Recruitment without the percentage-of-salary fee.
Proper recruitment, run for you, for roughly the cost of the advertising — not a percentage of the salary the way an agency charges. We run the process end to end and you make the hire.
The short answer
SME recruitment is the work of designing a role, advertising it, screening applicants and shortlisting candidates so a small or medium business can hire the right person without doing it all themselves. At Valont it is run for you for roughly the cost of the advertising, rather than the percentage of the new hire’s salary a traditional recruitment agency charges — one function of a connected back office, run inside the people function and shaped around the role you actually need filled.
Hiring is expensive, slow, and easy to get wrong.
For a small or medium business, filling a role is rarely simple. A traditional recruitment agency typically charges a placement fee worth around 15–20% of the new hire’s annual salary — a real cost that, on a single role, can run well into the thousands before the person has done a day’s work.
The alternative is doing it yourself: writing the ad, sifting through applications, chasing candidates and coordinating interviews, all on top of running the business. That eats the owner’s time, the process drags, and good applicants go cold — and a rushed decision risks a bad hire that costs far more to unwind than it did to make.
The usual trade-off
Agency placement fees priced as a percentage of salary
DIY hiring that eats the owner’s time and stalls
Good applicants going cold while a role sits open
The cost and disruption of a bad hire that has to be undone
A properly run process, without the agency premium.
We run as much or as little of the hiring process as you need — from designing the role to handing your new starter over for onboarding.
Role & ad design
We work out what the role actually needs to do, then write a clear position description and a job advertisement built to attract the right applicants rather than just any applicants.
Advertising & sourcing
We place the role on the job boards that suit it and manage the listing. Because the model is built around the advertising spend, you can see exactly where your money is going.
Screening & shortlisting
We review applications against the must-haves you set, handle the early back-and-forth, and bring you a shortlist of suitable candidates with notes — not a stack of CVs to wade through.
Interview coordination
We organise the interviews around your diary, brief candidates, and keep everyone informed, so the process keeps moving and good applicants do not go cold while you are busy running the business.
Reference & compliance checks
Where you want them, we coordinate reference checks and the right-to-work and pre-employment checks for the role, so the basics are confirmed before you make an offer.
Offer & onboarding handover
Once you have chosen, we help with the offer and hand the new hire straight into the People hub for onboarding, Award classification and payroll setup.
Our Recruitment Process
Scope the role with you
We start with a conversation about what the role really involves, the must-haves and nice-to-haves, the budget and the timeframe, then draft the position description and advertising for your approval.
Advertise & source
We place the approved advertisement on the channels that suit the role and manage the listing. You pay close to what the advertising costs, and we run the process around it.
Screen & shortlist
We review and screen applicants against your criteria, coordinate the interviews, and bring you a shortlist with our notes. You interview and decide who to hire.
Offer & hand over
Once you have chosen, we help with the offer and any reference or compliance checks, then hand the new hire into the rest of the People hub for onboarding and payroll setup.
The hire does not stop at the offer.
Recruitment is the front door to the rest of the People hub. Once you have chosen someone, they flow straight into onboarding, correct classification under the relevant Modern Award, and payroll setup — so the person you hired is set up properly from day one, as one connected part of the connected back office.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Recruitment is run for you for roughly the cost of the advertising, rather than a percentage of the new hire's salary the way a traditional agency charges. You pay close to what it costs to advertise the role, and we run the process end to end on top of that. The exact figure depends on the role, where it needs to be advertised, and how much of the process you want us to handle, so we will give you a clear quote up front before any work begins.
A traditional agency typically charges a placement fee worth a percentage of the new hire's annual salary, which on a single role can run into the thousands. We work the other way around: we run the recruitment for you for roughly the cost of the advertising, with no percentage-of-salary fee. You get a properly run process — role design, sourcing, screening, shortlisting and interview coordination — without the agency premium.
Yes. We design the role, write and place the advertising, screen applicants and bring you a shortlist with our notes, but the hiring decision is always yours. You interview the people you want to interview and make the final call. We run the process so you can focus on choosing the right person.
We recruit across the kinds of roles small and medium businesses hire most often — administration, operations, trades and field staff, customer service, finance and office roles, and team leaders. If a role needs specialist search or executive headhunting, we will tell you honestly where our process fits and where it does not.
A conversation about the role: what the person will actually do, the must-haves versus the nice-to-haves, the budget, and how soon you need them. From there we draft the role description and advertising for your approval, and you stay in control of the budget and the shortlist throughout.
The new hire flows straight into the rest of the People hub. We can handle onboarding, classify them under the correct Modern Award, and set up payroll, so the person you chose is set up properly from day one rather than landing on a pile of paperwork.
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Hire the right person, without the agency fee.
Tell us about the role and we will run the recruitment for you for roughly the cost of the advertising — no percentage-of-salary placement fee.