The professional recruitment landscape is undergoing a major shift, with increasingly desperate white-collar job seekers turning to paid recruiters to secure a job.
In this “reverse recruiting” model, candidates sign up for services that apply for jobs on their behalf, charge fees, and even take a percentage of their salary once a job is secured. This is opposed to the traditional recruitment dynamic where companies hire firms to fill open positions.
Some social media professionals say that when well-qualified professionals feel compelled to spend money just to be seen by a hiring manager, it signals something deeper is broken in US hiring systems.
“The growth of reverse recruiting doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” said Stephanie Alston, president at executive recruiting firm BGG Enterprises. “It’s really a response to how tumultuous the job market is even for highly skilled job seekers.”
Reverse recruitment defined
Reverse recruiting reverses the traditional model for recruiters and job hunters.
“In traditional recruiting, the company pays the recruiter to find talent,” Alston said. “In reverse recruiting, the candidate pays someone to promote them to employers.”
Fees vary widely, with some employees and corporate executives paying flat rates of $2,000 to $10,000 more in monthly withholdings, Alston noted. Some take 10–20% of career professionals’ first year salary.
“Functionally, reverse recruiters and executive recruiters do similar sourcing and positioning work,” Alson added. “The only real difference is who pays for it.”
Steven Lowell, career coach and senior reverse recruiter at Find My Profession, has been in the reverse recruiting market since 2016. “Every reverse recruiting service is different,” he said. “It’s actually a difficult business model to understand because job seekers contract for help to generate interviews and reverse recruiters don’t place anyone.”
Lowell spends her day job finding and applying to roles, teaching others how to network online, vetting clients and networking to help them. “Just this afternoon, I helped one person with interview preparation and another with a salary negotiation,” he said.
At Find My Profession, Lowell said the business model focuses on authenticity — reverse recruiters like him are former recruiters, not recruiters doing a side hustle.
“We offer monthly subscriptions, with no commission and no hidden fees,” he said. “Transparency is mandatory.”
He also mentioned that clients do not pay for recruiter access. “I’m paying for help from people who know how messed up the hiring tech space is,” Lowell said. “Imagine a former recruiter stops helping one company and starts helping five to ten job seekers.”
Lowell said his firm is needed because the job market is a data-mining nightmare, with 75,000 jobs and new hiring tools popping up every day. “But people only look for a job five to seven times in a career,” he said. “The moment someone is out of a job, they do what anyone does: look for answers online, only to be greeted by blogs about ATS systems, influencers spewing buzzwords, and new technologies making huge promises.”
The dominance of AI is changing the scenario for job seekers
Technology, especially artificial intelligence, has forced the hands of career professionals in ways that even professional recruiters have not seen.
“Using AI as an initial screening tool, about 75% of applicants are eliminated from consideration before a human ever sees their application,” said Lacey Kaelani, CEO of Metaintro, a job search engine platform that runs on real-time public data. “Our data indicates that, on average, a white-collar worker submits more than 100 applications to receive a job offer.”
This is a problem for professional job seekers and an opportunity for reverse recruiters, especially since the traditional job search method is no longer working for job candidates.
“People don’t pay for recruiters to help them find jobs just because they don’t have the qualifications to apply,” Kaelani said. “I’m paying because I can’t navigate the extremely complicated job search process without help.”
The sustainability of reverse recruitment also depends on the decisions of employers in the future. “As companies continue to automate their hiring processes and post jobs they don’t intend to fill, reverse recruiting will continue to grow,” Kaelani added.
There is no shortage of risks with reverse recruiting
Experts say buyer beware of job candidates eliminate the menial work that, in recent decades, has been handled by the job hunter.
“Reverse recruiting is a reflection of an employment market that has become increasingly unclear and, in many ways, unfair to employees,” said Eric Kingsley, a partner at Kingsley Szamet Employment Lawyers in Los Angeles.
As an experienced attorney representing employees in discrimination and retaliation claims, Kingsley sees reverse recruiting as a major cause for concern.
“If qualified professionals are forced into a market where they have to pay simply to be ‘seen’ by hiring managers or to be able to navigate hiring systems that increasingly use automated systems for initial screening, that’s a market that seems unfair and lacks transparency,” he noted.
Kingsley said it already appears that employment systems that use automated systems and informal networks are unfair to older workers, women and minorities. “Now, will reverse recruitment exacerbate this gap and actually provide advantages for those who have the means to pay?” he asked himself.
accordingly, anyone working with a reverse recruiter needs to be extremely careful.
“The contract must be reviewed, the scope of work must be understood, and the recruiter must not misrepresent qualifications or apply for positions without the full consent of the candidate,” Kinglsey said.
Reverse recruiting clients should be wary of percentage-based contracts that extend beyond the initial recruitment process to the actual job. “These could cause problems once the candidate is hired,” he added.
Take these steps if you’re working with a reverse recruiter
If you are an eager job seeker, go ahead and give the process a shot. Be sure to follow these steps as you move forward.
Do your research first
Talk to the people behind the computer screens and see that they are real people. “See what they know and ask tough questions,” Lowell said. “Ask how they will specifically help you.”
You know that not all reverse recruiting services are the same
Reverse recruiters are a lot like lawyers, teachers, chefs and other consumer service providers. “They may have their ‘idea’ of what the job entails, but not everyone is the same,” Lowell said.
Know your rights and where to go to assert these rights
While there is no single federal ban on candidate-paid job search services in the US, regulators still draw lines around deception and misrepresentation.
“The Federal Trade Commission can act where services exaggerate employer access, inflate results or obscure material terms,” said Alex Odwell, co-founder at Referment, a fintech recruitment firm based in London, UK. “Many states regulate employment agencies through licensing and consumer protection laws. buying.”
Take the Hollywood approach with reverse recruiting
Reverse recruiting is no different than someone in Hollywood having an agent.
“They market you, they take care of the mess and they get paid when you get the role,” said Trent Cotton, head of talent acquisition at iCIMS, a provider of talent acquisition technology services.
The business model approach itself is “an ingenious way” to solve two problems at once, Cotton noted. “It helps candidates really stand out by leveraging the relationships recruiters have within companies, while also giving recruiters struggling to land work orders a way to reach school.”