Two shortlisted agencies, both 4.2 stars on Google, both with a deck full of logos. One will fill your role in a month with a candidate who stays. The other will send LinkedIn scrapes for twelve weeks and invoice a fee you never saw coming. Nothing you can find before signing tells you which is which, because agency comparison fails at two separate points: the research you do before reaching out, and the proposals you read after.
The standard advice covers neither. Check reputation: the reputation lives in reviews anyone can write. Ask about fees: most agencies won't name a number until contract negotiation. Look for specialization: every agency's website claims it.
Where the Reviews Come From
Search any agency's name and you get a star rating built from purchased five-stars, current employees nudging the average up, ex-employees settling scores, and strangers whose connection to the agency is anyone's guess. Somewhere in that pile sit a few genuine clients and placed candidates, indistinguishable from the rest.
Even a genuine review answers the wrong question. A star rating records how someone felt on the day they typed it, and says nothing about whether the agency honored its contract, whether the candidate was still in the seat six months later, or whether the client would hire that consultant again.
Three Questions Clients Can Actually Answer
The people who hired an agency hold the only data worth having, and it fits in three questions:
- Contract adherence: Did the signed contract match the terms in the proposal?
- Placement success: Was the role filled within the agreed timeline?
- Partnership quality: Would the client engage this agency again?
Every Talent Acquisition team that has run a search can answer all three from memory. Almost none of it reaches the public internet, because those teams have nothing to gain from posting it.
Some platforms now capture these answers at the moment they exist: when a search closes, the client rates the agency on exactly those three questions, with no star rating to inflate and no essay to fabricate.
Those percentages record what happened. Written testimonials add the part numbers miss, and when a client puts detailed feedback under their own company name, the willingness to be named carries weight of its own.
Put the two together and an agency with 95% placement success and named clients on record separates instantly from one at 40% with nobody willing to attach a logo. On Google, both can sit at 4.2 stars forever.
What Arrives When You Ask for a Proposal
Suppose you skip the reviews and go straight to outreach. You request proposals from four agencies, and four PDFs land in your inbox:
- Industry expertise you have no way to verify
- A database headcount that says nothing about your specific search
- A sourcing methodology vague enough to describe any agency on earth
- Client logos with no detail on what those engagements involved
- A fee section that says "to be discussed"
The document is titled "proposal," yet it commits the agency to nothing. Different fonts, different logos, same absence of information: a deck built to impress has every incentive to leave out anything you could hold the agency to.
The Specifics a Proposal Should Contain
A proposal you can compare against another proposal answers four things about your role:
- The fee for this search: the percentage, and whether it's calculated on base salary or base plus on-target earnings
- A timeline commitment: how long they'll work the role, and what happens if they miss
- A sourcing plan for this role: where the candidates will actually come from
- Track record with outcomes: similar placements, and whether those candidates stayed
None of that survives contact with a marketing deck. In the normal flow you learn it deep into contract negotiation, after the time you'd want it for deciding is already spent.
The Same Four Agencies Side by Side
Here is what those four proposals look like when every agency has to answer the same questions in the same format.
Quick Staffing Solutions charges 38% on base plus OTE, a far higher effective cost than the headline suggests, wants 12 weeks, sources from job boards only, shows no relevant placements, and includes zero services. Premier Japan Recruiting charges 25% on base salary, commits to 4 weeks, works four sourcing channels including headhunting and referrals, can point to a placed candidate still in role after 18 months, and includes five services. Both decks looked equally professional; the gap only became visible when the format stopped letting anyone hide.
You can force the same discipline in an ordinary agency search. Send every agency a recruitment agency RFP template with fixed response slots, and the answers come back comparable whether the agencies like it or not.
Four Factors That Predict How a Search Ends
Fee Transparency
Before you spend an hour on calls, get four answers: the fee percentage for this role, whether it's calculated on base or base plus OTE, whether a minimum fee floor applies, and the payment terms. An agency that answers directly is confident in its own pricing. An agency that wants to "discuss fees later" is planning to discuss them after you're too invested to walk away.
For reference, contingency fees in Japan typically run 30-40%. On platforms built around comparison, exclusive search fees tend to land at 20-30%, because agencies pricing for a high probability of success don't need to charge you for their failures elsewhere.
Relevant Experience
"We've placed 500 people in tech" tells you nothing about your Head of Finance search. Ask for placements in similar roles at comparable companies within the last 12 months, then ask what happened afterward: is the candidate still there, and how long did the search take? A placement that resigned at month three cost its client a restart, whatever the deck called it. An agency that won't share outcome data has usually looked at its outcome data.
Sourcing Strategy
A generic answer sounds like "we use multiple channels including our database, job boards, and LinkedIn." A real answer names your role: for a senior engineering manager at a Series B startup, the agency might propose headhunting from three competitors you've listed, working its network of engineering leaders open to startup moves, and running targeted outreach to passive candidates at the large tech companies. If the sourcing plan would fit any role at any company, nobody has thought about yours yet.
Timeline and Exclusivity
Exclusivity periods usually run 30-90 days; longer gives the agency room to source properly, shorter caps your downside if they stall. On guarantees, most agencies offer something if the placed candidate leaves early, commonly an 80% refund within one month and 50% within three months, and some offer a replacement search instead of money. Push for pro-rated refunds. Cash back leaves you free to act; a replacement search leaves you waiting on the same agency that just missed.
Eight Questions to Ask Before You Sign
Why One Focused Agency Beats Four Distracted Ones
Handing the same role to four agencies feels like quadrupling your chances. Run the numbers from the agency's side. Four agencies are working the same role for one fee, and there's a real chance the role gets filled internally or closed without notice, so each agency is looking at roughly a 20% shot at getting paid. Nobody invests 40 hours of headhunting into work that pays one time in five. The rational move is to fire off whoever's already in the database and pivot to the next role, which is exactly the volume model contingency search built.
Give one agency the role exclusively and the same logic inverts: their placement probability increases to 80%, so deep sourcing, careful screening, and real candidate engagement become the profitable strategy instead of the naive one. The fee often falls too, because an agency that expects to make the placement doesn't need your search to subsidize the four that didn't close, which is why exclusive engagements can price below contingency rates.
Five Principles for Comparing Recruitment Agencies
- Ignore star ratings; ask for outcomes. Did placements stick? Were the contract terms the proposal terms?
- Get the fee before you get invested. An agency that won't price your role upfront is pricing your sunk time instead.
- Ask questions only your role can answer. A sourcing plan that fits every search fits none.
- Standardize the format. Identical response slots, whether through an RFP or a platform that enforces one, turn four decks into one decision.
- Concentrate the incentive. One agency with an 80% shot works harder than four sharing 20% each.
Reviews measure how strangers felt; outcomes measure what the agency did. Compare on the second and the choice usually makes itself.
Ready to compare agencies on outcomes? AirTA gives you standardized proposals, upfront fees, and verified post-search ratings in one place. Post a Job and see the difference in the first responses you receive.