Nobody in this business publishes a price.
We checked 89 recruiting firms in September 2026. Three publish a fee schedule. Here is the whole of ours — including the rule that tells you when not to buy the expensive one. And because we are new, founding clients pay half of it.
The fee is set by how hard the seat is, not by what it pays.
Almost everybody charges a flat percentage of salary. That prices a search by what the job pays — and what the job pays turns out to have very little to do with how hard it is to fill.
Across fourteen occupations where the AGC’s difficulty figures and the federal salary figures can be matched, pay explains about eight per cent of how hard a role is to fill, and the relationship is not statistically significant.
A superintendent is 81% hard to fill. A diesel mechanic is 79% — the same job, to us. On a flat percentage of salary the superintendent costs you 1.86× as much.— AGC 2025 workforce survey, matched to BLS median pay
So we band by difficulty instead, and publish the boundary that puts a seat in each band. Every line of it comes off a survey you can go and read.
One Seat — the card
We are new, so founding clients pay half. The right-hand column is the standard card — what this work costs. The left is the founding rate, locked for two years, and it is exactly half so you can check it line by line.
| Band | The seats in it | Founding | Standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | General field Laborers, helpers, forklift operators, general maintenance AGC difficulty under 70% and median pay under $50,000 | 7.5%$3,250 | 15%$6,500 |
| B | Skilled hands Truck drivers, carpenters, concrete finishers, surveyors AGC difficulty 70–74% | 8.5%$4,500 | 17%$9,000 |
| C | Scarce craft Diesel and industrial mechanics, ironworkers, electricians, crane and heavy-equipment operators, plumbers, pipefitters, welders, sheet metal, HVACR AGC difficulty 75% or more, craft | 11%$6,000 | 22%$12,000 |
| D | Field and technical leadership Foremen and general foremen, shop supervisors, transport supervisors, QC and safety leads, civil engineers Leadership or technical, AGC difficulty under 75% | 10%$6,500 | 20%$13,000 |
| E | Salaried ops Superintendents, project managers, estimators AGC difficulty 75% or more, salaried | 12.5%$9,000 | 25%$18,000 |
| F | Ops leadership Plant managers, senior superintendents, chief estimators No AGC line — priced by the engagement | 12.5%$15,000 | 25%$30,000 |
Percentage of first-year base pay. The smaller figure under each rate is the floor — what the search bills at when the percentage lands under it. The founding column is exactly half the standard column, floors included, and it is locked for two years from the day you start: it does not move under you when the card does.
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Hard searches carry three points more on the standard card, capped at 28% — and half that, one and a half points, on the founding rate. It applies when two or more of these are true on the day we start: the seat has been open more than sixty days; the site is more than forty-five minutes from a metro of 250,000; the last person in it left inside twelve months; the search is confidential. Two or more, or it does not apply — we do not get to decide it is hard after the fact.
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You pay when they start, not when they sign. If somebody accepts and then renegs before the first day, that is our problem to fix, not an invoice you argue about.
If you are hiring all year
One Seat
7.5–12.5% founding rate, by bandOne search at a time, paid on result — half the standard card. Most companies should buy this, and the arithmetic below says when that stops being true.
The Bench
$1,500 a month, founding rateThree seats open at once, plus every hire at four points off the founding card. Built for 20–99 people. $3,000 on the standard card.
The Department
$3,000 a month, founding rateFive slots held for you and front of the queue on all of them. One client at a time. Built for 100–499 people. $6,000 on the standard card.
| Band | One Seat | On a monthly |
|---|---|---|
| A | 7.5% | 3.5% |
| B | 8.5% | 4.5% |
| C | 11% | 7% |
| D | 10% | 6% |
| E | 12.5% | 8.5% |
| F | 12.5% | 8.5% |
Founding rates, both columns. No floor on hires inside a monthly agreement — the monthly is the floor. The retainer buys capacity; the fee buys the outcome, so both are on the invoice and neither is credited against the other.
Pipeline Keeper — $1,000 a month, founding rate
For a monthly client with nothing open right now. We keep working your patch so the next seat starts warm, and you keep the quarterly comp sheet. Reactivate in 48 hours with no new setup.
When not to buy the monthly
Under about six hires a year, single searches are cheaper. Buy those.
$18,000 is a founding year of The Bench. Four points of a typical salary in your bands is what you save on each hire. Divide the first by the second and you have the number of hires where the monthly starts winning. Halving both sides leaves this arithmetic exactly where it was, which is why the answer below is the same one we would give you at full price.
Hiring around $75,000 a seat. Four points is $3,000. It tips at six hires a year.
Mostly superintendents, around $113,000. Four points is $4,540. It tips at four.
Under your number, buy single searches. We would rather put that on the page than have you work it out in month five.
The Department works out to about twelve hires from one company — roughly sixty per cent of everything we can do in a year. That is why there is only ever one at a time, and why it is sold as reserved capacity rather than as a volume discount.
In all of them, no exceptions and no upsell:
Four checked people per open seat every 30 days — the first inside 10 business days.
The scorecard, written with you at kickoff, before anybody is contacted.
The whole process run under your brand — outreach through offer.
The interview kit: question bank and scorecards for the one part we don’t do.
The 90-day restart.
The pipeline file, and it stays yours.
The monthly agreements add: a comp sheet every quarter — what your roles actually pay in your metro — and a weekly call.
The Department adds: a quarterly bench review. Who is retiring, who is next, what it will cost to replace them.
Kickoff: five business days on a single search, 48 hours on The Bench, 24 hours on The Department.
What happens when we miss
Of the 89 firms we checked, not one attaches a remedy to a promise about time. These are ours, and they only ever fire on our failure.
Miss the 10-day slate or the 30-day cadence. Monthly billing pauses until we are current. On a single search, 20% comes off the fee. The clock stops while we are waiting on you for feedback or a decision — that clause is the only reason we can afford to print the rest.
A hire leaves inside 90 days. We restart that search at no fee. If we have not put a replacement in front of you within 45 days of you telling us, it converts to a credit good for twelve months.
They renege between the offer and the first day. No invoice. You pay on start, not on signature.
What we do not do is refund cash on a departure. Not one of the 89 firms refunds a placement fee, and we are not going to pretend we can be the first — one bad fall-off is about twelve per cent of our year, and a promise we cannot keep is worse than one we never made. We replace instead, and we put a clock on that too.
The terms, in the same plain words we use on the call
The free phase. Up to two seats, both scorecarded at kickoff, and it ends when your first hire signs. Sixty days maximum either way, so it cannot run forever. It is exclusive while it runs, and it is one free start per company group.
After it converts. Three months minimum, then thirty days’ notice, either direction.
The pipeline file. Every candidate we contact for you, in a file that is yours to keep. It is handed over on your first paid invoice.
The backdoor clause, twelve months. If you hire someone we introduced — directly, through an affiliate, in any capacity, or through a third party we passed them to — the card rate applies. “Introduced” means we put their name in front of you in writing.
The stall clause. If we deliver a slate and nobody gets an interview for thirty days, billing starts anyway. We can find people. We cannot make you meet them.
We qualify, and sometimes we say no:
Fewer than four salaried hires expected in twelve months.
No real open seat today — just planning.
No named decision-maker who can say yes.
A seat priced under its market band. We will show you the comp data and you can decide, but we will not run a search that cannot close.
We would rather lose the sale than run a search nobody is ready to hire from. And if the calendar is full, you will hear that too.
Not sure which one fits?
That is the call. Fifteen minutes, and we will do the arithmetic above with your real numbers — including when the answer is that you should not buy anything from us.
Book a 15-minute call