Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) hands your hiring to an outside firm. The provider runs sourcing, screening, interview coordination, and offers so your team doesn’t have to. Enterprise RPO programs are built for companies that hire constantly, and they’re priced that way. If you hire two to twelve people a year, fractional recruiting delivers the same done-for-you work at a flat monthly fee.
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.
What RPO Covers, and What It Costs
A full RPO engagement takes over the whole recruiting function. The provider becomes your recruiting team, usually with a monthly management fee, per-hire charges, and a contract sized for continuous hiring volume. For an enterprise filling dozens of seats a year, that structure earns its keep.
Most small and mid-sized companies are solving a different problem. There’s no dedicated recruiter on staff, so an owner, office manager, or HR generalist recruits as a side duty. They can’t move fast enough, can’t headhunt, and can’t get back to candidates promptly. As Fletcher Wimbush puts it, “HR people are not recruiters. Making a compliance-focused HR person do recruiting is like making an accountant do sales.”
Fractional Recruiting as Right-Sized RPO
Fractional recruiting is done-for-you recruiting on a flat monthly fee. It covers sourcing, screening, structured assessments, interview coordination, and reference checks for every open role. Sourcing and screening are unlimited within the engagement. Engagements run month to month for up to 12 months, and every fractional engagement carries a 30-day money-back guarantee.
At $1,500 a month on a six-month commitment, six months of recruiting costs $9,000. A single contingency fee at 20% of a $120,000 salary is $24,000, for one hire. Typical fill runs 4 to 12 weeks for a quality hire either way.
| Model | How You Pay | Built For |
|---|---|---|
| Full RPO | Management fee plus per-hire charges on a long contract | Enterprise hiring volume, dozens of seats a year |
| Fractional recruiting | $1,500 a month on a six-month commitment, or $2,500 month to month | Teams hiring 2 to 12 people a year that want recruiting handled without a percentage fee |
| Contingency search | 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary per hire | One-off hires every few years |
The screen and the sourcing follow a fixed system. We evaluate integrity first, then attitude, then cognitive ability, then personality, because personality is the least predictive of the four. You can read how the sourcing works in how we find candidates and see what roles the retainer covers, from helpdesk and sysadmin through service managers and outside sales.
When Full RPO or Another Model Wins
Fractional isn’t the answer for every company. If you hire dozens of people a year across many locations, enterprise RPO’s dedicated-team model fits better. If you hire once every few years, a one-off contingency search can be tolerable despite the percentage fee; the fractional recruiting vs contingency breakdown covers that call in detail. And for a single high-stakes leadership hire, retained executive search puts a firm fully behind one role.
For managed service providers (MSPs), we run a dedicated MSP recruiting practice. We also recruit in construction, accounting, architecture and engineering, and home health.
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.