What do Randstad and Hays charge for a permanent placement?

Neither publishes rates. Buyers typically report 18 to 28% of first-year salary for professional permanent placements, and 40 to 60% markups on temporary staff. Hyring publishes its fee instead: a flat 7% of CTC in India and 14% in the US, UAE, and Europe.

Which is better for hiring in the UAE and Europe?

Both are strong. Hays leads specialist professional desks in Dubai, the UK, and Germany, while Randstad has broader operational coverage across continental Europe. Hyring's Dubai delivery team places the same professional roles at a flat 14%, which typically lands about a third cheaper than the reported fee ranges.

What is the difference between Randstad Enterprise RPO and standard staffing?

Randstad Enterprise runs recruitment process outsourcing and MSP programs, taking over part or all of a company's hiring function for a management fee plus per-hire charges. Standard staffing is transaction-by-transaction. Hyring's AI-powered RPO automates the screening labor that traditional RPO bills to clients, which is why equivalent scope prices roughly 30% lower.

Is Randstad good for high-volume hiring?

Yes, volume is Randstad's core strength, especially industrial, logistics, and customer service staffing across Europe and the US. For high-volume professional and tech hiring, AI-native screening works differently: Hyring's AI Phone Screener and AI Video Interviewer process thousands of applicants in days, so volume stops requiring an army of recruiters.

How fast can I get a shortlist from each firm?

Consultant-led shortlists from Randstad or Hays typically take one to three weeks depending on role and market. Hyring delivers AI-screened shortlists with interview recordings and calibrated scores in 48 to 72 hours for most professional and tech roles, because screening starts the moment candidates apply rather than when a consultant finds time.

Who handles payroll and compliance for remote India teams?

In a Hyring staff augmentation engagement, Hyring employs the team in India and handles payroll, statutory compliance, and benefits, while you direct the day-to-day work. Insight by Hyring runs on every augmented team, so both sides see the same hours and activity data, and employees always see their own data first.

How is Hyring different from Randstad and Hays?

Hyring is an AI-native recruitment agency with flat, published fees: 7% of CTC in India and 14% in the US, UAE, and Europe. Every candidate passes AI screening backed by 900,000+ interviews, thousands of recruiting partners work each role, clients see everything in a live portal, and Insight by Hyring keeps augmented teams transparent. Book a call to price your open roles.

Agency Comparison

Randstad vs Hays: Which Staffing Partner Fits Your Hiring in 2026?

The world's largest staffing firm against the cross-border specialist, compared on fees, RPO, temp staffing, and coverage across the US, UAE, and Europe. With Hyring's flat-fee model in the third column so you can see the full spread.

Last updated on: July 13, 2026Read time: 12 mins

Written byAdithyan RKFact checked bySurya N

1.7M

People Randstad placed in 2025

18–28%

Typical perm fee, both firms

7% / 14%

Hyring flat fee, India / rest of world

900K+

AI interviews behind Hyring screening

Randstad is the biggest staffing company on the planet. Roughly $27 billion in revenue, 1.7 million people placed in a year, operations in 39 markets, and for seven consecutive years the number one spot in the global industry rankings. Hays plays a narrower, deeper game: specialist professional recruitment across the UK, Europe, the UAE, and Australia, with the largest recruitment following on LinkedIn as proof of brand pull.

Hyring sits in the third column of every table on this page. We are an AI-native recruitment agency with teams in the US, India, and Dubai, and we publish our fees, which neither of these firms does. Keep that difference in mind as you read. When one vendor in a comparison shows its price and two do not, that tells you something about where the margin lives.

Quick Verdict

Randstad wins on scale and volume staffing, Hays wins on specialist cross-border desks, and Hyring wins on cost per hire and speed.

Pick Randstad

When you need hundreds of workers across warehouses, contact centers, or multiple European countries, and scale is the requirement.

Pick Hays

When the role is a specialist professional position in London, Dubai, Berlin, or Sydney and local desk knowledge is what you are paying for.

Pick Hyring

When unit economics decide. Flat 7% in India, 14% in the US, UAE, and Europe, AI-screened shortlists in 48 to 72 hours, everything visible in a portal.

Who Are Randstad and Hays?

Randstad is the world's largest staffing firm at roughly $27 billion revenue; Hays is a specialist recruiter placing 255,000 people yearly across professional sectors.

Randstad, headquartered in the Netherlands, is what staffing looks like at industrial scale. Temp workers for logistics and manufacturing, professional placements through Randstad Digital, and enterprise hiring programs through Randstad Enterprise. If a Fortune 500 company outsources its entire contingent workforce, Randstad is usually one of two or three names in the room.

Hays placed 43,000 people in permanent roles and 212,000 in temporary positions in its 2024 fiscal year, with technology as its largest specialism. The firm's real asset is its desks: consultants who own one sector in one city and publish the salary guides that market actually trades on.

Here is what both share: the consultant does the screening, the client pays a percentage, and the process runs on relationships and phone calls. We built Hyring on a different assumption, that AI should do the first 80% of screening so the fee can drop by half. Our engine has run 900,000+ interviews for Fortune 500 companies. The rest of this page is what that difference costs and saves.

What Do Randstad and Hays Fees Look Like?

Buyers report 18 to 28% of first-year salary for professional permanent placements and 40 to 60% temp markups at both Randstad and Hays.

Permanent placement: typically 18 to 28% of first-year salary. Randstad's professional lines and Hays' specialist desks both cluster in the low-to-mid twenties.
Temporary and contract staffing: markups of 40 to 60% on the worker's pay rate, with volume discounts negotiable at Randstad scale.
RPO and MSP: management fees plus per-hire or per-seat charges, always custom, rarely comparable across vendors.

Neither firm publishes a rate card. The ranges below are what employers in the US, UAE, and Europe consistently report:

The Hyring number is on the website: 7% of CTC for direct hire in India, 14% flat for the US, UAE, Europe, and the rest of the world. On a $100,000 operations manager, the spread looks like this:

Perm fee on a $100,000 US operations manager

Competitor figures are typical reported ranges; Hyring fee is published

In India the same seniority at ₹30 lakh CTC carries a 7% Hyring fee, about ₹2.1 lakh. Two markets, one portal, one invoice format.

Full Comparison Table: Randstad vs Hays vs Hyring

The three differ most on scale, specialism, fee transparency, and how much of the recruiting process is automated versus consultant-led.

Head-to-head across twelve buying criteria
Criteria	Randstad	Hays	Hyring
Scale	World's largest, ~$27B revenue	255K placements/year, specialist scale	AI-native agency, US, India, UAE hubs
Core strength	Volume staffing, enterprise programs	Specialist professional recruitment	Flat-fee direct hire, staff augmentation, RPO
Perm placement fee	~18–28% of salary (typical)	~18–28% of salary (typical)	7% India, 14% US, UAE, Europe, flat
Temp/contract pricing	~40–60% markup, volume deals possible	~40–60% markup (typical)	~30% below big-firm quotes
RPO / enterprise programs	Randstad Enterprise, market leader	Hays Talent Solutions	AI-powered RPO, automation replaces labor cost
UAE presence	Present, enterprise-led	Established Dubai desks	Dubai delivery team, 14% flat
Europe presence	Broadest coverage on the continent	Deep UK and Germany desks	Remote-first EU delivery at 14% flat
Sourcing engine	Branch network plus enterprise databases	Sector desks plus 7M+ LinkedIn followers	AI sourcing, jobs portal pool, thousands of recruiting partners
Screening	Recruiter screens, assessments at enterprise tier	Consultant interviews, skills checks	AI video, phone, coding, and English screening on every candidate
Time-to-shortlist	One to three weeks, program dependent	One to three weeks, market dependent	48–72 hours for most roles
Client visibility	Account teams, MSP dashboards at enterprise tier	Consultant updates, salary data	Live portal for every client, plus Insight time tracking
Best for	Contingent workforce at scale	Specialist cross-border professional roles	Cost-conscious teams hiring across US, Gulf, Europe, India

RPO and Enterprise Hiring Programs: Where the Big Fees Hide

Randstad Enterprise leads traditional RPO and MSP, while AI-powered RPO models cut program cost by automating the screening labor clients normally pay for.

Randstad Enterprise is genuinely the market leader here. If you want one vendor to run your entire contingent workforce program across twelve countries with an MSP dashboard on top, few firms can even bid against them. Hays Talent Solutions competes in the mid-market with a lighter version of the same idea.

Understand what you are paying for, though. Traditional RPO pricing is mostly people: sourcers, screeners, coordinators, and program managers, billed to you as a management fee plus per-hire charges. Every screen a human runs is a cost that lands on your invoice.

Hyring's RPO services invert that stack. The AI Resume Screener ranks every applicant, the AI Video Interviewer and AI Phone Screener run first and second rounds at any volume, and human recruiters only touch the top of the funnel. The labor that traditional RPO bills for simply is not there, which is why our programs price roughly 30% below equivalent big-firm scope. Your hiring managers watch interview recordings in the portal instead of sitting through first rounds. Most tell us that alone pays for the program.

UAE and Europe: Strong for Both, Priced Differently

Hays leads specialist desks in Dubai and Germany, Randstad leads breadth across continental Europe, and Hyring places the same roles at a flat 14%.

This is the rare matchup where both incumbents deserve their reputation. Hays owns the specialist white-collar market in Dubai, London, and Germany. Randstad covers more of the continent operationally, especially for volume and industrial roles in the Netherlands, France, and Belgium. If you must pick between the two for a professional role in the Gulf, pick Hays. For a hundred warehouse workers in Rotterdam, Randstad.

Then run the third quote. Our Dubai delivery team places UAE roles at the flat 14%, with AI screening compressing shortlists to 72 hours. On an AED 400,000 package, the gap between a 22% fee and 14% is about AED 32,000. Per hire. European placements run the same flat rate through remote-first delivery, and if the role can be done remotely from India, the 7% fee plus Indian salary levels rewrites the budget entirely. That relocation and remote pipeline runs through our global staffing desk, one portal end to end, with Insight by Hyring keeping remote teams transparent once they start.

Volume Hiring and Screening: The Arithmetic Nobody Escapes

Consultant screening caps at six to eight candidates per recruiter per day, while AI screening processes entire applicant pools the day they apply.

Randstad solves volume with headcount: more branches, more recruiters, more phone calls. It works, and you pay for every hour of it. Hays solves selection with expertise: fewer, better screens by consultants who know the sector. Also works. Also billed.

We solve both with the same engine. Every applicant from the Hyring Jobs portal and every submission from the Recruiting Partners network, thousands of independent recruiters paid on placements, passes AI screening the day they arrive: video for depth, phone for volume roles, coding for technical roles, and an English proficiency test where communication is the job. Candidates take it seriously because good ones prep, often with our free Jobseeker Toolkit and the interview questions library, which means the shortlist you review has self-selected twice before you see it.

Fact

Hyring holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications across the platform, from the AI Screening Suite to Insight. If your procurement team wants to understand AI screening before approving a vendor, the explainers in our Learn hub and the definitions in the HR Glossary are written exactly for that review.

STEP 1

Brief the role

Send your JD or adapt one from 900+ templates in the JD library. Intake call within 24 hours.

STEP 2

AI screens the pool

Portal applicants and partner submissions pass video, phone, and skills screening automatically.

STEP 3

Review in the portal

Watch recordings, compare calibrated scores, shortlist in 48 to 72 hours.

STEP 4

Hire flat-fee

7% India, 14% everywhere else. Augmented teams run on Insight for transparent tracking.

Which One Should You Pick?

Pick Randstad for contingent workforce scale, Hays for specialist cross-border desks, and Hyring when fee, speed, and visibility decide the deal.

The honest close. Randstad at $27 billion did not get there by being bad at staffing; for volume industrial and enterprise contingent programs, they are the benchmark. Hays earns its fees where local specialist knowledge is scarce and the role is senior enough to justify it.

Everywhere else, the percentage model is paying for a cost structure you no longer need. One flat-fee requisition next to one consultant-led requisition settles the question with your own data in about a week. We will even tell you honestly if your role is one of the cases where the incumbent is the better pick. That answer costs us a deal occasionally and earns us the next three.

Written by

Adithyan RK

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CEO & Co-founder, Hyring

18+ years of experience

Adithyan RK is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hyring, an AI-native recruitment platform that has run over 900,000 AI interviews for companies ranging from early-stage startups to the Fortune 500. He has spent 18 years building technology businesses, starting with a digital consultancy in 2008 and a staff augmentation firm in 2017, before founding Hyring in 2022 to rebuild hiring around evidence instead of guesswork. Read more

Expertise

AI RecruitmentAI InterviewsRecruitment AutomationHR TechnologyHiring AnalyticsApplicant TrackingRecruiter Operations

Fact checked by

Surya N

View Profile

CTO & Co-founder, Hyring

6+ years of experience

Surya N is the Co-Founder and CTO of Hyring, where he architected the AI interviewing engine that has now conducted over 900,000 interviews for companies ranging from early-stage startups to the Fortune 500. A mechanical engineer who moved into artificial intelligence, he spent 6 years building AI applications inside a technology consultancy before co-founding Hyring, and wrote the first version of its AI interviewer from scratch. Read more

Expertise

AI Interview SystemsConversational AIInterview Fraud DetectionPlatform ArchitectureMachine Learning EngineeringApplied AISpeech and Voice AIBias Testing and Model Evaluation

Run the three-quote test

Brief us the same role you are briefing Randstad or Hays. Within 72 hours you get a fee comparison for your market, an AI-screened shortlist sample with interview recordings, and portal access to judge the process yourself. If the incumbent is genuinely the better fit for that role, we will say so.

FAQs

Randstad is far larger. It is the world's largest staffing firm at roughly $27 billion in annual revenue, placing 1.7 million people a year across 39 markets. Hays is a specialist recruiter, placing about 255,000 people a year with deep strength in the UK, Europe, UAE, and Australia rather than volume scale.