Some job seekers spend thousands of dollars on reverse job posting sites to find a job

How much would you pay to get a new job?

Ask around and job seekers will tell you that it’s harder to get an interview or offer today than it has been in years. It’s not uncommon to hear stories of people who have applied for dozens, even hundreds of jobs, only to receive very few jobs.

The data supports this. The U.S. added 1.46 million jobs in 2024, but there was little job growth in 2025, with only 116,000 jobs added for the year. According to Greenhouse data, a typical job opening in 2025 received an average of 244 applicants, more than double the number in 2022.

Economists refer to this as a job market with “fewer jobs and fewer layoffs,” and some refer to it as a “jobs recession.”

As a result, some job seekers are turning to “reverse recruitment” and paying to outsource their searches themselves. In traditional recruiting, companies pay recruiters to find candidates for open positions. In recruiting, job seekers pay a recruiter to help them find a job.

From applying on behalf of candidates to negotiating offers, this model turns traditional recruitment on its head, and its use could reveal deeper changes in the labor market.

Nick Ebel said he “didn’t have a choice” when he learned about the reverse recruitment.

Ebel, 50, of Charlotte, North Carolina, said he was laid off from his engineering job in November 2023 due to layoffs. For about two years, while working part-time, project-based jobs that barely covered the cost of living, he said he tried applying for new roles with little luck. By the summer of 2025, he heard about a company called Reverse Recruiting Agency and decided to give it a try.

Reverse recruiters work in a few different ways, but typically provide job seekers with help identifying new jobs to apply for, tailoring resumes and cover letters for each new role, and submitting applications on the job seeker’s behalf. Reverse recruiters keep candidates updated on the status of their applications and may even send emails and LinkedIn messages to internal contacts on a candidate’s behalf to gain attention.

Some agencies help job seekers set up and prepare for interviews, but once they get to that stage, it’s up to them to work well with the hiring team.

Some reverse recruiting companies charge a flat fee based on the number of applications they send to candidates, while others charge monthly fees throughout the hiring process. For example, Reverse Recruiting Agency charges $1,500 per month. Once a candidate finds a job, the first month’s fee will be refunded, followed by 10% of the first year’s base salary. Agents call this a “success fee.”

Ebel enrolled and began working directly with Alex Sincarowski, founder of Reverse Recruiting Agency. This includes overhauling your application strategy, including creating a target list of desired jobs and companies, and then applying to new opportunities on Ebel’s behalf with a tailored resume and cover letter.

Within a month of using Reverse Recruiting Agency, Ebel said he had secured about 12 interviews. “I got the offer within about three weeks of interviews starting.”

Ebel says it was worth the thousands of dollars to help reverse recruit because without the investment, he could have lost his full-time job. “Months after you apply, you start to really question whether there’s still a place for you in this economy (and) this workforce,” Ebel says.

He said he is currently working in a job he loves and has advanced in his career with a director-level position.

Mr. Shinkarovsky launched his reverse recruiting agency in 2024 with just three clients. So far, the company has worked with 45 clients who have completed the program, 22 of whom received offers through the agency’s efforts and six who obtained offers on their own.

He believes his business has picked up because “people don’t know the formula for success in this market,” he says. “Before, I could apply for 25 positions and get five interviews,” he adds. But “the old rules are gone. The system is different.”

Shinkarofsky said his agency submits 50 to 100 human-generated applications per week on behalf of each client, as well as sending emails and LinkedIn messages to five to 10 people at each company they apply to to reach out to hiring teams.

Economists say the growing interest in reverse job offers reflects a weakening labor market, with competition for jobs intensifying by the day.

“February jobs numbers were pretty disappointing,” said Svenja Guder, chief economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. The US job market lost 92,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in the same month.

Meanwhile, the time to hire is rapidly approaching. According to data from Indeed, as of November 2025, it took an average of 47 days for companies to post a job and issue an offer, up from less than a month in late 2022. Meanwhile, the number of long-term unemployed people is increasing, with one in four job seekers looking for work for six months or more.

Corey Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of Americas economics, said the economic downturn and rising interest rates are hitting sectors like tech, financials and professional services hard.

AI tools have made it easier for job seekers to quickly update their resumes and cover letters and apply to many jobs at once. That’s a bottleneck when recruiting teams.

“If you’re in a white-collar job, this is a difficult time to find work, so that’s why some people are looking elsewhere, doing reverse recruitment, etc.,” Kantenga said.

Faced with intense market competition, some candidates may be willing to pay for something like a partner to help them navigate the difficult search.

“In this world of AI and technology, we are once again reaching out to humans to find jobs and engage with real people to talk to,” Goodell says. “It’s like constantly pressing zero on the phone to talk to a representative.”

Reverse recruitment may be a hot topic, but it also receives a lot of criticism and requires caution. One criticism is that it can give career advantages to people who can afford to pay.

“One of the concerns about reverse recruitment is that people who don’t have money will be less competitive in the job market, even if they have the skill set,” Kantenga says.

Some warn of the dangers of fraud.

Bonnie Dilber, senior manager of talent acquisition at Zapier, says it’s important to check a reverse recruiter’s credentials before signing on. She recommends doing extensive research by getting independent referrals and seeing if the recruiter has success finding jobs for candidates in a particular industry. It’s also a good idea to check online forums like Reddit and Trustpilot reviews for mentions of scams, she says.

Additionally, Dilber says using a service like reverse recruitment can be considered a scam by some companies who consider you to be misrepresenting yourself during the recruitment process.

“You need to experience it for yourself, because if your experience is misrepresented, you could end up spending a lot of money on these services without actually getting the results you want,” says Dilber.

After doing his own research, Howard Pan, a job seeker based in Washington, D.C., decided to try reverse recruiting himself.

Pan, who was fired from Amazon Web Services in January, paid $299 for a service called ApplyAll. The service will apply to 200 job openings on his behalf. The biggest advantage of using this service is that it is easier to find job openings at companies you don’t know about, and you can apply faster than applying on your own.

With the help of a reverse recruiter, “I can now get my name out in front of other applicants,” says Pang, 35.

But job seekers shouldn’t rely on just one method when searching for a job, he said. “I don’t intend to use this service as the only way to search for a job,” he said, adding that he sees reverse recruiting services as “complementary to traditional job search methods like LinkedIn, recruiter contacts, in-person recruiting events, job fairs, etc.”

Ebel says the service isn’t for everyone. He doesn’t recommend this job to new professionals who don’t have an established career or aren’t completely clear on what kind of job they’re looking for.

People who apply for jobs on their own and get a 10% interview rate (i.e., one interview offer for every 10 applications) may not even need help with reverse recruiting, especially within the first month or two of their search, Shinkarofsky says.

After all, when working with a reverse recruiter, no matter how much money you pay, there is no guarantee that you will land an interview or get a job offer.

“It’s hard to estimate how much people should spend looking for a job,” Dilber said. If you haven’t updated your materials in a few years, other job search services may also be valuable, she says, such as a resume writer with extensive experience in your industry or a career coach who can help you understand your strengths or transition into a new field.

And while there’s been a lot of talk about reverse job openings, especially in a frustrating job market, some economists say demand could slow as hiring increases and job seekers become more positive about their prospects.

“As with many trends, once people learn something, they tend to stick with it, so this trend is likely to continue,” Kantenga said. “But as the job market improves, I expect people to find opportunities and not have to rely as much on hiring professionals.”

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