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10 posts
A job ad proves a role exists most of the time and says nothing about a fee. Here are the five signals that a company has agency budget this quarter, the three people prospect on instead, and what each is worth on a $175,000 role.
Stop counting clients and count job orders. Won cold, one order is about 600 dials over three weeks; earned inbound, it is months of posting; on a marketplace board it is one application, reviewed within a business day, with the fee and the band already set.
The four ways an independent recruiter gets clients, costed in hours per signed client, from about 100 on cold outreach to about 2 on a marketplace role application. Then the placement arithmetic that shows selling is the most expensive line on the desk, and the mix I would run in year one.
HR specialist employment dipped 0.5% in 2025 after adding 187,550 people from 2020 to 2022, and the crowd that made stands at the client's door, not on the search. Here is the arithmetic of two recruiters on a role against ten, and how I would start this year.
Yes: on a marketplace the client is already signed, so you search, submit and get paid. Here is what the sales half of a full desk takes each week, what skipping it used to cost, and what a $170,000 placement pays a recruiter who never made a sales call.
Yes, if your employer's outside-work rule allows it and you pick a model with no quota. Here is the five-hour week on one role, the employer check that comes first, and what one or two placements a year pay after self-employment tax.
Day one is one client, one contract and somewhere to keep candidates straight. The standard tool stack bills $3,780 a year before any fee lands, so here is what each line costs, when the first fee arrives, and the path that costs nothing.
A first recruiting fee needs a signed agreement and a W-9, not an LLC and not insurance. The number that bites on a $26,000 fee is the 15.3% self-employment tax, so here is an order of operations that puts each cost after the money that pays for it.
An agency year teaches you the agency's terms; the craft you already have from in-house. Here are the four things contingency work adds, each run through a $120,000 placement, and where the clients come from when you have none.
Eight years in-house, five months of applications and nothing back. Going independent is realistic if you price it as placement income, and the client book is the one part of the trade you can rent.