Comparison
Recruitment agency alternatives for UK employers
There are six realistic alternatives to a percentage recruitment agency: hiring in-house, advertising the role yourself, flat-fee managed search, employee referrals, an RPO or embedded recruiter, and interim or contract cover. The right one depends on two things almost nobody asks about up front — how many hours you genuinely have for screening, and whether the people who can do the job are actively looking. Cost is the easy part; capacity is what decides it.
Why employers look for an alternative
Almost always the same trigger: a quote arrives for 20% of salary, and on a £45,000 hire that is £9,000 plus VAT for work that will take a few weeks. The fee is indexed to the salary rather than to the difficulty, so it rises every time you hire someone better paid, and none of the alternatives below share that property.
Worth having the real benchmark to hand. CIPD's 2024 survey asked employers to estimate their own cost per hire including in-house time, advertising and agency fees, and found a median of £1,500 for most employees and £2,000 for senior managers and directors — figures well below what the market usually quotes.
The six realistic alternatives
1. Hire in-house, with no external help
Cost: your time. Works when: you have a name in mind, an internal candidate, or a genuinely active local market.
The honest version of this option includes writing the advert, posting it, reading everything that arrives, ringing people, arranging interviews and chasing feedback. It is free in the way that fitting your own kitchen is free.
2. Advertise the role yourself on the job boards
Cost: roughly £224 to £600 per vacancy on published prices. Works when: the title is one people search for, the salary is competitive, and someone owns the screening.
This is the cheapest sensible option and for a large share of roles it is the right one. The failure mode is specific and it is not the advert: applications arrive, nobody has time for ten days, and the good candidates accept something else. Our own pipeline puts a number on the work — a median of 26 candidates worked per hire, of whom only about 15% were worth presenting.
3. Flat-fee managed search
Cost: roughly £850 to £4,000 per vacancy depending on provider and salary band. Works when: you want what an agency does without a price that moves with the salary.
Same work as contingency — writing, advertising, headhunting, screening, interviewing, shortlisting — charged as a fixed amount. The thing to interrogate is what happens if it is not filled: on contingency you owe nothing, so a flat fee has to carry its own protection. Ours is a 100% refund if the role is not filled; ask any provider for theirs in writing.
4. Employee referrals
Cost: a bonus, typically £250–£1,000. Works when: your team knows people doing the same job elsewhere.
Consistently the highest-quality source in most businesses and the most under-used. It has a hard ceiling — your team's network is a fixed size, and it tends to reproduce the shape of the team you already have, which is worth being deliberate about.
5. RPO or an embedded recruiter
Cost: a monthly retainer, commonly from around £2,000. Works when: hiring is continuous rather than occasional.
You stop buying roles and start buying capacity. Below roughly one hire a month it is capacity you are paying for and not using; above it, per-role pricing costs more and creates more admin. The clause that matters is the cancel right — a quiet quarter should not be locked in for twelve months.
6. Interim, contract or temp cover
Cost: a day rate, or an hourly margin through an agency. Works when: you need the work done now and the permanent decision can wait.
Not a permanent-hiring alternative so much as a way of buying time — genuinely useful when a vacancy is costing you output every week and you would rather not hire in a panic.
Choosing, honestly
| Your situation | The answer |
|---|---|
| Common title, active market, someone free to screen | Advertise it yourself |
| Common title, nobody free to screen | Flat-fee managed search |
| The right people are employed and not looking | A search — advertising cannot reach them |
| Hiring continuously, three or four roles open | Retainer or embedded recruiter |
| Genuinely scarce, senior or confidential | Retained search, and pay for the commitment |
| Bleeding money every week it is empty | Interim now, permanent properly afterwards |
The two questions that actually decide it
Cost is the easy part. These are the ones employers skip:
Who is doing the screening, and do they have the hours this month? Not "the team" — a named person with time blocked out. If the honest answer is nobody, do not buy advertising however cheap it is.
Are the people who can do this job actually looking? If you can name five local companies where they work and none are hiring, no advert will reach them. That role needs a direct approach, and choosing an advertising product for it wastes three weeks before you find out.
What we do
We are two of the six. Advertising at £399–£599 +VAT if you have the hours, and Guaranteed Hire — the full managed search — at £1,500–£4,000 +VAT by salary band with a 100% refund if the role is not filled.
We are not the cheapest advertising option and we say so on the cost comparison. What we will put our name to is that the median role we filled took 42 days and that all 46 of them are published with the pipeline behind each — which is more than the fee quote from an agency will ever come with.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest alternative to a recruitment agency?
Advertising the role yourself, from roughly £224 to £600 per vacancy. It is only genuinely cheapest if someone has the hours to screen — on our own filled roles that meant about 26 candidates worked per hire.
Can I just use LinkedIn or Indeed directly?
Yes, and for common, well-defined roles with an active market it often works. It stops working when the people who can do the job are employed and not looking, because no amount of advertising reaches someone who is not searching.
Is a flat-fee recruiter as good as a percentage agency?
It is the same work — writing, advertising, headhunting, screening, shortlisting — priced as a fixed amount instead of a share of the salary. What matters is what happens if the role is not filled, so ask about the refund before you compare the fee.
When is a recruitment agency actually the right answer?
When the role is genuinely scarce, confidential, or so senior that the market has to be mapped rather than advertised — and when you would rather pay more on success than anything up front. Those are real cases; they are just not most roles.
Sources
More hiring guides
Want the fixed price for your role?
Advertise it yourself from £399 +VAT, or hand the whole search to a dedicated recruiter with Guaranteed Hire — a flat fee by salary band with a 100% refund if the role is not filled.
See Guaranteed Hire Advertise a job
Or call 0161 327 2895.