What Each One Actually Does
The confusion is real and mostly linguistic. Both call themselves offshore recruitment. What differs is where the work sits.
| Offshore recruitment service | Offshore talent platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sources candidates | The provider, against your brief | The provider builds the pool. You search it. |
| Who screens | The provider, then presents a shortlist | The provider vets for the pool. You evaluate for the role. |
| Who interviews | You, usually final round only | You, all rounds |
| What you receive | Two to four candidates, pre-selected | Access to everyone who matches your criteria |
| Pricing | Percentage of first-year salary, or a retainer | Subscription plus a flat fee per hire |
| Time to first candidate | Two to six weeks, after briefing | Immediate, you search |
| What you are buying | Their judgement | Their vetting, plus access |
| Fails when | The brief was wrong, or their judgement does not match yours | You cannot evaluate the role well enough to choose |
Read the last two rows together, because they are the actual decision. A service sells you judgement. A platform sells you access and expects you to supply the judgement. Everything else, including the price difference, follows from that.
Where Recruitment Services Genuinely Earn Their Fee
This section exists because a comparison with no concession is an advertisement.
- You cannot evaluate the role. A non-technical founder hiring their first senior engineer is the clearest case. You can read a CV. You cannot tell whether the architecture answers were good. Paying someone who can is not a shortcut, it is buying a capability you lack.
- The role is genuinely scarce. Some skill combinations do not sit in a pool waiting to be searched. Finding them requires outreach, persuasion, and a network. That is search work, and it is priced as such for good reason.
- You have no time to run a process. Reviewing forty profiles, running first interviews, and coordinating scheduling is real work. If nobody internally can absorb it, delegating is honest.
- Confidentiality. Replacing someone who still works there cannot be done through an open search.
If two or more of those describe your situation, a recruitment service is the right instrument and the percentage is the market price for it. Our guide to offshore recruitment strategies covers how to brief one properly, which is where most of these engagements are won or lost.
Where the Fee Buys You Nothing
The inverse cases are just as specific.
- You know the role cold. If you have done the job, or manage people who do, you can evaluate a candidate faster and more accurately than a recruiter who learned the role from your job description.
- The role is well-supplied. Bookkeepers, customer support, admin, and most marketing execution roles have deep pools. There is no search to conduct. There is a filter to apply, and you can apply it.
- You are hiring more than one. Percentage pricing multiplies per hire. Three roles at 20% of $50,000 is $30,000 in fees for three searches through overlapping pools.
- You want to see the field. A shortlist of three is a shortlist of three. You never learn what the other forty looked like, or whether the three were the best or the three who replied fastest.
The Cost Comparison, Honestly
Both models cost real money. The shapes differ.
| Scenario | Recruitment service at 20% | Platform with flat fee |
|---|---|---|
| One hire at $45,000 | $9,000 | $1,999 plus subscription |
| Three hires in a year at $45,000 | $27,000 | $5,997 plus subscription |
| One senior hire at $90,000 | $18,000 | $1,999 plus subscription |
| What scales the cost | Salary and hire count | Hire count only |
The subscription is the part that makes this comparison honest rather than lopsided. At Pavago, search is free, but full profiles and direct messaging are $100 a month, and you pay that whether or not you hire that month. Over a long, slow search, that adds up. Placement is $1,999 flat, and the pricing page has the full structure including the 60-day replacement window.
The platform model loses on one axis, and it is worth naming. You do the work. Reviewing profiles, writing outreach, running first interviews, chasing scheduling. If that time is worth more to you than the fee difference, the service is the better buy and the arithmetic above is irrelevant.
A Question That Settles It Faster Than Either Table
Could you write the interview questions for this role yourself, and would you know a good answer when you heard one?
If yes, you have the judgement. Buying it again is spending money on something you already own, and the platform model is the cheaper way to apply it.
If no, do not compensate by reading more CVs. That is the failure mode where companies choose the platform to save the fee, then hire badly because nobody could evaluate the shortlist, then conclude offshore hiring does not work. The fee was not the problem.
Tenant Planet ran their own search rather than delegating it; the Tenant Planet case study covers what that looked like in practice. For a comparison against a named provider in this category, see our breakdown of Pavago versus HireWithNear. You can also look at admin talent or a specific role such as virtual assistant before deciding which model fits.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are offshore recruitment services?
A provider that runs the search on your behalf: sourcing candidates against your brief, screening them, and presenting a shortlist. Pricing is usually a percentage of first-year salary or a retainer. It differs from a talent platform, where the provider vets a pool and you search it yourself.
How much do offshore recruitment services cost?
Commonly 15–25% of first-year salary for contingency search, or a retainer paid in installments for senior roles. Platform models charge a subscription plus a flat fee per hire, which does not scale with salary.
Is a recruitment service better than searching myself?
Better when you cannot evaluate the role, the skill set is genuinely scarce, or nobody internally has time to run a process. Not better when you know the role well and the talent pool is deep, which covers most admin, support, bookkeeping, and marketing execution hires.
What is the risk of doing the search myself?
Hiring badly because you could not tell a strong candidate from a plausible one. That risk is small in roles you understand and large in roles you do not. The fee saved is a poor trade against a bad senior hire.
Can I use both?
Yes, and many companies should. Use a service for the roles you cannot evaluate, typically senior and technical, and search yourself for the ones you can. Splitting by role rather than committing to one model is usually the cheapest correct answer.
Search the pool yourself, when that is the right call
Free to search. $100 a month for full profiles and direct messaging, cancel anytime. $1,999 flat when you hire, with a 60-day replacement window.
