Intuch is our subscription-based recruitment model designed to give growing businesses more control over recruitment costs. Instead of committing to a large upfront fee, you spread the cost over time, reducing financial pressure and making it easier to scale your team without stacking traditional recruitment fees.
The problem
Hiring carries risk. A significant proportion of new hires consider alternative employment within their first year. Even with clear briefs and structured interviews, circumstances can change quickly once someone starts.
Early departures happen for reasons that are difficult to predict at the offer stage. Culture fit, counter offers, relocation, commuting changes or shifts in working expectations can all affect retention.
Under most traditional recruitment models, the full fee is paid upfront. Rebate periods are typically short and conditional. If a hire leaves outside that window, you absorb the financial impact while reopening the search.
For growing businesses, concentrating recruitment costs at the point of greatest uncertainty increases financial exposure. Intuch was created to distribute that risk more fairly by spreading the cost of recruitment over time.
How it works
Intuch replaces traditional upfront recruitment fees with a structured subscription model. The process is straightforward and gives you clarity on how and when you pay.
Why choose Intuch
Intuch gives businesses an alternative way to pay for recruitment. Costs are spread over time, making it easier to plan recruitment spend alongside wider business priorities.
Rather than paying a single recruitment fee when a candidate starts, costs are structured through monthly payments over 6 or 12 months.
Recruitment fees are spread over time, helping businesses manage hiring costs in a way that suits their budget and growth plans.
If a candidate leaves the role, payments stop from that point onwards. This provides additional flexibility compared to a traditional one-off fee structure.
For businesses hiring across multiple roles, Intuch provides a more predictable way to manage recruitment spend while continuing to grow the team.
Who is this for
Intuch is designed for startups and SMEs that are scaling but want to protect cash flow. When every hire affects your monthly outgoings and growth plans, spreading recruitment costs makes expansion more manageable.
It suits founder-led businesses, leadership teams and finance-conscious organisations that want to hire confidently without committing large sums upfront.
If you are building out a team, replacing key roles or planning phased growth, Intuch gives you a structured way to move forward without concentrating recruitment spend at the start.
Case studies
"We needed to grow headcount by 50% in 6 months, including hard-to-fill tech roles, which wasn't something we were going to do on our own. Digital Waffle filled the gap properly. They got us the people we needed at the pace we needed them, and at significantly less cost than building out our own recruitment function. We hit the target on schedule."
"We brought Digital Waffle in on a retained basis to help us scale at Gnosis. Over twelve months they delivered 28 roles, sourcing the right candidates for each one across functions that aren't always easy to recruit for in this space. They showed a deep understanding of our requirements from the start. Happy to recommend them to anyone hiring at scale."
"We've been hiring across marketing, digital and the wider team for the last 18 months, and Digital Waffle have been our go-to partner throughout. They've placed 82 people for us, from juniors right through to director level, perm and freelance. It's a lot of moving parts for one agency to handle well, and they've kept on top of it the whole way through. We'll be using them again."
"We brought Digital Waffle in to run our hiring through the development hub launch, and they've placed over 50 specialists for us across product, development, design and QA in the two years since. The quality has been consistent throughout, which matters across a stretch that long. They've become the team we go to when we need to hire."
"Zak has been a real help in building out our talent pool at Commify. His ability to source candidates across diverse roles has been genuinely impressive. His professionalism and commitment to our recruitment needs have made a real difference to the quality of people we've been able to hire."
"Hitting 40 hires in 18 months across infrastructure and engineering was an ambitious target, and we needed an agency that could deliver against it without us having to manage the process closely. Digital Waffle did exactly that. The shortlists were focused and we didn't waste time on candidates who weren't right. Every role landed on schedule, and the people they brought in are already contributing to the programmes they're supporting."
"Digital Waffle were a real help when we were building out our engineering team. It was a fast-moving period, with a lot happening across our website and apps, and they quickly understood the kind of people we needed. They supported us with both perm and contract hires, kept things moving and made the whole process feel straightforward. Really easy team to work with."
"Digital Waffle handled our hiring across data and engineering for the last year, supporting a big period of transformation. They listened to what we needed and brought us qualified candidates for each role, twenty in total. The team they've helped us build is now delivering real results across our digital projects. They got the brief and they got it right."
Pricing
Choose and compare your selected pricing plan from these options:
| Features | Standard | Intuch - 6 months | Intuch - 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront costs | Significant upfront fee | No large upfront costs | No large upfront costs |
| Payment | One off | Split over 6 months | Split over 12 months |
| Payment terms | 14 days | 14 days | 14 days |
| Payment stops if candidates leave or is let go | — | Included | Included |
| A team of recruitment specialists | Included | Included | Included |
| Dedicated account manager | Included | Included | Included |
| Direct communications with hiring manager | Included | Included | Included |
| Ongoing pipeline of candidates | Included | Included | Included |
| Monthly marketing support | Included | Included | Included |
| Access to top-line tech stack | Included | Included | Included |
| Access to all the job boards | Included | Included | Included |
| Bespoke salary survey | Included | Included | Included |
| Prompt 48-hour CV turnaround | Included | Included | Included |
Our disciplines
Intuch is available across all of our core recruitment areas. Wherever you need to hire, you can use our subscription-based recruitment model to spread the cost and manage hiring more affordably.
Salary guides
Hiring affordably starts with knowing the market rate. If salary expectations are misaligned, offers stall, budgets stretch and recruitment costs increase.
Our 2027 UK salary guides provide up-to-date benchmarks across marketing, tech, IT and data, with year-on-year comparisons and forward projections. They help you sense-check salary ranges before you go to market.
Used alongside Intuch, they give you clearer visibility on both salary and recruitment spend, so you can plan headcount with greater confidence and control.
RECRUITMENT TERMS
Intuch offers an alternative way to structure recruitment support, but you can also work with us through more traditional recruitment models.
Compare our standard, exclusive and retained search options to understand the different fees, payment terms and rebate periods available.
FAQs
Subscription-based recruitment is a hiring model where recruitment fees are structured over time rather than paid as a single upfront fee. With Intuch, we replace the traditional one-off placement fee with instalments. This gives you more predictable recruitment costs and better cash flow control while still receiving a full recruitment service.
Recruitment-as-a-Service, often shortened to RaaS, is a hiring model where recruitment support and fees are structured over time rather than paid as a single upfront cost. With Intuch, we apply this subscription-based recruitment approach to permanent hiring, allowing you to spread recruitment costs, reduce financial risk and scale your team with greater budget control.
Traditional recruitment typically requires a large upfront payment when a candidate starts. With Intuch, recruitment costs are divided over 6 or 12 months. If the hire leaves, payments stop. This reduces financial exposure and removes the pressure of short rebate periods often associated with standard recruitment models.
If a candidate leaves during the subscription period, your payments stop immediately. You are not required to continue paying the full recruitment fee. Once services delivered to date have been covered, we can restart the search and refill the role. This creates a fairer, lower-risk structure compared to traditional upfront recruitment fees.
The overall recruitment fee percentage may differ from a standard model, but the key difference is how it is structured. Instead of concentrating the cost at the start, Intuch spreads recruitment spend over time. For growing businesses managing cash flow, this often makes hiring more commercially manageable.
Intuch is particularly suited to startups, SMEs and growing businesses that need to hire but want to protect cash flow. If multiple roles are live or hiring plans are phased, spreading recruitment costs reduces upfront financial strain and supports more controlled scaling.
Yes. Intuch is designed to support scaling teams. If you are hiring across several roles, subscription-based recruitment prevents traditional fees from stacking at the start. This allows you to grow without committing large capital sums upfront for each placement.
No. The recruitment process remains structured and specialist-led. We still run full candidate sourcing, qualification and interview management across marketing, tech, IT and data roles. The difference is how the recruitment fee is structured, not the quality or rigour of the hiring process.
Get in touch
If you’re exploring ways to spread recruitment costs or reduce upfront hiring fees, we can walk you through how Intuch works and whether it suits your hiring plans.
Share a few details about your hiring goals and our team will be in touch to discuss the model and answer any questions.
Prefer to talk? Call us on 0121 517 0357.
