📩Heads up! We've got a new sending address. Going forward, our emails come from [email protected]. Please add it to your contacts (or safe-sender list) so you never miss an edition.
A recruiter charging 20% of salary earns $18,000 more by showing you the $150,000 candidate instead of the $60,000 one.
Guess which candidate you're going to meet.
This isn’t to hate on recruiters; they’re just doing their jobs.
But the standard contingency fee runs 20 to 25% of first-year salary, which means every dollar added to your payroll adds a quarter to their invoice. You're asking someone to negotiate against their own commission.
I call it the Percentage Problem: the fee model steers every search toward the most expensive acceptable hire. Nobody lies to you.
The cheaper, better candidate just never makes it into the deck.
The SDR in that math is a real person.
One of our South African SDR candidates asked for $1,500 a month when we placed him, his own price, and a strong market salary where he lives.
The median US SDR base runs about $60,000, so at a 20% fee, a percentage recruiter earns more than three times as much by never showing you the $1,500 candidate.
And, he’s not just a “cheap hire”. He has the resume and outcomes to back him up.
He spent two years cold-calling employers and candidates for a UK healthcare recruitment firm (sourcing, qualifying, and pitching decision-makers)
His training literally included a course called "Negotiation: Defending Fees and Margins."
He books meetings at volume.
He's been with our client for over a year now, and he's one of the best hires they've made.
You might be thinking: doesn't a flat fee mean less motivation to dig?
The opposite.
A flat fee only pays off when we fill the seat fast and the hire sticks, because our business runs on repeat clients and referrals, not one big commission.
Half our clients hire one of the first candidates we show them, and our median time to placement is 17 days.
Those are our internal numbers. And the person you hire works for you directly, with no markup on their pay.
Flip the model and the whole search changes.
The question stops being "what's the biggest salary you'll approve?" and becomes "who's the best person for this seat, anywhere we can find them?"
If you're about to sign a contingency agreement, run the incentive math first.
Reply to this email OR book a discovery call below and compare what a flat-fee search that’s incentivized to place the best candidate looks like.
Until next time,
The Go Carpathian Team
What I’m Recommending
This Week
Want to get in front of 17,000+ Tech & SaaS owners and operators?
Founders Daily Brief reaches thousands of real business owners actively looking for new tools, services, and ideas every day. They’re finally taking on new sponsors in 2026.
→ Apply here to see if you’re a good fit
Want your newsletter to book sales meetings for you?
Bobb turns your newsletter into your #1 sales channel. It finds qualified leads, writes and sends the emails, and books calls with your most engaged readers, all without cold email.
→ Start free here
