Most Irish recruitment agencies will not tell you how they charge until you are on a call. We publish the structure so you can work out what suits you before you pick up the phone.
There are four ways to buy recruitment. They suit different situations, and picking the wrong one costs you either money or time.
Permanent recruitment
How it is charged: a search commencement fee, then a placement fee when your hire starts.
The commencement fee buys committed search time. It is what separates a genuine search from a CV forward. In return you get a defined process:
- An agreed brief, written down, covering the role and what a good hire looks like in your business
- A mapped market, so you know who is out there and not only who applied
- Direct approach to people who are in post and not looking
- A shortlist you can interview, not a pile you have to sift
- Offer management, including the counter offer conversation before it happens
Suits you when: the role is permanent, the skill set is scarce, or you have already advertised and the response was wrong.
Executive and senior search
How it is charged: a retained search fee, staged across the assignment.
For director level, commercial leadership and roles you cannot advertise without telling the market something you would rather it did not know. Confidential, fully mapped, with a documented long list before the shortlist.
Suits you when: the hire is business critical, the pool is small enough to name, or discretion matters.
Recruitment partnership
How it is charged: a monthly retainer, plus a reduced fee per hire.
You get a named consultant working your requirements continuously rather than one role at a time. They learn your projects, your sites, your interview process and your standards. The per hire cost falls as volume rises.
Suits you when: you are hiring steadily across a year, you run multiple sites, or you are staffing up for a programme of work rather than filling a vacancy.
Contract and temporary staffing
How it is charged: an hourly or daily rate per worker, invoiced against approved timesheets.
The worker is employed by us. Everything sits inside the one rate you are quoted: the worker’s pay, employer PRSI, holiday pay and public holiday entitlement, employer and public liability insurance, payroll processing and Revenue reporting, and our margin.
Suits you when: a project has a fixed duration, headcount is capped, cover is needed for leave, or the requirement is real but the permanent headcount is not signed off.
Which model suits which situation
| Your situation | Model |
|---|---|
| One senior permanent hire, hard to find | Permanent recruitment |
| You advertised and got the wrong people | Permanent recruitment |
| Replacing someone who does not know yet | Executive and senior search |
| Commercial director or country lead | Executive and senior search |
| Twelve to twenty hires over a year | Recruitment partnership |
| Multiple sites, continuous churn | Recruitment partnership |
| Project needs eight people for fourteen months | Contract staffing |
| Maternity or sick leave cover | Contract staffing |
| Headcount not approved but the work is here | Contract staffing |
| Public body buying through a framework | Framework terms apply |
Contract or permanent?
The question most employers get wrong is not price, it is timing.
A senior permanent hire in Irish construction is a four to six month exercise from brief to start date, once you add search and interview time to a two or three month notice period. If a project milestone will not wait that long, a permanent process will not save it. Hire on contract for the gap and run the permanent search in parallel.
The reverse is also true. If you keep extending a contractor because the permanent role never gets signed off, you are paying a premium indefinitely for a person you could have employed.
Public sector and framework pricing
Where you are buying through a public framework, the commercial terms are fixed by the framework. There is nothing to negotiate. See public sector recruitment.
What to ask any agency before you engage
- Who is actually doing the search? Ask for the consultant’s name and whether they have filled this role before.
- Where will the candidates come from? If the answer is job boards, you could have done that yourself.
- How many people will I see? Three relevant people beats twenty CVs. Ask how the shortlist gets built.
- What is inside a contract rate? If holiday pay, employer PRSI or insurance sit outside it, your real cost is higher than the number quoted.
- Who handles compliance? For public sector work, ask specifically about vetting, mandatory training and right to work checks.
Get a quote for a live role
Tell us the role, the location and whether it is permanent or contract. We will come back with the model that fits and what it costs. You will hear back within 24 hours.
Send us your requirement or call 01 443 3917.