Talent acquisition consultancy · Melbourne · Australia-wide
Marque Talent is the smarter way to hire, for growing SMEs and large organisations alike: senior recruitment expertise on demand, around half the cost of an agency, with every hour itemised and no lock-in.
Founder-led by Tharindu Domingo. Senior expertise on every role.
The problem
Most businesses believe they have two options when a role opens up. Both were designed around someone else's margin.
Option one: the agency
of first-year salary, per hire
On a $100k role that's a fee of $25,000, for a few weeks of work, priced against your candidate's salary rather than the effort involved. And the more the candidate costs you, the more the agency makes.
Option two: hiring in-house
a year in salary and on-costs
A dedicated recruiter is wonderful, if you hire constantly. Most growing businesses don't, so the desk sits quiet between roles while the salary, super and software keep running.
There is a better way. Pay a senior talent partner for the hours worked, and nothing else.
See how it works ↓The Marque model
Marque Talent runs your recruitment the way an in-house talent lead would: scoped up front, tracked to the task, and billed only for time actually worked. Take the whole search or just the stages you need.
Tharindu Domingo
Founder & Director
The person behind Marque
I founded Marque Talent to offer businesses a more cost-effective and transparent alternative to traditional agency recruitment. Percentage-based fees are rarely aligned with the work required to make a hire, and they leave clients with little visibility of what they are paying for.
Great recruitment begins with understanding the business: its strategy, its culture and the qualities that will allow someone to succeed in the role. That understanding is too often lost when recruitment is treated as a volume exercise.
At Marque, every engagement starts there. We invest the time to understand your organisation before we search, and we provide full visibility of the work undertaken and where your investment has been directed.
Our ambition is to be a long-term partner in your growth, not simply another supplier. We measure our success by the strength of the relationships we build and the calibre of the people we help you hire.
◆ Your business understood first. Every hour accounted for.
Who we work with
Whether you hire a few times a year or run a busy talent team that needs more capacity, Marque plugs in where it adds the most value, as an extension of your team rather than another agency on the panel.
You're adding people, opening a new site or making key hires, without an in-house recruiter or the budget for agency percentages on every role.
Your talent or People & Culture team has more roles than hours. We take on a campaign, a peak period or the hard-to-fill roles, scoped in hours up front and reported line by line.
Sales leadership, specialist and C-suite roles where culture and personality matter as much as the CV, and the brief needs real understanding of your business.
Side by side
| Traditional agency | In-house recruiter | ◆ Marque Talent | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | 15–25% of salary | Full salary + on-costs | Hourly. Pay for time used |
| Commitment | Per hire | Permanent headcount | None. Scale up or down |
| Incentive | Close the placement | Fixed | Great work & honest advice |
| Transparency | Opaque fee | n/a | Every hour itemised |
The fee calculator
Drag the sliders. The difference is your money.
How hard is the role to fill?
Estimated effort: 35 hours at our blended rate of ~$220/hr
Typical agency fee
$20,000
Marque estimate
$7,700
You keep
$12,300
62% less than the agency route
Estimates only. Every engagement is scoped with an estimate and a cap up front. You approve before we ever exceed it.
Engagement tiers
Same partner, same process. Choose how you'd like to buy the hours.
Flex
$250/hr
For occasional, one-off hires
Best value
Partner
$200/hr
For regular hirers
Embedded
$180/hr
Your ongoing talent function
◆ New clients begin with a one-off $750 establishment fee, credited in full against your first work, so it costs you nothing to commit properly.
What we do
Brief to onboarding: ads, search, screening, interviews, references and the close, all run like your own talent team would.
Enquire →
Only need the ad written? A shortlist screened? Final interviews run? Buy exactly the stages you need, nothing more.
Enquire →
Talent roadmaps, workforce planning, retention strategy and employee value propositions, so you keep the people you've got.
Enquire →
Branded job descriptions, Seek ads and reference-check templates: flat-priced, yours to keep and reuse forever.
Enquire →How an engagement runs
We define the role, agree exactly which stages you're buying, and set the estimate and cap.
Sharp, honest advertising plus direct search, not just the people who happen to apply.
Structured screening against the brief. You see a shortlist worth your time, with clear notes.
Interviews, references and the checks that matter, verified before you commit.
Offer managed, start date locked, and a follow-up rhythm so your new hire actually stays.
Every stage is logged and itemised. Your invoice reads like a story of the work, and you'll get a clear update every single week.
What you actually see
This is the shape of a typical full search for a mid-level role, the same breakdown you'd get in your estimate before we start and on your invoices as the work happens.
Illustrative example only, not a client record. Your own estimate and cap are agreed with you before any work begins. Shown at the $250 Flex rate; the calculator above uses a blended rate across our tiers. Job board advertising is shown as its own line.
Example estimate · mid-level role · Flex rate
| Stage | Hours | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Brief & scope | 4 | $1,000 |
| Attract & source | 9 | $2,250 |
| Screen & shortlist | 11 | $2,750 |
| Assess & verify | 7 | $1,750 |
| Close & onboard | 4 | $1,000 |
| Marque total | 35 | $8,750 |
| Agency at 20% of $100k | $20,000 |
Fair questions
They can't. You get an estimate and a cap up front, and we flag it before ever exceeding it. You approve any extension first, so you will never get a surprise invoice.
You can, and you'll usually pay two to three times more, to someone whose fee grows with your candidate's salary. We're paid for the work, not the placement, so our advice doesn't have a commission behind it.
Not as a standard term. In a percentage fee, the cost of the guarantee is already built into the price. We put the effort into reducing the risk before anyone starts instead: a clear brief, structured screening against it, references checked before you commit, and a check-in after your new hire starts. If a hire still doesn't work out, you re-engage at the same hourly rate, and you're still well ahead of an agency fee.
You get a senior partner, personally accountable for every role, not a desk of thirty jobs fighting for attention. Behind that sits a streamlined delivery system, so nothing waits and nothing gets dropped, and you get a clear update every week so you always know where your search is at.
It's a one-off for new clients that confirms commitment on both sides, and it's credited in full against your first work. In effect it costs you nothing; it just means we both take the engagement seriously from day one.
A free, no-obligation chat about the role you're trying to fill. Worst case, you leave with better questions. Best case, you never pay a percentage again.
