A staffing agency fee is worth paying when your own search hours plus the cost of the empty seat exceed the fee, and the role is genuinely hard to source. The arithmetic with a worked example, when to skip the agency entirely, what to negotiate, and how to tell a real recruiter from a CV forwarder.
What a Virtual Assistant vs an Employee Actually Costs
The loaded cost of a local part-time employee, built from current BLS and HMRC figures rather than a rule of thumb, set against what a VA arrangement really costs once your own documentation and management time are counted. How the answer changes at 5, 15 and 40 hours a week, and a ten-minute decision test.