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Recruitment Agency in Ireland: How to Hire Through Vetted Specialist Agencies (2026)
A recruitment agency in Ireland finds, screens and presents candidates for your open role, and you pay a percentage of first-year salary only when someone is hired. Contingency fees in Ireland typically run roughly 15-25%, and CBREX sees 15-30% across European placements. Expect a first shortlist within 24-72 hours and a hire about three weeks later if the process keeps moving.
| Item | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Typical contingency fee in Ireland | 15-25% of first-year salary, payable only on a placement |
| CBREX fee range for European placements | 15-30%, set by country of hire and the candidate's years of experience |
| Time to first shortlist | 24-72 hours from posting (sourcing time on CBREX for EU roles) |
| Time to hire (EU roles) | About 3 weeks after sourcing, when the process moves in rhythm |
| Typical European notice period | 30 days in CBREX's experience; check the actual contract |
| Screening on CBREX | Agency pre-screen, C Screen AI validation, stack ranking |
| Replacement guarantee | 30-90 days after joining, depending on level; free replacement or refund |
| Contract model | One contract, one invoice, pay on hire, registration free for recruiters |
A recruitment agency in Ireland searches its own network for candidates, screens them against your brief and presents a shortlist. It also coordinates interviews, relays offers and handles notice-period negotiation. The hiring company pays the fee, usually a percentage of first-year salary, and only when a placement is made.
That last point matters. Notre Dame's career guidance for students notes that the hiring companies pay the fee, which is why a good agency has every reason to present candidates who will accept and stay. If any agency asks the candidate to pay, walk away.
Agencies work in different ways. Yale School of Management's career office, in a guide for job seekers, separates contingency agencies from retained search firms and in-house recruiters. The same split applies to Ireland.
For India-HQ teams, the hard part is rarely finding one Irish agency. It is knowing which of the dozens is strong in your skill, then managing contracts, invoices and duplicate submissions across several of them. Our guide on how companies hire across 55 countries with one contract covers that admin problem in detail.
Before you pick an agency, settle who will employ the person. An agency finds and screens candidates but does not employ them. An employer of record (EOR) becomes the legal employer on your behalf. A direct hire needs your own Irish entity, or a plan to set one up.
The two services solve different problems, and many companies use both: an agency to find the person, an EOR to employ them while you test the market. Employer-of-record providers describe the EOR as the legal employer that runs payroll and statutory filings while day-to-day direction stays with you.
One open question: if the candidate is a non-EU national, the permit becomes the longest and least predictable step. We cover that in the timeline section below.
Most Irish agencies charge a contingency fee of 15-25% of the hire's first-year salary, payable only when the person starts. Others use retained or fixed-fee managed search with a payment before or during the search. CBREX sees 15-30% for European placements, and the exact percentage depends on the country of hire.
Suppose you hire a software engineer in Dublin at a first-year salary of €60,000. At 15% the fee would be €9,000. At 25% it would be €15,000. At 30%, the top of the range we see for Europe, it would be €18,000. These are illustrations of the arithmetic, not a quote.
The percentage also tells you what you are buying. A lower rate on a role that needs weeks of passive-candidate outreach may get little attention. A higher rate with a clear guarantee may be cheaper once you count a failed hire.
The most common fee mistake we see per overseas hire is calibrating fees to how hard the role seems. We advise the opposite: calibrate by the candidate's years of experience. Difficulty is subjective and invites haggling; years of experience can be checked on a CV.
Another trap sits in the brief itself. Hiring heads often ask for very high quality talent but will not pay at that level. Benchmark the salary against the Irish market for the role, not against your India pay bands. Our recruitment agency fees by country guide shows how the percentage shifts by market.
For a plain-language walkthrough of the mechanics, see how pay-on-hire recruitment works.
On CBREX, sourcing for a European role takes 24-72 hours, and hiring takes about another 3 weeks. So a typical Irish search runs roughly four weeks from posting to offer, before the candidate's notice period. Work permits for non-EU candidates can add well beyond that.
Those numbers are CBREX's own for EU searches. In our Germany search the role went from opening to hire in 30-45 days, with no visa step because the candidates were local or EU citizens. Another overseas hire closed in 27 days from role opening to hire when the process moved in rhythm.
| Stage | Typical time | What speeds it up |
|---|---|---|
| Role posted to first sourced candidates | 24-72 hours | A clear brief with salary band and must-haves |
| Interviews to offer | About 3 weeks (hiring phase for EU roles) | Fixed interview slots, one decision-maker |
| Notice period | 30 days is typical in Europe on CBREX | Negotiate the buy-out at offer stage |
| Work permit (non-EU candidates) | Separate government timeline | Start permit paperwork on acceptance |
Irish law sets minimum notice that rises with service, from one week for staff with 13 weeks to two years of service up to eight weeks for those with over 15 years. Contracts for professional roles often go beyond the statutory minimum, so read the actual contract. In CBREX's experience a typical European notice period is 30 days.
For non-EU candidates the Irish Employment Permit queue sets the pace. The Department's published averages have been around 10 working days for Critical Skills applications and 25 working days for new General permits, counted only from a fully completed application. Later government updates flagged longer processing times. Check the Department of Enterprise's current published figures before you promise a start date.
Slow hiring is also costly in its own right. Mint reported that timelines to close have increased, sometimes by 10-20% over the preceding year, partly because stakeholders disagree. The fix is on your side: agree who decides before the first interview.
Before signing, confirm six things in writing: the fee percentage and base, that only the employer pays, the replacement guarantee period, how duplicate candidate submissions are handled, who carries permit risk for non-EU hires, and the agency's track record in your exact skill area.
The IOM publishes a checklist of provisions employers can use in service agreements with labour recruiters. It is written for migrant-worker recruitment, but several of its clauses, such as clear fee disclosure, are useful to borrow for any cross-border agency agreement.
If fee terms or the guarantee are unclear, ask for a revised draft before sharing the brief. If the agency will not give a duplicate-control answer, do not run two agencies on the same role. If the agency fails on specialist depth, move to a boutique firm that does one sector. Do not sign and hope to fix it later.
You post the role once on CBREX. Our AI vendor matching, C Map, routes it to the specialist recruiting agencies most relevant to the skill and country. Candidates then pass three screening levels before you see them, and you sign one contract and receive one invoice, paying only on hire.
The three levels are an agency pre-screen, C Screen AI validation, and stack ranking. C Screen is a 98% accurate screener trained on 250,000+ anonymised resumes across 570+ job categories. Our shortlist-to-offer ratio after three-level screening has been 1:3 to 1:4 interviews per offer in recent searches.
The same platform has filled AI, semiconductor, hardware and software engineering roles, and roles across the US, Europe, APAC and India. More than 90% of our local hires stayed at least 12 months. For specialist technology roles in Dublin or Cork, that means a boutique agency in your skill, not a general desk.
For confidential senior searches we map only boutique search firms whose owners have more than two decades of industry experience and know how to be discreet. Want to see it run on your own role? Book a demo of the Irish routing and bring a live brief.
A strong brief states the role's purpose, the salary band, years of experience required, the notice period you can accept, and work-permit status. Agencies shortlist faster, and better, when they know what you will actually pay and who will make the decision.
One caution on our own numbers: our timelines come from CBREX searches, not a guaranteed service level. A hard, scarce skill with a permit step can take longer than a local software hire. Treat the ranges as planning inputs and revisit them once the first shortlist arrives.
A staffing agency is one firm that supplies candidates from its own network under its own contract. A recruiting marketplace connects you to many specialist agencies through one platform and one contract. CBREX is the second model: corporates post jobs, recruiters fill them, and the employer pays commission only for a successful hire.
If you want to compare the two models in depth, read our guide to recruitment marketplace vs agency in India.
Fees depend on the country of hire and the candidate's seniority. For Irish contingency searches expect 15-25% of first-year salary, and CBREX sees 15-30% for European placements. There are no retainers, seat licences or monthly fees on CBREX, so cost arrives as a single placement fee on one invoice.
Recruitment, staffing and executive search agencies, and self-employed recruiters, can sign up. Registration is free, and recruiters earn a commission for each successful hire. Signed-up sourcing partners get a Quickstart Guide and a dedicated Technical Support team.
If you run an Irish recruitment firm, you can sign up as a recruiting firm to receive roles from Indian and global employers.
If a placed candidate leaves inside the guarantee window, the remedy is a free replacement or a refund. The window on CBREX is 30-90 days after joining, depending on the level of hire. Confirm the period and any exclusions in your agreement before the search starts.
Hiring through a recruitment agency in Ireland works when the brief is realistic, the fee follows experience, and every check above passes before you sign. If you are an India-HQ team that would rather not manage a new vendor for each country, route the search through CBREX. You get vetted Irish specialists, three-level screening and a fee only on hire.
Book a demo to see an Irish role matched to specialist agencies in your skill. Want to size the admin drag first? Calculate your Hidden Hiring Tax. Prefer to talk it through? Let's Talk. Already a recruiting partner? Log in as a recruiting firm.
