This is what we would actually do, in what order, and what it costs.
No discovery call is required to see the number.
What we would go looking for
These are patterns that recur in staffing and recruitment, written as things to
look for. They are not findings from a named engagement.
Contractor margin eroded by employment cost that was modeled once and never updated.
Rebates and refunds on early leavers recurring with particular clients or consultants, unexamined.
Timesheet-to-invoice delay extending DSO for reasons entirely internal.
Job board and sourcing spend renewed annually with no view of placements generated per channel.
Contract extensions rolling on at original rates while the cost to serve has risen.
The sequence
Five weeks for one operating unit. More units run in parallel rather than in
series, so a group does not take five times as long.
Week 1
Intake and reconciliation7 requests written for staffing and recruitment, alongside the 107 covering the operating spine. We tell you which findings the gaps will limit before any fieldwork starts.
Weeks 2–3
Full pass, not a sampleEvery placement in scope is read rather than sampled.
Week 4
Quantification and challengeEach finding sized, and put to whoever owns it before it is written down.
Week 5
Report and walkthroughThe written report, ranked by annual value and by how hard each finding is to act on.
2 core requests written for staffing and recruitment, inside the full intake.
Anything you do not have can be skipped with a reason — skipping narrows what the
review can conclude, and we tell you where before the work starts rather than after.
Placements by client, sector and consultant — Permanent and contract.
Gross margin per placement and per contractor — Pay rate against charge rate, after employment cost.
If any of this is already happening
The review is always worth doing and rarely urgent. It becomes urgent when
something else is happening — and if one of these is, the sequence above compresses
to fit it.
A workers' compensation audit that reclassified codes and produced a bill
A client demanding an unprofitable rate at renewal, with no cost model to argue from
A misclassification claim, or a state audit of 1099 contractors
An acquisition approach, where spread by client becomes a diligence question
Losing a large account and discovering how much overhead it was carrying
Who needs to be in the room
Signs it: Owner or CEO
Will resist it: Branch or desk managers whose account-level spread becomes visible — worth telling them what the
review is for before they hear it from somewhere else.
Has been asking for it: The controller, who cannot currently prove which accounts earn
What it costs
Priced by operating unit — an entity, a location, or a business the accounts are
kept separately for. The second unit costs less than the first because by then the
intake is built, the chart of accounts is understood and the patterns are known.
Purchase order is the primary route — most
buyers this size raise a PO and pay against an invoice on terms. Card and bank
transfer exist for those who prefer them.