The comparison matrix
Read down the column matching your situation, not your budget.
| Contingency agency | Research-led sourcing | RPO | In-house team | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fee basis | 15–25% on placement | Project fee or day rate | Per hire or managed service | Salary plus tooling |
| Paid if nobody is hired | No | Yes | Varies | Fixed cost either way |
| Rises with the salary offered | Yes | No | Often | No |
| Coverage | Existing network | Researched market | Varies by provider | Depends on capacity |
| Longlist shown first | No | Yes | Rarely | Sometimes |
| Research handed over | No | Yes | Varies | Internal |
| Owns your process and ATS | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Independence from the outcome | None | Full | Partial | Lower |
| Best for | Deep, active markets | Hard roles and scarce populations | Sustained high volume | Sustained similar volume |
Research-led sourcing
What we do. Treat this section with appropriate scepticism.
What it does well
Reaches people who are not looking and are not in any agency database. Shows the target population before contacting it. Hands over the longlist, approach record and decline reasons.
Because the fee is for the work, the honest finding can be that the band is wrong or the role is two jobs.
Where it is the wrong purchase
When candidates are plentiful and actively applying — you are paying for research you do not need.
When you need someone to own the whole process including offer and onboarding; that is RPO or an in-house team.
What it costs
$3,000 to $7,500 per role, or $5,200 to $9,500 a month for a dedicated seat. Full bands on the cost page.
Contingency agencies
Paid only if a placement is made.
What they do well
Speed and zero commitment. No fee unless you hire, immediate access to an existing network, and genuine value where the qualified population is deep and actively looking.
Where it structurally fails
The fee depends on a placement, so there is no commercial reason to report that the role is wrongly designed or the package uncompetitive. Coverage is whoever can be reached fast rather than the market.
Multiple agencies on one role signals to the market that you are hiring before you intended, and the research never reaches you.
What it costs
15 to 25 per cent of first-year salary on placement. Cheap if it works and nothing if it does not — but research you did not pay for is research you do not have.
RPO and managed service
What it does well
Takes ownership of the end-to-end process at sustained volume: requisitions, ATS, candidate experience, reporting and hiring-manager management.
At high, predictable volume it is usually the most economical model and the most consistent candidate experience.
Where to look carefully
Per-hire pricing reintroduces the incentive problem, and sourcing depth varies enormously between providers. Ask who actually does the research and whether specialist roles are subcontracted.
Our position
We provide RPO support rather than full-scope RPO: the research and support layers behind your team or alongside an incumbent provider. We do not own requisitions, run your ATS or price per hire, and if that is what you need we will say so.
In-house teams
What it does well
Institutional memory, near-zero marginal cost per role once the capability exists, deep knowledge of the business, and full control of candidate experience.
Where it struggles
Episodic specialist roles, markets or languages the team does not already know, and the outreach-law differences between countries, which have to be learned rather than assumed.
Also capacity spikes: a hiring surge either breaks the team or gets outsourced in a hurry at the worst price.
What it costs
Fully-loaded salary per sourcer plus tooling. The business case turns on volume, and should be run with fully-loaded cost on both sides.
A word on sourcing tools
Sourcing platforms build lists quickly and at breadth no manual research can match, and for a well-covered market they are genuinely useful.
What they cannot do is verify that someone is still in the role, write an approach that gets a reply, qualify motivation and notice, or know that unsolicited advertising email generally requires prior consent in Germany and Austria. A tool without a researcher produces volume — which in most technical markets is the problem rather than the solution.
If you already licence one, the useful question is not whether to replace it but which roles need researched depth that the tool cannot give you.
How to choose
Five questions that usually settle it.
- Would the people you need answer a job advert? If yes, your own team or a contingency agency. If no, sourcing.
- Do you need the research afterwards? If the longlist has value beyond this hire — the next role, a pay review, succession — insist on a model that hands it over.
- How many roles a quarter? Below two, buy per project. Between two and six, buy a seat. Consistently above that, build in-house and commission for specialist gaps.
- How many markets and languages? Cross-border and non-English campaigns are where commissioned sourcing is hardest to replicate internally.
- Is the role confidential? That rules out multiple-agency contingency and is difficult to run internally.
Six questions to ask any provider
Including us.
- Will you show me the target longlist before contacting anyone? A provider who cannot searched a database rather than researching a market.
- Who actually does the research, and can I speak to them? Not an account manager.
- What is your outreach-law position in each market in scope? It should be answerable in a sentence per country.
- Do I own the dataset afterwards? Ownership and sight are different things.
- What is your fee if nobody is hired? The answer tells you whose interest the advice serves.
- What would make you tell me not to run this campaign? A provider who cannot name a scenario has either never done it or is not paid in a way that permits it.
Comparison FAQs
What is the difference between sourcing and recruitment?
Sourcing finds and engages candidates. Recruitment runs the whole hiring process from requisition to onboarding. Sourcing is the front half, separated out and bought on its own.
The commercial difference matters more than the vocabulary: sourcing on a project fee pays for work and hands over the research; contingency recruitment pays on placement and does not.
When should we use a contingency agency instead?
When the market is deep and candidates are actively looking. If several agencies already have good people on file and those people would answer an advert, contingency is faster and often cheaper, and paying for exhaustive research adds cost you do not need.
We will tell you when that is your situation. It is a legitimate purchase for the right role.
Should we build an in-house sourcing team?
If you have sustained volume of similar roles, yes. Marginal cost per role falls to near zero and institutional memory is genuinely valuable.
It struggles with episodic specialist roles, with markets or languages the team does not already know, and with the outreach-law differences between countries. Most mature teams run both.
What about RPO?
Recruitment process outsourcing takes ownership of the end-to-end process, usually under a per-hire or managed-service contract. It suits sustained high volume where you want a provider to own requisitions, your ATS and the candidate experience.
We provide RPO support rather than full-scope RPO: the research and support layers behind your team or alongside an incumbent provider, on a project fee.
Is a sourcing tool not cheaper than a sourcing partner?
Per seat, usually. Sourcing platforms are good at building lists quickly and at breadth no manual research matches.
What they cannot do is verify that someone is still in the role, write an approach that gets a reply, qualify motivation and notice, or know that cold advertising email generally needs prior consent in Germany. A tool without a researcher produces volume, which is the problem rather than the solution.
How do we judge a sourcing provider?
Six questions. Will you show me the target longlist before contacting anyone? Who actually does the research, and can I speak to them? What is your outreach-law position in each market in scope? Do I own the dataset? What is your fee if nobody is hired? And what would make you tell me not to run this campaign?
A provider who answers all six is selling a method. One who answers none is selling access to a database you could licence yourself.
Can sourcing and an agency work on the same role?
They can, and it usually goes badly. Candidates approached by two parties about the same role conclude the process is disorganised, and the market learns you are hiring before you intended.
If coverage is the concern, a documented longlist answers it better than two overlapping networks.
What does 'research-led' mean in practice?
That the target population is built and verified before anyone is contacted, and that the longlist is a deliverable in its own right.
It is testable. Ask to see the longlist before outreach. A provider who cannot produce one searched a database rather than researching a market.