RecruitSourcing Sprint vs Full Search: Choosing the Right Model
Recruitmint's two search-scoped models differ on who runs interviews and how the fee is structured. Here is an honest comparison of when each one fits.
Recruitmint's two search-scoped models differ on who runs interviews and how the fee is structured. Here is an honest comparison of when each one fits.
Sourcing Sprint hands over a calibrated shortlist and lets your team run the interviews. Full Search runs the whole process, from calibration through offer and close, on your behalf. The difference is not quality of candidates. It is who does the work after sourcing ends.
Key numbers
Sourcing Sprint is built for a client who already knows what the role needs and can run interviews internally. The scope is narrow and specific: we identify, engage and qualify candidates, then hand over a carefully calibrated shortlist. What happens after that, the interviews, the reference checks, the offer, the close, is the client's process to run.
Full Search is scoped end to end. We manage calibration, candidate assessment, interviews, offer negotiation and close, all inside the one engagement. The fee reflects that: a launch fee plus a success fee on placement, with the success fee sized to seniority, complexity and volume rather than a flat rate.
Neither model is a subscription. Both close when the search closes, or a hire is made, whichever the scope defines.
| Sourcing Sprint | Full Search | |
|---|---|---|
| Sources and qualifies candidates | Yes, us | Yes, us |
| Runs interviews | No, the client | Yes, us |
| Runs candidate assessment | No, the client | Yes, us |
| Handles offer negotiation | No, the client | Yes, us |
| Manages the close | No, the client | Yes, us |
| Price | Flat fee per search, quoted on request | Launch fee plus success fee, quoted on request |
The table makes the tradeoff plain. Sourcing Sprint is a single flat fee and stops earlier in the process. Full Search carries a launch fee plus a success fee, and in exchange the firm carries the process all the way through the hardest parts: assessing candidates against what the role actually needs, and closing an offer without losing the finalist.
Sourcing Sprint fits a client who has a structured internal interview process already running, has hired for this kind of role before, and mainly lacks one thing: enough qualified candidates in front of them. A VP People at a scale-up with a defined rubric, a panel that already knows how to assess for the role, and internal bandwidth to run five or six interview loops does not need someone else to run those interviews. They need a shortlist that has already been screened for fit against the mandate, so the internal process only sees candidates worth the panel's time.
This is also the honest answer for a reader who should not spend more than they have to. If your team can run assessment and close confidently on its own, paying for someone else to do it is not judgment, it is padding the invoice. Sourcing Sprint exists specifically for that case, and the sourcing-only recruiting cost guide covers what that scope should and should not include in more detail.
Full Search fits two situations that often overlap. The first is a high-impact or hard-to-fill role, a founding engineer, a first CTO, a Head of Growth, where getting the hire wrong is expensive in ways that go beyond the search fee itself. The second is a client who does not have the internal bandwidth or market familiarity to run assessment and close with confidence, even if the role itself is not unusually senior.
The site's own framing is the reason this matters: the harder part of hiring is understanding what the business actually needs and who can genuinely perform in that environment, not just producing names. Sourcing gets you candidates. It does not, by itself, get you through a structured assessment that tests for that fit, or through an offer negotiation with a finalist who has other options, or through a close that does not fall apart in the final week. Full Search is built to carry a search through exactly those stages, which is why it is priced with a success fee tied to seniority and complexity rather than a flat sourcing rate.
A government contractor mobilizing cleared talent after a contract award is a useful test case. The role is often narrowly defined on paper, but the market is thin, the timeline is tied to a delivery phase, and the internal team may not have run a search like this before. That is a Full Search pattern even when the internal interview panel is perfectly capable, because the scarcity of the market and the cost of a slow close outweigh the savings of running it in-house.
Some roles need neither. A mid-level, well-defined role with steady applicant flow and a clear job description usually does not need a paid search at all, sourcing or full. Post it, run your existing process, and save the fee. Sourcing Sprint and Full Search both exist for roles where the candidate pool is not showing up on its own, or where the assessment work itself needs outside judgment. If neither of those is true, the honest answer is to keep running the process you already have.
If it is not obvious which model fits, the Hiring Scorecard is built to answer that question directly. It is a 2 to 3 minute, nine-question assessment scoring four pillars: Role Clarity, Hiring Readiness, Talent Market Fit and Recruitment Capacity. The recommendation logic is straightforward: sourcing-only support requested for a single role routes to Sourcing Sprint; ongoing support or four or more open roles routes to Embedded Partner; most other combinations, including a single high-impact role that needs assessment and close handled for you, route to Full Search.
The scorecard is a better starting point than guessing, because the two models look similar from the outside (both are search-scoped, both start with calibration) and the real difference only shows up once you ask who is doing the work after the shortlist lands. If your actual need turns out to be ongoing capacity across several open roles rather than one search, the embedded recruiter vs RPO comparison covers that different fork.
Sourcing Sprint, a flat fee per search, is the right call when your team already runs a solid internal interview process and mainly needs qualified candidates in front of it. Full Search, a launch fee plus a success fee on placement, is the right call for a high-impact or hard-to-fill role, or when your team lacks the bandwidth or market familiarity to run assessment and close with confidence. Both are quoted on request. If it is not obvious which describes your situation, the Hiring Scorecard is built to answer that in under three minutes, and for background on what a success fee itself covers, see the broader recruiter fees and engagement models overview.
The two models have different scopes and fee structures from the start, so moving from one to the other mid-search is a scope change worth discussing directly rather than something built into either engagement. The honest approach is to decide the scope up front, using the Hiring Scorecard or a straightforward read of your internal bandwidth, rather than starting narrow and hoping to expand later.
Sourcing Sprint is a single flat fee, while Full Search combines a launch fee with a success fee on placement, so the full cost comparison depends on the success fee for that specific role's seniority and complexity. What Sourcing Sprint saves in fee, the client spends in internal time running interviews, assessment and close; both are quoted on request.
That uncertainty is exactly what the Hiring Scorecard is built to resolve. It scores Role Clarity, Hiring Readiness, Talent Market Fit and Recruitment Capacity from nine questions and recommends Sourcing Sprint, Full Search or Embedded Partner based on that scoring, rather than asking you to guess.
Neither published model states a guarantee period, replacement window, or time-to-fill commitment, and neither should be assumed. Both are a paid engagement owed regardless of outcome, scoped to the search as described above.
How Recruitmint's Embedded Partner model is structured, what it includes, and the volume threshold at which the Hiring Scorecard recommends it over a single search.
Embedded recruiting and RPO both provide ongoing recruiting capacity, but differ in scope and how pricing is structured. Here is an honest comparison, using Recruitmint's Embedded Partner model and the RPO Association's own published pricing categories.
The market convention for retained executive search fees, what that means in dollar terms at different compensation levels, and how Recruitmint's Full Search model compares in structure.