An engineering staffing agency gets paid when your new hire starts. That moment is also when most agencies stop working on your problem. So choose the model by who owns week six, not by who sends resumes fastest.
You’re not buying resumes or effort. You’re buying an incentive structure, and it rarely covers the part you feel most, which is the ramp. Below, what each model gets paid to do, and how to find out who runs your search day to day.
The Fee Is Paid at the Signature
Plenty of hires start on the agreed date and still leave you worse off by week six, with your best tech doing shadow support instead of billable work. The invoice is the easy part to finish. The ramp is the part you pay for twice when the incentives point the wrong way.
Every agency model has a revenue event, and the differences between them are mostly about where that event falls.
- Contract staffing earns while a person occupies the seat.
- Contingency recruiting earns when your candidate starts.
- Retained search bills on a schedule that still closes around the hire.
None of the three is paid for week six. For a managed service provider (MSP), the hire isn’t a win until delivery steadies. You win when the engineer takes tickets, meets your documentation standard, and your senior tech stops backfilling the gap. In most agency models the revenue event comes due at the exact seam where that work begins.
Incentive structure explains that better than character does. A recruiter paid at the start date will work hard to produce a start date. What the fee doesn’t buy is attention on day 10, day 30, or the first morning your new sysadmin meets a client who escalates.
Ask Who Holds Your Search, and How Many Others
The agency’s name goes on the contract, and one recruiter does the work. That person runs your req between early voicemails and late-afternoon follow-ups, and your outcome tracks their attention.
When week one is loud and week two goes quiet, the market is rarely the reason. A bigger client called with something urgent, and your req slid down the stack. Ask three questions before you sign, and ask them about the person rather than the firm.
- Who holds the search day to day.
- How many other open searches that person carries this month.
- What happens to yours when a bigger client calls with a hot role.
A straight answer names a person and a number. Four open searches, two of them in your discipline, and here is who covers them in a vacation week. A soft answer talks about the team’s bench strength and the firm’s database. Searches sold that way go quiet in week two, because nobody in that answer carries your req on a personal list.
Then ask what you will see every week. A written weekly report of outreach, replies and next steps is the cheapest way to catch a search that has gone quiet, which is why we report weekly on every engagement. Ask the same three questions of any engineering recruitment agency you shortlist.
A Replacement Guarantee Buys Another Search
A month after a successful hire, the seat can be open again while your team still carries the coverage. A guarantee restarts the search. It can’t give you back the calendar you burned.
What a replacement clause buys is a rerun, not the time back. It doesn’t refund the weeks your senior engineer spent covering the seat, the client escalations that stacked up, or the momentum lost when onboarding starts over.
Read the terms before you need them. Ask what voids the clause, how long the window runs, and if it covers an engineer who resigns as well as one you let go. Ask if you get a replacement search or your money back, because those are different promises. Firms differ on every one of those, and the answers are much harder to get once a seat is empty for the second time.
If a sysadmin leaves in week four, refilling still takes a typical 4 to 12 weeks for a quality hire. Treat the clause as a way to restart work, then staff internal coverage as though you’ll need it. The more useful conversation with any firm is about reducing early turnover rather than about who pays for the next search.
Training Is the Fourth Letter, and No Agency Owns It
The FACT Driven Hiring System ends in T for Training. Framework, Attraction, Candidate evaluation, Training. Almost no agency gets paid to touch that last step, so onboarding belongs inside hiring rather than after it.
If the scorecard you measured the engineer against never reaches their first 90 days, the evaluation was theater. Say you hired a senior sysadmin for escalation ownership and clean documentation. Your service manager should inherit those exact expectations as week-one outcomes, in the words the interviews used.
The handoff usually breaks because the person who inherits the hire is doing recruiting as a side duty. Fletcher puts it plainly. “HR people are not recruiters. Making a compliance admin focused HR person do recruiting is like making an accountant do sales.”
So before the start date, name the person inside your MSP who owns week-six success, and require a short handoff packet with the scorecard and the interview notes tied to it. The framework step produces that packet, which is why it comes first and why an engineering staffing firm that skips straight to resumes leaves you to invent it.
What the Models Cost Across a Year of Hiring
Price hiring across the year, or you’ll optimize for one invoice instead of the operating plan. Two $120,000 hires on contingency at 20 percent is $48,000, and each fee triggers only when a person starts. Twelve months of fractional recruiting at $1,500 a month is $18,000, and it covers every role open in that window. Those figures are illustrative, and your own salaries move them.
The last column decides most of this. Ask each model who still does work in week six, and if you’re paying anyone for it then.
| Model | What You Pay | When You Pay It | What It Covers | Who Is Still Working in Week Six |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contingency search | 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary, so $24,000 on a $120,000 hire at 20 percent | At the hire, on the start date | One placement. A replacement clause may restart that search if its terms apply. | You and your managers. The agency returns only if the hire leaves and the clause applies. |
| Fractional recruiting, six-month rate | $1,500 a month on a six-month commitment, or $2,500 month to month | Monthly, through the engagement | Sourcing, screening, structured assessment, interview coordination and reference checks, for every role open in the window. A 30-day money-back guarantee on the engagement. | Your recruiter, because the engagement runs past any one start date and the next seat is already in it. |
| Self-serve hiring platform | $1,400 a year for a company under 50 employees | Annually, while subscribed | The tooling to run your own search. Execution stays with whoever has the time. | You. The platform is available, and the calling, screening and follow-through are still yours. |
For an MSP hiring two to five technical staff a year, the second hire is where this turns. One seat a year is a fee. Three seats a year is a hiring function, and funding that per placement is how a 12-person shop ends up spending more on recruiting than on the MSP tooling it runs the business with.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Staffing Agency the Same as a Recruiting Agency?
Not always. The two terms get used interchangeably, and three different motions hide behind them. Contract staffing bills while somebody occupies the seat. Contingency recruiting earns when your candidate starts. Retained search bills on a schedule, and it still closes around the hire.
How Fast Can We Realistically Fill an Engineering Seat?
Plan on a typical 4 to 12 weeks for a quality hire, even when an agency produces resumes in days. Most MSPs lose the time on scheduling and slow feedback rather than on sourcing, so the calendar you control matters as much as the pipeline you buy.
What Happens If the Hire Doesn’t Work Out?
A replacement clause usually buys you another search. It doesn’t buy back the delivery weeks you lost. On a fractional engagement the stated protection is different, a 30-day money-back guarantee on the fee. Read what triggers it, and what stays yours either way.
Do We Still Need an Internal Recruiter?
You don’t need a full-time recruiter to hire well. You do need an internal owner for the process and for the first 90 days. If recruiting is somebody’s side duty, say out loud who drives calibration, interview scheduling and the week-six check-ins, so the hire becomes billable instead of stuck.
If fractional looks right on paper and you want to test it against your own hiring plan, schedule a 30-minute call with Discovered and we’ll run the numbers with you.
