Not every seat should be a permanent hire. Here is how to tell which kind of staffing fits the work in front of you, plus a calculator to compare what each really costs.
Move the sliders to see a full-time hire against contract talent for the same stretch of work. Contract is not always cheaper. It is flexible, and that is the point.
A rough guide, not a quote. Assumes about 173 working hours a month. Your real numbers depend on the role, the market, and your benefits load. Want exact figures? Talk to us.
A direct hire is someone you build around. They learn your business, carry the institutional knowledge, and grow with the company. You pay once and they are yours.
Contract talent is capacity you can turn on and off. A project, a busy season, a leave to cover, a function you want to test. You scale up when you need to, and stop the day the work is done.
A project, a launch, a migration. You need the hands now, not forever.
Seasonal swings, surges, or coverage for a leave. Flex the headcount with the workload.
You cannot wait weeks for a full search. Contract talent can start in days.
No long-term commitment and no severance exposure if the need changes.
Try a role before you commit permanent headcount and budget to it.
Move spend from a fixed salary line to a variable cost you control.
It sits at the center of how the business runs, day in and day out.
The longer someone is in the seat, the more valuable they become.
Someone invested in the mission, the culture, and where you are headed.
The work is steady and you want a steady hand on it.
You are growing a team that will be here for the long run.
For scarce talent, a permanent offer is often what it takes to land them.
Salary is the number everyone quotes. It is not the number you pay. Once you load in payroll taxes, benefits, time off, and overhead, a full-time hire runs about a third more than the figure on the offer letter.
That is roughly 1.3 times base before they write a single line of work, plus ramp time and the cost of a mis-hire if the fit is wrong. A contract bill rate looks higher by the hour because it already carries all of this, and the agency holds the risk, not you.
We will not push you toward the bigger fee. We point you to the staffing that actually fits the work.