Most recruitment agencies send their final invoice before your new hire has cleared probation. Some before they've even started. 
You carry all the risk, armed with nothing more than a short warranty and a vague promise that they'll "sort it" if things go wrong.
We do it differently. At Time to Hire, you pay half our fee on appointment, and the remaining half only when your hire has been with you for 12 months. If it doesn't work out before then, you don't pay another penny.
No rebate chasing. No difficult conversations. No small print.
It sounds simple - because it is. But it changes everything about how we work. When our success depends entirely on yours, we have every reason to get it right. And no incentive whatsoever to cut corners. Here's what that looks like in practice.
The brief matters more when the fee depends on it
Before we begin any search, we take time to understand your business - not just the job spec.
Most agencies ask enough questions to write a job advert. We ask enough to make sure we're hiring the right person. As former marketing practitioners, we know which questions matter and which ones most recruiters never think to ask. What does success look like at 3, 6, and 12 months? What kind of personality will thrive in your team - not just survive in it? What's the culture really like, not the version you'd put in an ad?
Where possible, we'll visit you in person. Telling candidates "it's a great culture" means nothing unless we've seen it ourselves.
We'll also research the market on your behalf - mapping comparable roles, realistic salary ranges, and how remote, hybrid or office-based expectations might affect your options. You'll know exactly what you're working with before we start.
When half our fee is on the line at month 12, doing this properly isn't optional.
The job advert is a marketing problem
No templates, no buzzword bingo, no posting your own job spec to fifteen job boards and hoping for the best.
A job advert is marketing - and we were marketers before we were recruiters. We write clear, honest copy that reflects the role, your business, and the genuine opportunity for the right candidate. That means leading with what matters to them, not just what you need from them. It means being honest about the challenges of the role as well as the opportunity. And it means resisting the urge to list every requirement under the sun - research consistently shows that overly long criteria lists put off strong candidates, particularly those from underrepresented groups.
We'll get it in front of the right people once you've signed it off and we're aligned on exactly who we're looking for.
The best candidates often aren't on job boards
At the same time as advertising your role, we run a discreet outreach campaign targeting passive candidates - people who aren't actively job-hunting, but might be open to the right opportunity if it landed in front of them.
This is usually where the best hires come from. People who are settled, successful, and not desperately refreshing their inbox for new applications. Getting in front of them takes more effort than posting on a job board. But when our fee structure means we need your hire to last 12 months, finding the right person - not the nearest available person - is the only sensible approach.
Screening is where most agencies cut corners
Screening deserves human judgement, not AI shortcuts or CV-sifting at volume.
By the time a candidate reaches you, we'll have met them wherever possible, interviewed them properly, and had real conversations about their motivations, cultural fit, and career trajectory. We specialise in marketing recruitment - and because we've worked in many of the roles we recruit for, we know what good looks like beyond a well-written CV.
We always ask ourselves the same question: if we were building our own team today, would we hire this person? If not, we won't put them in front of you.
We also use a structured, consistent process - not a friendly chat followed by a gut feeling. Competency-based questions that ask candidates to draw on real experience. Practical assessments that reflect actual work. A scoring framework that keeps evaluation objective rather than impressionistic.Because a hire that doesn't work out isn't just an inconvenience. For us, it's a fee we don't collect.
Getting the hire over the line
We'll arrange all interviews and when you reach offer stage, we'll be on hand to help negotiate terms, handle any counteroffers, and assist with referencing and right-to-work checks. Our work isn't done when you make an offer. It isn't done when they accept. It isn't done on their first day.
It's done at 12 months - when your hire is still with you, delivering, and our final invoice is the easiest one you'll sign all year.
The final invoice
At 12 months, if your hire is still in post and performing - which is the only outcome we're working towards - we'll raise our final invoice.
No chasing. No awkward conversations. Just a straightforward bill for the second half of an agreed fee, for a hire that's proved their worth.
That's the model. That's the moment we've both been working towards.