Mike Carter
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 An ERP implementation needs seven filled seats, and only three of them are full-time. Executive sponsor, project manager, solution architect, data lead, one process owner per in-scope area, a test owner, and the administrator who runs the system after go-live. Everything else on the org chart is … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 An embedded software engineer costs $145,000 at the median in total compensation and $217,000 at the 75th percentile, and the role is not the same hire as a firmware engineer, whatever your req says. This person lives above the metal. They own the application layer on somebody … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 Hiring an AI agent engineer in 2026 costs roughly $150,000 at the median and north of $270,000 at the 75th percentile, and the deciding skill is production reliability, not model knowledge. The demo is never the hard part. Keeping the thing correct on the four hundredth run … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 Hiring an Oracle EBS consultant in 2026 runs $65 to $150 an hour on contract, or $115,000 to $175,000 base for a direct hire. Scope by module before you scope by title, because Financials, Supply Chain, HRMS, and the technical stack behave like four separate talent markets … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 Choose an executive search firm by testing four things before you sign: who personally runs your search, how the firm proves its market map, what its off-limits list blocks, and what the guarantee actually replaces. Everything else in the pitch meeting is decoration. Logos on a slide. … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 An employment background check is a third-party report on a candidate’s criminal, employment, education, and sometimes credit history, governed federally by the FCRA and Title VII and further restricted by fair-chance laws in fifteen states. The report itself is rarely the problem. The paperwork around it is. … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 A retained executive search runs in installments over roughly 90 to 120 days, with the firm mapping a market, approaching passive leaders directly, and delivering three to five assessed finalists instead of a stack of applicants. That timeline is two to three times longer than the published … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 A dedicated in-house technical recruiter runs $122,000 to $130,000 a year once benefits and tools are counted, and the math only wins past roughly six to seven closed hires a year. Below that volume, a 20% to 25% contingency fee per placement costs you less. That crossover … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 Contract-to-hire only beats direct hire on cost up to a break-even point, typically 6 to 14 months depending on your fee and markup rates; wait longer and a one-time 15% to 30% direct-hire fee wins outright. That range is wide because the two rates that set it, … Read more
By Mike Carter, Director of Partnership Success, KORE1 ERP consultants bill $85 to $325 an hour in 2026 across NetSuite, SAP, and Dynamics 365, and the platform explains less of that spread than the engagement model and how much validation the project actually requires. A generalist quoting $95 an hour and a validation specialist quoting … Read more
