot do in the opening sentence rather than after three paragraphs of context, which is what a hiring manager comparing suppliers actually wants. Naming exclusive and retained separately catches the client who thinks they asked one question. The handover asks for the roles because that is the missing term.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor names a job title, a salary or a shift pattern and asks what it would cost, or asks to be sent terms.
I cannot price a role from here, because a permanent fee follows the agreed salary and a temporary rate follows the shift pattern. Leave your name, an email and the roles and a consultant will send terms with the figures on them.
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 give a figure against a named role, because a percentage typed into a chat window becomes the number the client expects to see on the invoice.
- Never say a search costs nothing until somebody starts without naming the arrangement, since that is true of contingent work and false of a retained assignment.
- Never estimate what a candidate is likely to want in salary, because that sets an expectation on one side of a negotiation the agency has to run.
- Never tell a candidate what a role pays beyond what the live advert already states.
Questions
- Clients want a number before they will brief. Does refusing lose them?
- Refusing the number loses fewer than refusing the basis. Publish the bands, what exclusivity changes and how retained work is staged, and most hiring managers can price it closely enough themselves to pick up the phone.
- Can it produce a written quote?
- No. It cannot generate a document, price anything or send terms. It explains how the fee is constructed, cites the schedule, and takes a name, an email and the roles so a consultant can send the real thing.
- Should it explain retained search to a small client?
- It should define it neutrally and leave the choice alone. Steering a client toward retained terms in a chat window is selling, and the assistant has none of the context a consultant would want before recommending it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a recruitment agencyTwo audiences on one website. Process, payroll and compliance questions are answerable, application outcomes never are.
- Handling quotes and estimates in generalWhat has to be known before a number is possible, how the scoping step works, and how to answer without stonewalling or inventing a figure.
- 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.
- The lockout that costs somebody a week's payA temp who cannot log in on the evening of the cut off has a deadline, not an inconvenience. What an assistant can honestly do about it.
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.