Four routes to choose from, all with the same design flaw: they start from zero at every vacancy. Where the threshold sits for building your own system.
A machinery builder or technical service operator with an open service technician role has four routes to choose from. All four work. All four share the same design flaw – and it does not show at role one, it shows at role six.
| Route | What it costs | What it delivers | What it leaves behind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job advertisement | low, per posting | reaches the 6 % of skilled workers actively searching | nothing |
| Recruitment agency | 15–25 % of annual salary, market average 27.8 % | one hire, fast, with network access | nothing |
| Temp staffing | markup factor 1.5–2.0, indefinitely | bridges capacity immediately | nothing – the person never belongs to the company |
| Agency on retainer | monthly, without an endpoint | ongoing campaigns and applications | nothing – accounts and data sit with the agency |
The last column is the actual comparison. After every hire the engagement ends, access expires, and the knowledge of what worked in your region leaves with it. Six months later the same process restarts – same cost, none of the head start.
Because the frequency is higher than most companies assume. At 10 to 15 percent turnover in industrial and technical roles, a company of 150 employees fills eight to twelve technical roles a year: service technicians, industrial mechanics, CNC machinists, operators, plus replacements driven by age structure.
And the age structure will sharpen this: 23 percent of employees in German mechanical engineering are over 55, only 12 percent under 30, average age 46.2 years. According to IW Köln and the Impuls Foundation, around 296,000 will retire by 2034 while 118,000 enter.
In many companies “in-house recruiting” means the management assistant handles staffing on the side. That is not a system, it is a responsibility without a tool – and it fails at the response rhythm, because Monday is dispatch planning and the application sits for three days.
A system consists of six parts, and the difference to an agency lies in each final line:
| Module | What stays in the company |
|---|---|
| Role profile with travel radius, on-call, control systems | the template for every future role |
| Careers page on your own domain | the page, including access and source code |
| Channel to the 62 % passively open | ad accounts, audiences, creative |
| 72-hour response rhythm | process, message templates, ownership |
| Pre-selection on technical criteria | questionnaire, scoring logic, applicant data |
| Handover | training and a written operating manual |
The threshold sits at roughly five hires a year, corresponding to around 50 employees.
Below that it generally does not pay off. Anyone hiring two technicians a year cannot use a system to capacity; an agency is the cheaper math. There are exceptions – a new site, an age structure with several foreseeable departures, a territory being opened up – but they are exceptions and should be named as such.
Above it the calculation inverts. At eight hires a year at around €8,900 in fees each, placement costs alone run to about €71,200 annually – and around €356,000 over five years, without a single module remaining in the company.
“If the system belongs to us, what does the provider live on?” That is the right question, and it has an uncomfortable answer: on building new companies every year – not on old ones never finishing.
Which is precisely why a recruitment agency, a temp staffing firm and a retainer agency cannot make this offer. It attacks their own business model. If you think that is a sales trick, test it at the one place where it shows: does the ad account run under your name or the provider’s? That single question separates a system from a campaign more reliably than any brochure.
How the system is built in detail is on the page for the in-house recruiting system.
A field service technician hired in fourteen days. A machining company with three candidates for two roles in the first month. No magic pill – a system that stays in the company afterwards. The feasibility check tells you whether your role can be filled in your catchment area. If it cannot, we decline before you spend a cent. One company per field and area.
What happens on the first call
