Recruitment agency fees in Australia: what you’re actually paying for

Updated October 2026.

Most Australian recruitment agencies charge 15% to 25% of the new hire’s first-year salary, with 15% to 20% the most common. On an $80,000 salary that’s $12,000 to $16,000, usually invoiced when the person starts. The fee feels high because it looks like the price of a few weeks of work. It isn’t. Most of it pays the agency to carry the risk of your hire. Once you see that, you can manage that risk yourself instead of only paying for it.

How much do recruitment agencies charge in Australia?

Typically 15% to 25% of the candidate’s annual salary, with 15% to 20% the average for most roles. The more senior or specialist the role, the higher the percentage.

Experis’s 2026 ranges put entry-level and junior roles at 15% to 20%, mid-level professional roles at 18% to 25%, and senior, executive or hard-to-fill roles at 20% to 30% or more. In dollars:

Is the fee worked out on salary or the whole package?

Usually the package. In Australia the fee is most often calculated on base salary plus superannuation and, depending on the agency, expected bonuses, commission or allowances.

That moves the number more than people expect. On a $100,000 base salary, a 20% fee is $20,000. Add the 12% superannuation guarantee and the package is $112,000, so the fee becomes $22,400.

It matters most where pay includes commission. On a sales role with a $90,000 base and $40,000 in expected commission, 15% of the $130,000 package is $19,500, before super. 20% of the base alone is $18,000. The lower percentage costs more. Ask which figure the fee is calculated on before you compare quotes.

Why do recruitment fees feel so high?

Because one invoice pays for a lot of risk you never see. On a contingency search you pay nothing until someone starts, so the agency carries everything up to that point, and the fee has to cover it.

I spent years in a systematic hedge fund where every decision was priced for its risk. When you break down the risk transfer, a recruitment fee makes sense. It isn’t overpriced for the work on your role. It’s priced for the risk of that work never being paid for.

That risk comes from five places:

• Searches that go nowhere. The agency spends time, money and its candidate network on your role, and you’re free to hire no one.
• Competing agencies. If two or three agencies work the same role, each has a reduced chance of being successful in filling the role and therefore being paid for their services.
• Capacity on demand. The agency has to keep people ready for roles that arrive unplanned, from clients who can’t say when the next one is coming.
• Funding the search. Nothing is paid until your new hire starts, often months after the work began.
• The guarantee. If the hire leaves within the agreed period, typically 3 months, the agency runs the search again at no cost.

The fee on the roles that are filled pays for all the roles that aren’t.

The guarantee also has a limit worth knowing. It covers the fee, not the cost of a hire who doesn’t work out. Research by SEEK, run by Nature across more than 950 small businesses in February 2026, put that cost at around $16,000 on an $80,000 salary.

What’s the difference between contingency, exclusive and retained?

Contingency means you pay only if you hire someone the agency introduced, and you can brief several agencies at once. Exclusive gives one agency the role. Retained is exclusive with part of the fee paid up front, usually at the start, at shortlist and on placement.

Contingency is the default below executive level. It feels like the low-risk option for you, and on a single role it can be. But it’s the arrangement that carries the most risk for the agency, and that shapes how your role gets worked and the price.

Should you use one agency or several?

For most roles, one. Briefing several agencies feels like more coverage, but the arithmetic works against you.

With three agencies on a role, each knows it has roughly a one in three chance of being paid. So each one rations its effort, prioritises the roles it’s more likely to fill, and races to send CVs before the others. You get the same candidates sent twice, a lot of speed and not much fit. An Australian recruitment firm writing in Pro Bono Australia put the average fill rate at below 25% when several agencies compete, against 95% to 100% for a single trusted agency.

Exclusivity is the first way to manage the risk on purpose. You take away the race, and in return you can ask for real commitments: a dedicated search, agreed dates, and regular updates. Many agencies will also lower their percentage for it.

What should you agree before the search starts?

Agree the terms of the search, not just the fee. Most frustration with recruitment comes from things nobody set out at the start.

• A written brief you both sign off. What the role needs, what’s essential, and what could be met another way.
• A shortlist date. A serious operator will commit to one before the search opens, because they’ve looked at the market first.
• How often you’ll hear from them, and in what form. Weekly at a minimum, with numbers: how many people approached, how many interested, how many in process.
• How quickly you’ll respond. Candidates go cold when feedback is slow, so agree a window in both directions.
• Who runs the search day to day. In many agencies the consultant who wins your business also runs your search, alongside finding their next client. Know who is actually doing the work.
• What happens if the market doesn’t support the brief. The answer should be “we tell you early and agree a new plan,” not silence.
• The commercial basics. Salary or package, plus GST or not, what’s charged on top, and how long the guarantee is.

How do you know you’re dealing with a serious operator?

They commit before they start, and they tell you early when something changes.

A serious operator will:

• tell you what your market looks like for the role before you sign, including whether your salary band is realistic,
• give you a shortlist date and explain what it depends on,
• check the search a few days in and report honestly, whether it confirms the date or changes the approach,
• re-agree the timeline before a date slips, never after,
• show you why each candidate is on the shortlist, not just send a CV.

If an agency won’t commit to dates or reporting, that tells you how the search will run.

How do you know when a search is going off track?

In the first week or two. Waiting until month two is how a search drags on.

Watch for:

• no update with real numbers by the end of the first week,
• candidates who don’t match the brief you agreed,
• a shortlist date that moves without an explanation or a new plan,
• an agency that can’t tell you how many people it has approached, or where they came from,
• the same few candidates reappearing from different agencies.

If you see two or more, ask for a reset: what the market is telling them, what needs to change in the brief, salary or approach, and a new date. If they can’t answer, that’s the time to change course.

What if you hire regularly?

Then most of the risk you’re paying to transfer isn’t really uncertain. You know roughly how many people you’ll hire this year, so paying for cover one role at a time means buying the same protection again and again. Each role starts from zero, and very little of what’s learned stays with you.

Businesses in that position usually look at building their own hiring function. What it takes to build a real internal hiring function covers what that involves, and why a first in-house hire often ends up coordinating agencies rather than replacing them.

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Hiring for a role now? Tell us about it, and we’ll tell you what the market looks like for it and when you could expect a shortlist, before you commit to anything.

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Josh del Rio is the founder and CEO of Ploomo, which runs hiring for growing businesses so every role is built on evidence, not instinct. He has coached hundreds of leaders and founders.