Job boards and direct applications
The cheapest channel per application and the most expensive per hire on hard roles. Cost is predictable — a few hundred pounds per posting — but volume is unfiltered, so the real spend lands on your team's screening time.
Works well for roles with a large, active candidate pool. Fails on senior and specialist hiring, where the people you want are not reading job boards.
Flat-fee and subscription recruiters
A fixed price per role, typically £1,500 to £5,000, rather than a percentage of salary. You get sourcing and shortlisting without percentage exposure.
The trade-off is incentive. Payment is usually due for the process, not the outcome, so quality varies and the risk of a role not filling sits with you.
RPO and embedded recruiters
A recruiter on a day rate or monthly retainer, working as part of your team. Economical at volume — around eight or more hires — and it builds process capability you keep.
Below that volume the fixed monthly cost is hard to justify, and ramp time means the first month rarely produces hires.
Sourcing tools and outbound
Licences for contact databases and outreach tooling cost a few thousand pounds a year and give you unlimited reach. The cost moves from fees to your team's time.
Reply rates on cold outbound are typically low single digits. The tooling is only as good as the hours available to work it.
Employee referral schemes
The highest-converting channel most companies have, at a bonus of £500 to £2,000 per hire. Referred candidates interview better, accept more often and stay longer.
The ceiling is your own headcount. A forty-person company has a forty-person network, and it is exhausted quickly on specialist roles.
Referral networks
A referral network keeps the trust and conversion of a referral but extends it beyond your payroll: people outside your company introduce candidates they personally know and worked with, and are paid when a hire completes.
Linillo prices this as a subscription, a fixed fee per referral received, and around three per cent of salary on a hire — so cost per hire stays roughly flat as salaries rise, and every referral arrives with a named person vouching for the candidate.
- Agency at 20 per cent on £60,000: £12,000 per hire
- Flat-fee recruiter: £1,500–£5,000 per role, filled or not
- Employee referral bonus: £500–£2,000, limited to your own network
- Linillo on £60,000: roughly £1,800 on the hire, plus subscription and per-referral fees
Frequently asked questions
- What is the best alternative to a recruitment agency?
- For roles with an active candidate pool, direct applications and job boards. For senior, specialist or confidential hiring, referrals convert best — extended beyond your own employees through a referral network when internal reach runs out.
- Are recruitment agency alternatives cheaper?
- Almost always on cost per hire. A contingency agency charges 15–25 per cent of first-year salary; flat-fee, referral and in-house channels typically land between a few hundred and a few thousand pounds per hire.
- Why do teams go back to agencies?
- Coverage. Cheaper channels work until a role is genuinely hard, and with no alternative reach the brief gets sent out at full percentage. Building a channel that covers hard roles is what breaks the cycle.