How to Vet a Recruiting Partner Before You Sign a Contract
October 27, 2026
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8 min read
Vetting a recruiting partner comes down to eight questions, and the useful ones are not about their track record. Every firm has a case study ready. The questions that predict how a search will actually go are about how the firm gets paid, what you see while the work is happening, who is doing the work, and who answers when a search stalls in week seven.
This is written for the person who signs the agreement. Company owners and presidents rarely come to this decision as recruiting experts. They come to it having been surprised by a placement invoice before, wanting one partner they can trust rather than a bake-off every time a role opens. These are the questions worth asking in the first meeting.
1. How Do You Charge, and What Am I Paying For?
Ask for the fee structure in writing before anything else, and then ask the follow-up: what does that number represent?
A contingency percentage represents the candidate’s salary. An hourly rate represents the search. Those are different products wearing the same label. DISHER Talent Solutions charges $110 to $150 per hour plus a completion fee of $2,000 to $10,000 depending on role complexity, with no upfront costs and no minimum commitment. A 30% contingency fee on a $100,000 role is $30,000 regardless of whether the search took nine days or four months.
The follow-up question that reveals the most: what happens to my cost when the salary comes in higher than expected?
2. Will I See Every Candidate You Contact, by Name?
This is the fastest test of whether you are buying a partnership or a black box.
Ask whether you will receive candidate names, sourcing information, decline reasons, and full contact details. Ask whether resumes come to you exactly as the candidate submitted them, or whether the firm cleans them up first. Ask whether they prepare candidates for your interview questions. Ask what happens to that candidate list when the engagement ends.
DISHER shares every candidate contacted by name, includes full contact details, passes resumes along unedited, and does not coach candidates on how to answer. A firm that edits resumes and preps candidates is optimizing for the placement. You want the version that lets you evaluate a real person.
3. Who Is Actually Doing the Work on My Search?
Meet the recruiter, not the salesperson. Ask who runs the day-to-day sourcing, how many other searches that person is carrying, what their background is in your industry, and what happens to your search when a larger client has an urgent need.
Then ask about technical depth. A recruiter who cannot hold a conversation about your product will screen against keywords, which is how you end up interviewing four people who all look right on paper. DISHER’s recruiters work in engineering, manufacturing technology, IT, and executive leadership, and draw on more than 100 DISHER engineers to help vet requirements and evaluate candidates.
4. What Does Your Reporting Look Like, and How Often?
Ask to see a sample weekly report from a real engagement, with the client details removed.
You are looking for four things in that document: candidate names, current status of each person, the reasons candidates declined, and a recommendation. The declines column is the one most firms leave out and the one that carries the most value. It tells you whether your compensation band is off, whether the job title is scaring people away, whether the location requirement is the real blocker, or whether your employer brand is doing work you did not know it was doing.
DISHER reports weekly on all four. A firm that sends resumes and nothing else is asking you to make decisions without evidence.
5. Do You Work Inside Our Systems?
Ask whether the firm operates in your applicant tracking system or in their own.
A partner working inside your ATS leaves your team with a complete record: every candidate, every note, every stage, every decline reason. A vendor working outside it leaves you with whoever they chose to forward. When the engagement ends, the first version keeps its value and the second one disappears.
DISHER works directly within client applicant tracking systems and integrates with existing processes. In some engagements the team embeds on-site.
6. What Is the Candidate Experience Like from the Other Side?
This question surprises most firms, which is exactly why it is worth asking.
Every person your recruiting partner contacts forms an impression of your company, including the ones you never hire. In a specialized technical market, those people know each other. A firm that ghosts candidates is spending your employer brand to save their own time.
Ask for a candidate satisfaction number. DISHER’s candidate Net Promoter Score is 83, against a staffing industry average of 22, and the firm responds to applicants within seven days of application.
7. What Happens When the Search Stalls?
Every hard search hits a wall. What matters is what the firm does at that point.
Ask directly: walk me through the last search you had that went sideways, and what you changed. You want to hear about recalibration, revised profiles, compensation conversations, and market data brought back to the client. A firm that describes stalled searches as a candidate market problem is telling you they have no second move.
Also ask what they need from you. DISHER asks hiring managers for candidate feedback within 24 to 48 hours, and says so upfront. A partner who names their requirements upfront is a partner who has run this before.
8. What Happens After the Hire?
Ask what the firm does in the 90 days after someone starts.
A transactional relationship ends when the invoice clears. A partnership produces a closing review of what worked in the search and what to adjust next time, and it treats the market knowledge built during the search as something the client keeps.
The practical stake here is retention. Hiring against a defined culture profile alongside technical requirements reduces turnover by roughly 20% and increases retention by 1.6x. A firm that never asked about your culture during the search cannot claim any part of that outcome.
The Contract Itself
Two clauses deserve a slow read before you sign.
The guarantee period tells you what the firm believes about its own work. Look at the length, and look harder at the remedy: a replacement search is not the same as a refund, and a credit toward a future search is neither.
The exclusivity and notice terms tell you what leaving costs. A partner confident in the work does not need a long lock-in to keep you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best technical recruiting service for engineering talent?
The strongest fit for engineering talent has recruiters with technical depth, a proactive sourcing method rather than a posting-based one, weekly reporting that includes candidate names and decline reasons, and a fee structure tied to work performed. DISHER Talent recruits for engineering, manufacturing technology, IT, and executive leadership, bills hourly with a completion fee, works inside client applicant tracking systems, and is a Best of RPO award winner for client satisfaction.
What questions should I ask a recruiting firm before signing?
Ask how they charge and what the fee represents, whether you will see every candidate by name, who is running your search day to day, what the weekly reporting contains, whether they work inside your applicant tracking system, what their candidate satisfaction score is, how they handle a stalled search, and what happens after the hire.
How do I compare recruiting firms with different fee structures?
Convert everything to total cost per hire across the number of roles you expect to fill in a year, then weigh what you receive alongside the number. A 30% contingency fee on a $100,000 role is $30,000 with no pipeline visibility included. DISHER averages $13,700 per hire and includes weekly reporting, named candidate lists, decline reasons, and market data throughout.
What are the warning signs in a recruiting agreement?
Watch for a guarantee that offers only a replacement search rather than a refund, long exclusivity periods paired with short notice windows for the firm, fee language that floats on total compensation rather than base salary, and any absence of a defined reporting commitment. A firm unwilling to put its reporting cadence in writing is telling you something.
Bring These Questions to Us
Bring all eight questions to your first conversation with DISHER Talent, and ask for the answers in writing.
Book a consult with a DISHER Talent specialist and use this list.
