What is in a recruiting engagement
A Metcalf Search engagement is a flat monthly partnership that handles five things across every open role: sourcing, screening, interview coordination, offer construction, and retention support. The five map to the STACK Method, the framework this firm uses to describe how small businesses hire well. The services below are what that framework looks like when someone is doing the work.
Sourcing
Sourcing is finding the people you want to hire, which is almost never the same group of people who apply to your job posting. Most SMB hiring failures begin here. The wrong pipeline produces the wrong candidates no matter how well you interview. Sourcing inside an engagement means active outbound to passive candidates, employee referral activation, targeted LinkedIn and trade community work, careers page traffic capture, and re-engagement of warm candidates from prior searches. Posting on Indeed is part of this. It is not most of it. See Source for the full picture.
Screening
Screening is the first conversation, and it is the most undervalued step in SMB hiring. A good screen filters for fit on the three or four things that actually matter and surfaces the two or three concerns worth raising before the hiring manager spends an hour on a video call. We screen every candidate before they reach you. You see fewer people. The people you see are closer to the role.
Interview coordination
Interview coordination is the part SMB owners do not think they need help with and then quietly hate doing. Scheduling across four interviewers, two candidates, and three weeks of competing calendars is its own job. It is also where Tempo dies. Candidates ghost when a process drags. Engagements include the scheduling, the candidate communication between interviews, the debrief structure, and the structured-interview support that Assess describes in detail.
Offer construction
Offer construction is where most SMB hires fall apart. Counteroffers, ghosting, last-minute pulls, and the "I thought we had them" phone call. The fix is rarely more money. It is total compensation framed clearly, no-surprises offer conversations, and a sequence that does not leave the candidate alone with their current employer for a weekend. The full pattern lives on Close.
Retention support
Retention support is the work that happens after the hire signs. Onboarding scaffolding, 30-60-90 planning, manager check-in cadence, and early warning signals when someone is drifting. The first ninety days predict whether a hire stays three years, and most "bad hires" are really bad onboardings. The mechanics are on Keep.
Tiers, briefly
Engagements come in four flat monthly tiers: Recruiting Partner, Partner Plus, Partner Pro, and Partner Lite. The tiers vary by role volume, onsite hours, and scope of retention support. Pricing is set in the first conversation based on your hiring volume and the complexity of the roles. There is no per-hire fee on any tier. Rates are grandfathered, so a tier change later does not reset what you are paying for the work already running.
What is not included
Engagements do not include payroll administration, benefits brokerage, employment law advice, performance management, or HR generalist work. Those belong to your HR person or fractional HR partner. Fractional Recruiting sits next to HR, not on top of it.