Every talent acquisition leader I speak with tells me they are working hard to optimize their hiring process. They’ve invested in modern applicant tracking systems, built strong employer brands, and trained their recruiters. Yet when I ask about their agency relationships, I get a different story — one involving scattered contracts, rogue hiring managers working with friends who recruit, mysterious fees, and a general sense that they’re paying too much for too little control.
I recently sat down with Brin McCagg, CEO and founder of RecruitiFi, to understand how they address this challenge. The company has been quietly building something unusual in the talent acquisition technology space: a platform that treats agency recruiting like a marketplace problem rather than a vendor management problem. This briefing comes at an interesting time. RecruitiFi has been expanding its contingent workforce capabilities while pursuing deeper integrations with major ATS platforms, positioning itself as an embedded solution rather than another standalone system.
Why This Problem Exists
For permanent hires from agency recruiters, the core issue is straightforward: most organizations hire 95% of their people through traditional channels such as job boards, career sites and employee referrals. But for that remaining 4-5% of hard-to-fill roles, they turn to contingent agency recruiters. These might be technical roles in hot markets, leadership positions requiring discreet searches, or openings in new geographies where the company lacks presence.
The problem compounds because each agency relationship typically means:
- Separate contracts and terms negotiated individually
- Different fee structures ranging from 15% to 30% of first-year salary
- No visibility into which agencies are actually performing
- Rogue hiring managers engaging recruiters without HR involvement
- Payment chaos for accounts payable teams juggling hundreds of invoices
For contract/temp workers, which companies are increasingly reliant on, the situation often proves worse — spreadsheet management, workers being billed who aren’t actually working, and no systematic way to evaluate agency performance. In Brandon Hall Group’s advisory work with enterprise members, this consistently ranks among the top three operational pain points that TA leaders cite. But it’s the one they’re least likely to address systematically.
The Current Landscape
Several vendors have attempted to solve pieces of this problem, with varying approaches:
Beeline and Fieldglass (SAP): The enterprise heavyweights in vendor management systems (VMS), both platforms focus primarily on contingent workforce management. They offer robust functionality for large organizations but require significant implementation time and resources.
Workday VNDLY (formerly VNDLY): Following Workday’s acquisition, VNDLY has integrated more tightly with Workday’s core HCM platform. The system handles contingent workforce management effectively for Workday customers but primarily serves the Fortune 500 segment.
Eightfold AI: Approaches the problem from a talent intelligence angle, using AI to match candidates with opportunities. While powerful for internal talent mobility and direct sourcing, it doesn’t solve the specific challenges of managing external agency relationships, fee structures, and payment processes.
Bullhorn: Serves as an ATS specifically built for staffing agencies themselves — not the companies hiring them.
GoCo and similar HRIS platforms: Some provide basic vendor management capabilities as part of broader HR platforms, but lack the depth of functionality needed for sophisticated agency relationship management, particularly around performance tracking and AI-driven agency matching.
The landscape fragmentation we’re seeing here reflects a broader pattern in HR technology: established enterprise platforms handle the high-volume, standardized processes well, but struggle with edge cases that still represent significant cost and risk. When we conduct technology selection advisory projects for clients evaluating TA solutions, agency management capabilities rarely make the requirements list, yet six months post-implementation, it’s inevitably one of the first gaps they want to address.
What Makes RecruitiFi Different
Having reviewed the demo and spoken with their team, three capabilities stand out as genuinely differentiated:
Universal Terms Architecture
RecruitiFi operates on a single contract model similar to how Airbnb standardizes rental agreements. When companies join, they can’t modify the underlying terms; they can only adjust variables like fees and geography. This seems restrictive until you understand the implications:
- Every agency in their network (now over 20,000) has already accepted these terms.
- New agencies can be added to a client’s program in minutes, not months.
- The procurement and legal bottleneck that typically takes 6-12 months simply disappears.
- Companies maintain their existing agency relationships and fee structures.
The system includes a 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee, which is shorter than the industry standard 90-day prorated refund, but actually delivers more money back to clients (their analysis shows companies recover about 53-54% more under this model because they actually get 100% back rather than negotiating partial refunds).
AI-Driven Agency Matching With Community Effects
The platform doesn’t just manage existing relationships. It actively introduces new agencies to relevant openings:
- Agencies build detailed profiles showing their specializations, placement history, and performance ratings.
- Both candidates and companies rate agencies after each interaction.
- For each new job posting, the system automatically suggests 2-3 agencies beyond the client’s existing roster.
- These matched agencies consistently fill more than 50% of roles, typically at lower fees (since they’re earning new business).
- Agencies accept lower fees for matched opportunities because they’re skipping business development entirely.
This creates a network effect: more agencies joining makes the platform more valuable for employers, which attracts more employers, which makes the platform more valuable for agencies.
Dual-Model Economics: Direct Hire + Contingent Workforce
Most VMS platforms handle either permanent placements or contract workers, but none do so effectively in one system.
- For direct hires: RecruitiFi charges 6% of the gross placement fee (deducted from the agency’s commission, not added to the client’s cost).
- For contract workers: The platform takes 3% of the ongoing bill rate.
- Clients pay nothing. The model is 100% vendor-funded.
- Both workflows operate on the same platform with the same agencies.
The contract worker side has become particularly interesting. In one case study McCagg shared, a manufacturing company discovered contractors being billed who weren’t actually working, saving $2.5 million in the first six months simply from having visibility.
Who This Actually Serves
Based on their client base and go-to-market strategy, RecruitiFi fits specific organizational profiles:
Mid-Market Companies
- Need agency support for specialized roles but can’t justify enterprise VMS complexity
- Lack dedicated procurement resources for agency management
- Want professional agency infrastructure without enterprise price tags
- Growing fast enough that ad-hoc agency relationships have become unmanageable
Fortune 500 Companies With Decentralized Hiring:
- Use agencies across multiple business units or geographies
- Struggle with rogue hiring and contract proliferation
- Need to consolidate spending without disrupting existing agency relationships
- Current clients include MasterCard, Goodyear (70+ countries)
Organizations Scaling Contingent Workforce:
- Currently managing contractors through spreadsheets.
- Face compliance risks from inconsistent practices.
- Need time-tracking and billing integration (they integrate with UKG Workforce Management and other time-card systems)
- Want to expand contractor usage but lack infrastructure
Companies Implementing New ATS:
- RecruitiFi white-labels its functionality into several major ATS platforms.
- Agencies submit candidates that flow directly into the ATS workflow.
- Organizations gain agency management capabilities that their ATS lacks natively.
- Zero additional cost to the company (RecruitiFi revenue-shares with the ATS vendor).
Talent Acquisition Teams Under Pressure:
- Reduced headcount but same hiring targets
- Need agency support without admitting they “need agencies”
- Want performance data to justify agency investments
- Seeking cost reduction without sacrificing quality
Strategic Position and What’s Next
RecruitiFi’s real competition isn’t other technology platforms — it’s organizational inertia. Many TA leaders remain reluctant to acknowledge how much they rely on agencies, making this a challenging sale despite strong ROI. McCagg noted that companies often insist they “don’t use agencies” before eventually revealing they often work with many agencies.
The strategic direction centers on embedded partnerships rather than direct sales. By white-labeling their agency portal into major ATS and HRIS systems, RecruitiFI avoids the “we don’t want another system” objection entirely. The ATS gets a functional agency portal (most openly admit their agency portal doesn’t work well or in some cases does not exist), the company gets consolidated agency management at zero cost, and RecruitiFi monetizes the placements. RecruitiFi shares a portion of its revenue with the ATS partner.
This partnership approach makes sense given market dynamics. Companies consolidating systems won’t readily add standalone platforms, but they will adopt capabilities embedded in tools they already use. The challenge will be execution — navigating partnership sales cycles, integration work, and the leadership turnover at platform vendors that McCagg described as frustrating (mentioning one ATS had three CEOs during their three-year collaboration).
From our perspective at Brandon Hall Group™, RecruitiFi represents the type of specialized solution that often gets overlooked in favor of all-in-one platforms, yet solves a genuine pain point that traditional systems handle poorly. Their technology is well-positioned for our Excellence in Technology Awards, which recognize solutions that deliver measurable business impact.
For solution providers navigating similar market positioning challenges, particularly around partnership strategies and establishing credibility with larger platform vendors, our strategic marketing services help companies articulate differentiated value propositions and reach decision-makers who might otherwise default to familiar enterprise names. The agency recruiting space particularly benefits from third-party validation, given how reluctant many organizations are to admit they need help managing these relationships.
For organizations currently managing agencies through email, spreadsheets, and hope, RecruitiFi offers infrastructure that addresses real operational pain. Whether they access it directly or through an embedded ATS integration, the value proposition centers on making an unavoidable business process — using agencies for specialized hiring needs — actually manageable and measurable.
