Engagement models and how we charge
Most agencies keep this behind an introductory call. We would rather you knew the mechanism first: it saves a meeting and filters out engagements that were never going to work.
The two models
Permanent placement. We find, screen and shortlist candidates. You interview and decide. The person is your employee from day one. We invoice once, and the relationship ends there apart from the guarantee.
Leased staff, or outsourced teams. We employ the person in Bulgaria. They work full time for you and take direction from your managers, but the contract, payroll, contributions and HR administration stay with us. You pay one monthly rate per head.
The first is a transaction, the second an ongoing service. That drives all the pricing.
Permanent placement: how the fee works
The fee is a percentage of the person’s first-year gross salary, moving with seniority and with how hard the search is.
Insert your standard fee: typically expressed as a percentage of first-year gross salary — state your real figure, the range across seniority levels, and what moves a search to the upper end.
Define what "first-year gross" includes before signing with any agency. Base salary is never disputed; guaranteed bonuses, a thirteenth-month payment and a sign-on bonus can be.
Insert your definition of first-year gross: name which components are in and which are out, so nothing is arguable at invoice time.
The fee becomes payable when the person actually starts, not when they sign the offer. Candidates do occasionally accept and then not appear; that should be our risk, not yours.
Insert your payment trigger and terms: the event that makes the invoice due, and your payment window in days.
Contingent search means we are paid only if you hire someone we introduced — no risk to you, but our time competes with every other mandate. Retained means part of the fee is paid up front to reserve that time, which is what makes confidential or genuinely scarce searches viable.
Insert which models you offer: contingent, retained or both, and the threshold where a search moves to retained.
The guarantee period
If the person leaves, or you let them go, inside the guarantee window, we run the search again with no further fee. It normally covers resignation and dismissal for performance, and normally does not cover redundancy, a role redefined after the hire, or a change in your circumstances — none of which say anything about whether we found the right person.
Insert your guarantee length and terms: how long it runs, whether it is a free replacement search or a pro-rated refund, and exactly what voids it.
Leased staff: how the monthly rate works
One rate per person per month, built from the gross salary, the statutory employer contributions on top of it, and our administration and margin. Nothing is invoiced separately.
The rate covers:
- An employment contract under Bulgarian law, with us as the employer
- Payroll, tax withholding and all statutory employer contributions
- Paid leave, sick leave and the administration around both
- A local HR contact, for the person and for you
- Replacement if they resign, on the terms agreed at the start
It does not normally cover:
- Laptops, equipment and software licences
- Desk or office space, where the person is not remote
- Travel to your sites, training and certifications
- Discretionary bonuses you decide to pay
Any of those can be passed through at cost or built into the rate, as long as it is written down: unbundled extras are where a competitive-looking monthly rate quietly stops being competitive.
Insert your rate structure: whether you quote a multiplier on gross salary, a fixed margin per head, or one all-in monthly figure — plus your minimum engagement length and notice period on both sides.
Ask any provider whether they will show the split between salary and margin; some quote all-in and never break it down. Clients who expect to convert people later almost always want it.
Insert your position on transparency: whether you disclose the salary and margin split.
Which model costs less over one, two and three years
Permanent placement is one large fee at the start and nothing after. Leasing is a recurring premium on top of a salary you would pay anyway, accumulating until it passes the one-off fee. That crossover point is the whole decision.
Over twelve months leasing is usually cheaper — especially without a Bulgarian entity, since permanent placement then means first spending money and months on incorporation. Over twenty-four to thirty-six months permanent placement is usually cheaper per head, provided the person stays.
Cash is not the whole comparison. Leasing also removes entity setup, compliance risk and severance exposure. If headcount is genuinely uncertain that flexibility is worth paying for past the crossover; if the role is obviously permanent, it is not.
Insert a worked example with your real numbers: one representative role at a realistic salary, priced both ways at twelve, twenty-four and thirty-six months, showing the month where the lines cross.
Converting a leased person to a direct hire
This happens often and we plan for it rather than penalising it. The mechanism is a conversion fee that steps down with tenure: early on it is close to a placement fee, because we carried the recruitment cost and recovered little of it. The longer the person has been leased, the more the monthly margin has recovered, so the fee falls — and past a defined point it should be zero.
Insert your conversion terms: the starting fee, how it reduces with months leased, and the tenure at which conversion becomes free.
Practically it needs the employee to agree, a notice period to run and a transfer date the three of you coordinate. Administration, not negotiation.
Tell us the role, the salary you have in mind and how long the need is likely to last, and we will tell you which model works out cheaper and roughly by how much — including when the answer is that you do not need an agency.