Direct Hire IT Recruiting Is Won at the Offer Letter
Permanent tech hires on your payroll, from platform engineers to IT directors. One fee, charged at the start date.
Direct hire IT recruiting fills permanent tech seats on your own payroll. KORE1 averages 17 days to fill an IT role, bills 20% of first-year base once the hire starts, and replaces anyone who leaves within 60 days.
Last updated: September 26, 2026
- This desk
- Permanent IT hires on your payroll, from help desk leads and platform engineers up to IT directors.
- Routed elsewhere
- CIO, CTO and VP searches run through our executive recruiting firm. Cover for a chair that’s empty right now goes to backfill staffing, and permanent engineering or finance hires to direct hire staffing.
Most IT searches don’t die at the resume stage. They die in the last ten days, when a finalist who said yes to everything reads the letter, walks it into their manager’s office and has a counteroffer by Friday. We’ve watched it happen. So the offer gets most of our effort.
This page covers the permanent side of IT staffing services. Contract and contract-to-hire solve other problems, and our IT recruiting agency page lays out all four ways to staff a role. Here it’s one question. You want someone on your payroll for years, so how do you get them to sign, show up and stay?
When an IT Seat Should Go Direct Hire
Simple test. Ask what the person will own a year from now. A system, a pager, a set of admin credentials or a team means the seat should be permanent, and a finished project means it probably shouldn’t.
- Holds the pagerSREs and platform engineers who get paged when production breaks over a holiday weekend. Someone has to.
- Has the keysStanding admin rights to production or your identity provider. Rotating those through contractors is a security problem before it’s a budget one.
- Knows why the org looks like thatThe Salesforce or NetSuite admin whose knowledge gets more valuable every quarter.
- Runs peopleIT managers and IT directors. Who wants to report to someone with an end date?
Contract work has its place. A cloud migration, a warehouse rebuild or a SOC 2 push has a finish line, and contract staffing fits it better. When you can’t tell yet, contract-to-hire buys a few months of evidence, and our breakdown of what a trial period costs next to a permanent hire shows where the two cross over.
Permanent also means years. Federal employee tenure tables put the median for people in computer and mathematical jobs at 4.6 years with their current employer in January 2026, up from 4.3 two years earlier. That’s your horizon.
An IT Offer Letter, Marked Up by the Recruiter
Here’s an illustrative offer for a senior platform engineer. Six lines are highlighted. Those are where direct hire IT offers get accepted, countered or quietly turned down, and each recruiter note is something we settle with you before the letter goes out.
[Your company]
Offer of employment · [Date]
Dear [Finalist],
Recruiter’s notes
We’re pleased to offer you the position of Senior Platform Engineer, reporting to the Director of Infrastructure.
TitleTitles carry weight. A staff engineer reads “senior” as a step down, whatever the pay line says, so we check it against what they hold today.
Your starting base salary will be $[amount] a year, paid every two weeks.
BaseNo surprises here. It sits inside the range the finalist heard on our first call, or you’ve heard from us in advance that it won’t.
The role is hybrid, in our [city] office Tuesday through Thursday.
LocationWrite the days. An interview that promised flexibility and a letter that says three fixed days is how a signed engineer becomes a no-show.
After your first 90 days you’ll join the on-call rotation, one week in six.
On-callPager duty goes in writing. Engineers ask about it in the final round, and a vague answer gets heard as every other week.
You’ll receive [number] restricted stock units vesting over four years and a $[amount] signing bonus, repayable if you leave within twelve months.
EquityCompeting offers win here. We ask each finalist what else they’re holding before you write this line, so the grant isn’t a guess.
Your first day will be [start date], contingent on a standard background check.
StartName the checks. Say how long each one takes, too, because a three-week background check running against a two-week notice period leaves you with a slipped start date or a very nervous new hire.
- AcceptedDate
Before it goes outWe’ve already asked the finalist what their current manager would do to keep them. Awkward question. Cheaper than hearing the answer after they resign.
Seven notes. Not one of them is about finding candidates, and every one of them decides whether the person you picked shows up on day one.
The Two Weeks After the Signature
A signed offer isn’t a hire. Not yet. Most engineers give two weeks’ notice, senior ones often give more, and those are the weeks when a current employer suddenly finds the raise budget it couldn’t find at review time.
So we stay close. The recruiter who ran your search keeps talking to the new hire right up to day one, and when a counteroffer lands we hear about it early and talk it through with you that same day, not after the start date has already slipped.
- Resignation dayWe call that afternoon. We want to hear how it went.
- Middle of the notice periodA second call, in case the first counteroffer wasn’t the last one.
- The day before startEquipment, the first meeting and who meets them at the door, confirmed.
Why all this care? The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook projects about 280,000 openings a year in computer and information technology occupations from 2025 to 2035, so the engineer you just signed is still getting other calls. Recruiters don’t stop calling.
The start date also starts the guarantee. If the hire leaves, or doesn’t work out and you let them go, inside the first 60 days, we run the search again at no additional fee.
17 days
average time for KORE1 to fill an IT role, job order to signed offer
92%
of KORE1 placements still in their seat after a year
4.6 yrs
median time with the current employer, computer and math jobs, January 2026
280,000
computer and IT openings projected each year through 2035
Sources: BLS Employee Tenure, January 2026, released September 24, 2026. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025 to 2035 projections. KORE1 placement data.
What Direct Hire IT Recruiting Costs
These are our standard direct hire terms, the same for a help desk lead as for an IT director. Nothing’s hidden. Your agreement spells them out before the search opens.
Fee
20% of first-year base
One percentage of the new hire’s starting base salary, the same rate at every level we place.
Billed
Once, at the start date
One invoice when the new hire starts. Nothing up front. Nothing monthly after that.
No start
No fee
If nobody you hired through us starts, the search costs you nothing, however long it ran.
Guarantee
60 days from the start
If the hire leaves or doesn’t work out in the first 60 days, we search again free.
Hourly roles get annualized first, at forty hours a week for fifty-two weeks. On a platform engineer earning $150,000, the fee comes to $30,000, invoiced once. That’s the whole bill. Converting a contractor works differently, on a sliding scale covered in our guide to contract-to-hire conversion.
If that engineer stays as long as the median person in a computer or math job has been with their current employer, 4.6 years, the fee works out to a little over 4% of base a year. One more term. If you hire someone we introduced within a year of that introduction, for that role or any other, the standard fee applies.
Common Questions
How much does direct hire IT recruiting cost?
Our standard fee is 20% of the new employee’s starting base salary for the first year, invoiced once when they start. Hourly roles are annualized at 2,080 hours before the percentage applies. There’s no retainer. No monthly charge either, and if nobody starts, there’s no fee at all.
How long is a typical direct hire IT search?
17 days, on average, from an approved job order to a signed offer across KORE1’s IT searches. Add the notice period, usually two weeks, to reach a start date. Niche stacks and small markets run longer, and you’ll hear that on the intake call rather than a date we can’t hit.
What happens if the new hire leaves in the first couple of months?
We search again, and you don’t pay a second fee. The 60-day guarantee runs from the start date, whether the person resigns or doesn’t work out and you let them go. Tell us early, though. A problem raised in week three is easier to fix than one raised on day 59.
Should an IT role be direct hire or contract-to-hire?
Direct hire, if the person will own something a year from now, such as production, admin access, a system of record or a team. Contract-to-hire fits when you honestly can’t tell yet and want a few months of real work to judge before you decide, which is a fair position for a first IT hire in a new area. It gets expensive when the conversion decision drags. Set the date up front.
Is the fee higher for senior IT roles?
Same rate. Our standard 20% applies from a help desk lead up to an IT director. CIO, CTO and VP searches run differently, as retained or engaged executive search with their own terms.
Do we owe anything if you don’t find the right person?
No. The fee depends on someone starting, so a search that ends without a hire costs you interview time and nothing else. We’d still rather tell you in week two that the range is too low for the market we’re recruiting in than run a search for three months and hand you nobody.
What if we hire someone you introduced months later?
The standard fee applies if you hire them within a year of our introduction, for that role or any other. It’s in writing. The agreement spells it out before the search opens, so there’s nothing to discover later on either side.
Which IT Seat Are You Filling?
Send the role, the pay range and your target start date. That’s enough to start. A KORE1 IT recruiter comes back with how the search should run and where the offer is likely to get tested.
Send Us the Role →Or call 949-706-6990
