What does Hyring charge for direct hire?

A flat 14% of first-year base salary, published openly, at every seniority and in every function. It is calculated on base rather than total compensation, and it is payable when the candidate starts rather than when they accept.

Why is your fee lower than typical agencies?

Because AI handles the screening that recruiters normally do manually. Every applicant is interviewed and scored automatically rather than the first twenty being phone-screened by a person with limited hours, which removes the largest cost in a traditional staffing model and lets us price at 14% instead of 25%.

Is the fee calculated on base salary or total compensation?

Base salary. This matters most in bonus-heavy functions like finance and sales, where agencies quoting on total compensation can charge close to double for the same hire. We state the basis in public rather than in the contract's fine print.

What is your replacement guarantee?

A replacement is provided under agreed terms if a placed candidate leaves within the guarantee period. Terms are set in the agreement, and we recommend checking whether any agency offers a replacement or a refund, since those are materially different commitments.

How fast can you deliver a direct hire shortlist?

Typically 48 to 72 hours, with completed AI interview recordings and calibrated scores attached. Screening starts the day candidates apply rather than when a recruiter has capacity, which is what makes that speed possible at this fee level.

What should we check before signing any staffing agreement?

Five clauses: what the fee percentage applies to, whether it escalates by seniority or role type, the replacement guarantee period and whether it provides a replacement or refund, ownership of candidates you sourced independently, and conversion charges if a contractor becomes permanent.

How do I review candidates and share feedback with my team?

Everything runs in your Hyring portal. Every candidate is uploaded with resume, AI interview recording, and calibrated scores, moving through clear stages your whole team can see. Feedback is captured on the candidate profile rather than in email threads, and panel interviews are scheduled and held in Hyring Meet, our own video platform.

Staffing Agency

Direct Hire Staffing Agency

Hyring places permanent hires at a flat 14% commission, published on this page, at every seniority and in every function. No slabs, no seniority premiums, no negotiation about what the fee applies to.

Last updated on: July 17, 2026Read time: 9 mins

Written byAdithyan RKFact checked bySurya N

14%

Flat direct-hire commission

48–72h

AI-screened shortlist

900K+

AI interviews conducted

14%

Flat, published, every role

Hyring is an AI-native direct hire staffing agency placing permanent employees onto your payroll at a flat 14% of first-year base salary, published openly. Every candidate you review has already completed a first-round AI interview, and shortlists arrive in 48 to 72 hours.

Direct hire pricing in the US staffing industry is deliberately opaque, and that opacity is worth understanding before you sign anything. Fees typically run 20 to 30%, but the percentage is only half the question. The other half is what it applies to, whether it rises with seniority, what the replacement terms actually guarantee, and what happens if you hire a second candidate from the same shortlist. This page answers all of those for our model, in public, which is not something most agencies will do before a call.

Roles We Fill

Hyring places permanent hires across technology, finance, sales, marketing, HR, operations, and engineering, at the same flat commission regardless of function or seniority.

Direct hire is our primary service and spans every function we cover. Technology and engineering through the IT staffing practice, accounting and controllership through accounting staffing, plus finance, sales, marketing, HR, legal, and operations roles. Job descriptions for over 900 roles sit in our free JD library if you want a starting point for the brief.

Same fee at every level

14% on a $70,000 coordinator and 14% on a $250,000 engineering director. Seniority changes the work less than percentage pricing implies.

Calculated on base salary

Not total compensation. In bonus-heavy functions like finance, that distinction can halve the fee against agencies quoting on total.

Payable on start, not offer

The fee is triggered when the person actually starts, not when they accept, so a reneged acceptance is our problem rather than your invoice.

How Screening Works for Direct Hire

Every direct hire candidate completes an AI first-round interview calibrated to the role, so permanent hiring decisions rest on recorded evidence rather than recruiter assessment.

A permanent hire is the most consequential decision on this page. A bad contractor costs you a month. A bad permanent hire costs you the search, the onboarding, the performance management cycle, the exit, and the second search, which is why our screening effort concentrates here.

Every candidate completes an AI first round before submission, configured to the role: the coding interview for technical positions, scenario-based video interviews for finance, operations, and commercial roles, the phone screener for volume hiring, and the English proficiency test where communication carries the job. The resume screener ranks the full applicant pool so strong candidates are not lost to volume.

Because the screening is automated rather than recruiter-constrained, it happens on every applicant rather than the first twenty, and it happens the day they apply rather than when someone has capacity. That is the mechanical reason a 48 to 72 hour shortlist is possible at a 14% fee, and it is the reason the two are connected rather than a coincidence.

What These Roles Pay

Direct hire fees scale with salary, so the flat percentage saves most on senior roles where specialist agencies charge the highest rates.

Indicative US salary ranges, 2026 (verify current data in our salary benchmarks)

Role	Mid-level	Senior	Hyring fee at 14% (mid-range)
$70,000 role	Coordinator, specialist	–	$9,800
$110,000 role	Senior individual contributor	–	$15,400
$150,000 role	Manager, senior engineer	–	$21,000
$200,000 role	Director, staff engineer	–	$28,000
$250,000 role	Senior director, principal	–	$35,000
$300,000 role	VP, executive	–	$42,000

At a 25% market rate, that $300,000 executive would carry a $75,000 fee. The gap widens with seniority, which is precisely where slab pricing is designed to catch you. Full data across 93 roles sits in our free salary benchmarks, and job descriptions for over 900 roles in the JD library.

Fees Compared

US direct-hire fees typically run 20 to 30% of first-year salary, against Hyring's published flat 14%.

On a $150,000 hire, a flat 14% is $21,000 against $30,000 to $45,000 at typical rates. The saving compounds across a hiring plan: five such hires in a year is a difference of $45,000 to $120,000.

Direct-hire fee on a $150,000 US direct hire

Competitor figures are typical reported ranges; the Hyring commission is published

How the major staffing firms structure direct hire pricing is covered across our fifteen head-to-head comparisons, including TEKsystems vs Experis, Randstad vs Robert Half, and Akkodis vs Hays.

How Hyring Delivers

Every candidate arrives pre-interviewed by AI, sourced by thousands of recruiting partners, and tracked in one portal instead of an email chain.

In permanent hiring, where a mistake costs the search twice over, the screening effort belongs before submission rather than in your team's calendar. Six things run behind every shortlist:

Round one, already done

Every candidate completes an AI first round before you see them: video, coding, phone, or the English test where communication carries the role.

Every applicant ranked

The AI Resume Screener scores the full funnel against your brief, so nothing good gets buried under volume.

A video-first talent pool

Candidates join through Hyring Jobs, presenting on camera and interviewing as they apply. The database is assessed, not just collected.

Thousands of recruiters, not one

The Recruiting Partners network puts specialist recruiters nationwide on your role, paid on placements, every submission passing the same screen.

Panel rounds in Hyring Meet

Interviews are scheduled and held in Hyring Meet, our own video platform, so invites and recordings stay attached to the candidate record.

Transparency after the hire

Augmented and remote teams run on Insight by Hyring: tracked hours and focus patterns, employees seeing their own data first. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified.

All of it lands in one portal: every candidate uploaded with recording and score attached, clear stages your whole team can see, and feedback captured on the profile rather than in a thread half the panel is missing from.

The Full Service Stack

Direct hire at a flat 14% anchors a stack covering RPO, staff augmentation, IT staff augmentation, employer of record, and global hiring.

Services available for direct hire hiring

Service	Best for	Pricing shape
Direct hire	Permanent roles across functions	Flat 14% commission
RPO services	Outsourcing part or all of recruitment	~30% below big-firm quotes
Staff augmentation	Dedicated professionals on your projects	~30% below big-firm quotes
IT staff augmentation	Engineering capacity, US or remote India	India route: 60–70% savings
Employer of record	Employing remote talent without new entities	Per-employee monthly
Global hiring	Building teams beyond the US	14% rest of world, 7% India

Direct hire pairs naturally with RPO for companies whose volume makes per-role fees inefficient, and with staff augmentation where a role turns out to need capacity rather than a permanent employee.

What the Fee Covers, and What It Does Not

The 14% covers sourcing, AI screening, recruiter validation, portal access, offer support, and the replacement guarantee; other services are quoted separately rather than absorbed.

Included in the 14%: sourcing across our candidate database and the Recruiting Partners network, AI first-round interviews on every candidate, recruiter validation of shortlisted candidates, full portal access for your whole team, interview scheduling and coordination through Hyring Meet, offer support and negotiation assistance, and the replacement guarantee under agreed terms.

Not included, and quoted separately: contract and temporary staffing, payroll and benefits administration, employment taxes, compliance and background verification, equipment provision, RPO programmes, executive search retainers, and employer of record services. We separate these rather than bundling them into a percentage, because bundling is how a fee that sounds competitive becomes one that is not.

Terms worth checking in any agency agreement, ours included: what the percentage applies to, whether it escalates by seniority or role type, the replacement guarantee period and whether it offers a replacement or a refund, ownership of candidates you sourced independently, and conversion charges if a contractor becomes permanent. Those five clauses account for most of the disputes we see companies have with previous agencies, and they are worth ten minutes before signing anything.

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

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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

FAQs

Direct hire staffing places a permanent employee onto your payroll, with the agency paid a one-time fee on placement. It differs from contract or temp staffing, where the agency employs the worker and bills an ongoing markup, and from temp-to-hire, where a contractor converts to permanent employment after a period.