There’s a good chance you’re unemployed friend is paying someone $1,500 a month to apply to jobs for them.
Morning Brew reported this week on “reverse recruiting” — a trend where white-collar workers are so desperate they’re paying recruiters $1,000+ per month (plus sometimes a cut of their salary) to apply to jobs on their behalf.
Reverse recruiting is the latest sign that finding traditional employment has become so exhausting, time-consuming, and depressing that white-collar professionals are now outsourcing their entire job search to hired guns.
First, Allow Me to Explain Reverse Recruiting (In 30 Seconds)
Traditional recruiting: Companies pay recruiters to find candidates. You pay nothing.
Reverse recruiting: You pay recruiters to find you jobs. Companies pay nothing.
Low Hire, Low Fire Mode
The current U.S. job market is stuck in what economists call “low hire, low fire” mode.
This means that companies aren’t laying people off in droves (although it seems that way), but they’re also not bringing anyone new through the door.
Job searches now average 24 weeks (that’s six months of your life)
Job openings dropped to 6.5 million in December 2025, continuing a downward trend
Nearly one in four unemployed people (23.5%) have been jobless for 27+ weeks, which is long enough to exhaust unemployment benefits in most states
The unemployment rate hit 4.4% in December, the highest since 2021, with certain groups like Black women facing 18.5-week median unemployment duration
Less than half of workers think they could find a new job in three months, according to a Federal Reserve poll.
So many people are staying put in jobs they’d rather leave that it’s creating a vicious cycle: fewer openings, slower hiring, and longer searches.
Why Reverse Recruiting is Appealing
I get the appeal. When you’ve sent 200 applications and gotten 3 responses, paying someone to take over sounds like relief.
These services promise to:
Apply to dozens of jobs on your behalf
Optimize your resume for ATS systems
Handle the soul-crushing repetition of job applications
But these aren’t career coaches giving you resume tips.
Reverse recruiting services log into your LinkedIn and job boards, apply to dozens of positions daily on your behalf, and handle the grunt work of the modern job search.
In exchange, they charge monthly fees starting at $1,000 and climbing to $4,000+ for executive packages.
Or a cut of your first-year salary once you land.
What This Means for You
But here’s what Morning Brew and most coverage of reverse recruiting misses: while everyone’s fighting over the same shrinking pool of traditional jobs, the flexible work market is growing.
Contract roles, fractional positions, project-based work, and remote consulting opportunities don’t follow the same hiring timeline as traditional corporate jobs.
This is where experienced professionals actually have an advantage.
Reverse recruiting exists because the traditional job market is in a slow-motion stall. Companies aren’t hiring aggressively, and the hiring processes that do exist are broken by design.
You have three choices:
Pay someone $1,000-$4,000/month to play the volume game on your behalf
Spend six months doing it yourself and hoping for different results
Recognize that the traditional path might not be the only path — or even the best path — and adjust your strategy accordingly
About the Author
Nesha V. Frazier is the founder of FlexpertJobs, a curated job newsletter for experienced working moms. She's an HR professional, U.S. Air Force veteran, and mom of four who got tired of watching qualified women get buried by job boards that weren't built for them. She writes about flexible work, career strategy for working mothers, and what it actually looks like to build a career around your life instead of the other way around. Subscribe to FlexpertJobs (it's free) or reach her at [email protected].