Sometimes, you gotta spend money to make money. The truth behind that expression is debatable, except among today’s jobseekers, for many of whom it's become an established reality.
In their search for employment, desperate workforce hopefuls — white-collar ones, in particular — have given way to a relatively new breed of workers: reverse recruiters, per The Wall Street Journal.
Traditionally, recruiters are hired by companies to find candidates to fill open positions; by contrast, reverse recruiters are hired by jobseekers to help them find employment.
Why is this happening?
Because the current job market is an absolute shitshow pretty bleak.
- In late 2025, the unemployed outnumbered open roles for the first time since the pandemic, and the average job search now takes nearly six months, per federal data.
Adding to the mess are factors like ghost jobs, which waste applicants’ time and efforts, and AI tools, which have made it easier to apply to jobs but more difficult to stand out.
So how much do they cost?
Reverse recruitment agencies, which typically apply on behalf of jobseekers, can charge upwards of $1k and may even take a cut of their clients’ first paychecks if they’re successfully matched.
- Refer uses “Lia,” its AI agent, to set up ~20 introductions a day between applicants from top colleges and the ~2k companies in its network. Few result in employment, but the company told WSJ new candidate signups have grown from ~10 a day to ~50 since August. The cost of one successful matchup: ~20% of the new hire’s first month’s paycheck.
- Boutique firm Reverse Recruiting Agency’s service boasts a 2- to 2.5-month average placement time and includes resume building, career coaching, LinkedIn posting, and up to 100 application submissions a week. Its client pool is smaller but its success rates are higher, having successfully matched 20 of 44 past clients. The charge: $1.5k a month, plus 10% of their first-year salary (minus the first month’s fee).
For those able to, or simply depleted enough, dropping a couple thousand for a steady paycheck isn’t the worst trade-off against the prospect of sustained unemployment and the treachery of job hunting.
So, you gotta have money to make money?
To the disadvantage of jobseekers who can’t afford the professional assistance, reverse recruiting does stand to make that increasingly the case.
Labor
