How Recruiting Fees Work for Home Service Businesses — And Why Flat-Rate Beats Commission

Most recruiting firms charge a percentage of the new hire's first-year salary, usually 15% to 25%. In the trades, that means a single field tech can cost you $10,000 or more in placement fees, and the bill climbs every time you make a better hire. Trustal works differently. One flat rate, set before the search starts, that doesn't move with the salary and doesn't go up when you hire more than one person. No per-hire commission. You know the number before you commit.

This guide breaks down how recruiting pricing actually works, what each model costs a home service owner, and why flat-rate fits a growing home service business better than the commission model built for corporate hiring.

How Recruiting Agencies Charge: The Pricing Models Trades Owners Run Into

There are four pricing models you'll encounter when you start looking for hiring help. Knowing the difference tells you where your money actually goes.

Contingency (commission)

You pay only if the agency fills the role, and the fee is a percentage of the new hire's first-year salary, usually 15% to 25%. Multiple agencies may chase the same role at once. It feels low-risk because there's no upfront cost. But the price scales with salary, and the recruiter only gets paid when a seat is filled. That quietly rewards filling the seat fast over filling it right.

Retained search

You pay upfront to engage an agency for an ongoing search, typically for executives and harder-to-fill roles. Most retained searches also include a success payment once the hire is made, with the total fee often running 25% to 33% of first-year base salary. It's built for senior roles, and usually overkill for the field and office positions a home service company hires.

Staffing markup

This is what staffing agencies charge for temporary or contract labor: an hourly bill rate that includes the worker's wage plus a markup to cover payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits, and margin. It's built for temp work and project labor, not for hiring a permanent member of your team. Trustal is not a staffing agency, so this model doesn't apply.

Flat-rate

A fixed fee, agreed before the search begins, that doesn't move with the hire's salary and doesn't climb when you hire more than one person. No per-hire commission. You know the number before you commit. This is Trustal's model.

How Trustal's retainers are different

Trustal does offer retainers, but they don't work like a traditional retained search. They're a flat monthly fee, significantly less than a single-position search, and built for home service and trades businesses in two ways: to fill tough roles over time and build a strong bench of technicians, service professionals, and salespeople; and to help an organization fill positions across departments within the next 6 to 12 months to hit its business goals.

What a Commission Placement Actually Costs in the Trades

Contingency fees in the trades typically run 15% to 25% of the new hire's first-year salary. Translated into real numbers:

On a $70,000 field tech, that's roughly $10,500 to $17,500 per placement. On a $95,000 service manager, it's closer to $14,000 to $24,000. Hire three people across a year and you can spend $40,000-plus on placement fees alone. That bill increases every time you make more — and more experienced — hires.

That's the part that surprises owners. The model is designed so that your success raises your cost.

How Trustal's Flat-Rate Recruiting Works

You pay one set fee, agreed before the search starts. It doesn't move with the candidate's salary. It doesn't go up if you hire two people instead of one. There's no commission payout per hire. You know the number before the first hire is made.

When a client retains Trustal, the search continues until a hire is made. If it takes longer than the committed timeframe, the search keeps going at no extra cost. The goal is at least one strong hire, ideally with a backup candidate in hand. And if a client wants to hire more than one person, that's encouraged. There's no additional fee for it.

What's included in the flat rate?

The flat rate covers the time and expertise of two recruiters working the position. They move quickly to make first contact with qualified applicants, run a video interview, and schedule the face-to-face interviews with the client, ideally within 48 hours. It also covers all job posting fees and the outreach to invite people to apply, sometimes more than 100 invitations per role. Trustal is proactively sourcing qualified candidates daily. The client can hire as many of them as they want for the same flat fee. It's not uncommon for clients to hire two or three. The floor is one strong hire.

Why Flat-Rate Wins for Home Service Hiring: A Real Comparison

Commission pricing was built for executive and white-collar roles, jobs where the hiring process is long and walking away after a few weeks is rare. The trades work differently, for three reasons. People in skilled roles are sometimes underpaid for their expertise, so they'll move for a small raise. Many owners don't have a strong onboarding or training program in place, so new hires get frustrated and leave. And the candidate pool itself has different circumstances than the corporate world. Those realities make the commission model a poor fit for home service hiring.

Here's the math an owner can run. Compare a sales hire in pharma against the same kind of hire in HVAC.

A pharmaceutical sales rep in Atlanta might carry a base of $90,000. A contingency recruiter placing that rep charges 18% to 25%, roughly $16,200 to $22,500.

Now take an HVAC Comfort Advisor at a $5M home service company in the same market. Trustal's flat rate is a small fraction of a percentage-based fee, and because it's a flat fee rather than a cut of salary, it doesn't climb with the hire's pay.

For a role projected toward $120,000 in total comp, a non-specialized firm on a 15% to 25% model could run $18,000 to $30,000 and take 12-plus weeks. Trustal's flat-rate engagement on a Comfort Advisor averages about six weeks. The savings aren't marginal. They're the difference between a model built for corporate budgets and one built for locally owned trades businesses.

The Hidden Cost of a Bad Hire in the Trades

A wrong hire costs more than the fee you paid to make it. And in a small home service company, it hits harder than in a corporation. When a hire fails, the rest of your crew gets overworked covering the gap. Customers wait longer for service. Work gets sloppy because the team is stretched. You risk losing good employees to burnout and customers to delays.

The dollar cost is real, too. For a trades hire who quits or is let go within the first month, expect direct costs of roughly 20% to 100% of their annual compensation, plus indirect losses. Take an electrician at $60,000 a year. Recruiting and screening, onboarding, PPE and tools, a trainer's lost productivity, and first-month wages for little output can add up to around $6,200. Most of that hits in a single month, before you count delayed jobs or lost customers.

Industry research backs the pattern. In a 2024 survey of 1,000 U.S. employees, the HR firm Nectar found that 29% had quit a job within 90 days of starting. And in the 2024 Job Seeker Nation report, poor company culture was the most-cited reason workers gave for leaving inside the first three months. Early turnover is concentrated in frontline and blue-collar work more than in corporate white-collar roles, which is exactly why getting the hire right the first time matters most in the trades.

Be careful to hire, quick to fire

The way to avoid the cost is to screen for skills and culture fit, set clear expectations up front, onboard with structure, and act fast when someone clearly isn't a fit. Careful to hire, quick to fire. It's a good slogan to keep in mind.

Why Commission Pricing Doesn't Fit the Trades

Commission-based recruiting works fine for large, publicly owned companies. The roles are white-collar, the budgets are deep, and the fee is justified. Those firms can also afford to re-run a search for free if a hire rolls off in 30 to 90 days, because they charged triple what a trades hire would cost in the first place. White-collar hires also don't roll off as quickly or as often.

Home service owners are in a different position. They can't absorb 15% to 25% of every salary in fees. They need pricing built for how the trades actually work: where the search keeps going until a hire is made, where hiring more than one person doesn't raise the bill, and where the recruiter understands the pace and pressure of a home service business because they've lived it. That's the model Trustal built. Not because it's cheaper to be cheap, but because it's the model the trades actually need.