In-House Recruiter vs Agency: The Real Cost Math for Ecommerce Brands
"Should we just hire our own recruiter?" Every scaling ecommerce brand asks it eventually, usually somewhere around the third agency invoice. We're an agency, so you'd expect a one-sided answer - but for some brands building in-house genuinely is the right call. This is the maths we'd run in your position.
What an in-house talent person costs
A dedicated internal recruiter is now a circa $150,000 salary. Add super, job-ad spend and sourcing tools - LinkedIn recruiter seats are a serious line item on their own - and you're carrying $180,000 or more a year before they've made a single hire. That cost lands whether they place two people that year or ten.
What an agency costs
An agency is a per-role cost rather than a standing one. In the months you aren't hiring there's nothing to pay for, and the fee scales with the seniority of the search. Hire often enough, though, and per-role fees add up - which is exactly why the question gets asked.
Where the breakeven sits
Stack a $180,000-plus standing cost against per-role fees and the crossover only arrives with sustained volume: several placements a year, every year, in roles an internal person can genuinely fill. Most ecommerce brands hiring three or four times a year never get close. And volume is only half the test. Internal talent teams do their best work on repeatable, active-market roles - support, warehouse, junior digital. The hires that decide your year, like a Head of Ecommerce, a senior CRM specialist or a performance marketer who can prove incrementality, sit in a passive market, and reaching them takes a specialist network whoever's name is on the recruiter's badge.
The costs that don't make the spreadsheet
A revenue-owning role sitting empty for an extra month means an underperforming channel for that month. Speed to a strong shortlist has a dollar value, even though nobody budgets for it.
A wrong senior hire costs far more than any fee once you count salary, severance and the search you end up running again.
The candidates you most want aren't applying to ads, so whoever recruits for you needs a live network in your niche rather than just an advertising budget.
What we'd actually suggest
If you're hiring a handful of times a year, an agency costs less and there's no capacity sitting idle between searches. For senior and specialist roles, the specialist network wins at any volume. Past five or six placements a year, the structure our best clients run is a hybrid: an internal person (or a capable ops lead) owning volume and junior hiring, with a specialist agency on the searches where the market is passive and the stakes are high.
FAQ
When does in-house recruitment make sense for an ecommerce brand?
When hiring is constant - several placements a year, sustained, in roles where candidates are actively applying. High-growth brands scaling support, warehouse and junior digital teams often hit that bar.
How do agency fees work?
Fees are quoted per role and scale with seniority - a senior search costs more than a junior one. Brief us on a role and we'll tell you exactly what it would cost before anything starts.
Can we use both?
Most of our long-term clients do: internal capability for volume hiring, Revere for the specialist and senior searches. The two cover different ground, and together they cost less than either one stretched across everything.
Weighing it up for a specific role? Tell us about it - if you don't need us, we'll say so. For the wider picture, see our Complete Guide to Ecommerce Recruitment in Australia and what ecommerce roles pay in 2026.