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We recommend you hire on Toptal over Robert Half because Toptal vets their talent and does not charge as high of fees. However Robert Half has access to more types of talent than Toptal.
You can read our individual reviews to help you make an informed decision:
Or if you continue reading, you will learn the pros and cons of hiring on Toptal and Robert Half.
With over 70 years of experience in the staffing space, Robert Half has amassed quite a following with top companies. In addition to being voted Forbes’ top staffing agency in 2019, they were also voted one of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies for 2020.
One of the major pros of working with a staffing agency is the flexibility it provides. While plenty of massive companies rely on Robert Half to fill positions, it’s the small and mid-sized businesses that can best leverage the additional flexibility Robert Half can offer.
On an interim basis, a staffing agency allows you to provide reinforcements during your busy season, or to cover for a full-time employee that’s currently on medical or family leave.
Robert Half can also enable you to fill permanent positions without having to commit to the hiring process. With a temp-to-full-time arrangement, your business can garner meaningful insight about a person’s skills and personality before you commit to bringing them onto the team permanently. If it isn’t a good fit, you can move on and find a more suitable candidate.
Another benefit of working with Robert Half is that they can quickly scale with your business. Staffing an entirely new team from Robert Half is just as easy as staffing a single employee.
With Robert Half, all employees are put through a rigorous screening process and technical proficiency exam. These standards ensure that your recruiter is only pulling from top-quality talent that can jump right into a productive role for your business.
It’s worth mentioning that Robert Half is also an industry leader in terms of corporate responsibility. The company engages in global philanthropic, sustainability, and diversity efforts. In 2020, Robert Half was named to Baron’s 100 Most Sustainable Companies list for a third time, along with being honored by Forbes as one of the Best Employers for Diversity.
As the most popular staffing agency in the world, Robert Half has its fair share of glowing reviews from actual clients. Here’s a sample of what some hiring managers have to say about their experience dealing with Robert Half.
Others recommend Robert Half specifically for hard to fill IT roles, and for providing flexibility and well-vetted candidates that were perfect for the task at hand.
Toptal’s claim to screen 3% of the talent may or may not be entirely accurate (I’ll discuss Toptal’s vetting process in a moment).
What matters is Toptal saves you time spending hours filtering through freelancers for their performance. After all, if Toptal didn’t have hoops for freelancers to jump through, then their available talent would dilute. As a result, their market differentiation would be… the same as almost any other freelance marketplace.
Many entrepreneurs hiring on Toptal note their support staff is very hands-on. Toptal also has a fantastic UI and billing process.
According to Toptal, “In a typical engagement, we’ll introduce you to candidates within 24 hours. And 90% of our clients hire the first candidate we introduce.”
Freelancers must maintain high customer satisfaction ratings. Otherwise, Toptal will remove them from the platform.
The first time you work with your freelancer, you get a two-week test period with your new hire. If you’re not satisfied, Toptal will take the loss and won’t charge you for the freelancer’s work. (Please note: this is not a “free trial” in that if you accept the project, you will pay for the hours billed).
Toptal’s screening process 3% will weed out some quality workers. But it’s better to miss out on a potential A player than to waste precious time on a borderline freelancer who turns out to be a B or C player.
Toptal doesn’t have nearly the total number of freelancers for you compared to Robert Half. But do you really need 12 million freelancers, or just a handful of freelancers to consider to get the job done? More than 100,000 people apply to join Toptal every year, but they accept only 3%. In simple numbers, that means they add roughly 3,000 freelancers every year.
That means rather than spending your time and energy vetting freelancers, Toptal does the heavy lifting for you.
Toptal is a good place to start if you’re serious about growing your business and are ready to invest in top talent at a reasonable rate.
As of this writing, Toptal has vetted developers, designers, and finance experts. If you want to hire a freelancer with a different skill set, you may want to consider a different freelance platform.
The difficulty of using Toptal to source freelancers is if you are looking for someone to help with a small, one-off project. Toptal asks for a $500 commitment for the first project, which is fully refundable if you’re freelancer is not a fit.
Robert Half doesn’t specialize in placing select freelancers. They do state they have millions of candidates and that a job is filled every two minutes. Which, for the record, is about 262,800 jobs filled every year!
What’s Toptal’s vetting process to make sure you work with world-class talent?
Toptal uses a 5-step screening process to source the top 3% of freelancers:
Even with this level of screening, Toptal has a wide pool filled with a specific talent set. Instead of hiring any DevOps engineer, Toptal can help you find an “AWS DevOps engineer who understands Docker, Jenkins, RDS...” and any other needs you may have.
The dollar per hour will often increase when you need a specific skill set. But you’ll also know the freelancer better fits your needs than finding a freelancer for yourself on Robert Half.
Robert Half does not disclose their screening process. This the information we received when messaging a customer support staff member:
“Candidates are typically screened, interviewed, provided assessments based on need, references are required and background check if direct hire or once a temp candidate is converted. We have a solid in depth process.”
After this chat, the customer support rep refused to disclose any information unless we scheduled a sales call with a sales rep.
Hiring normally takes a long time, as anything worth doing should take time. But because Toptal screens their candidates, they can place you with a candidate in 48 hours:
If there are no candidates available in Toptal’s network, it typically takes 1-3 weeks for Toptal to locate, screen, and work with every expert.
As with Robert Half’s screening process, they do not disclose any information about their hiring process. We specified we may want to hire a ruby on rails developer to get more specific information. However, the support rep failed to provide anything about the process.
Toptal does not charge a fee above their regular pricing. Instead, they add a profit margin above the freelancer’s rates.
Most rates you’ll pay are what you’d expect to pay outside their platform.
Toptal offers this pricing chart:
What you pay your freelancer depends on:
It’s difficult to pin down Robert Half’s pricing because the fees they charge depend on position you’re filling.
For temporary hires, you can expect to pay an extra 75% of what you would pay the employee if you hired them on your own and put them on your payroll. So a temporary developer at $50 an hour would then be billed at $87.50 per hour.
If you want to hire a temporary employee full-time, you’ll pay a recruiting fee. Generally, these fees work out to around 33% of the employee’s first-year salary. So a $50/hour developer would have a salary around $100,000. At a 33% recruitment rate, you’d pay roughly $33,333.
Toptal requires a $500 deposit which applies to your first bill. If you get a freelancer you are not satisfied with, you are not required to make any payment. You can choose to either part ways with Toptal or restart the hiring process.
The first time you work with your freelancer, you get a two-week test period with your new hire. If you’re not satisfied, Toptal will take the loss and won’t charge you for the freelancer’s work. (Please note: this is not a “free trial” in that if you accept the project, you will pay for the hours billed).
Toptal does not mention any information on their website how they handle disputes. However, every Toptal client receives an account manager who can help resolve your issues.
Robert Half offers a service guarantee, but they do not provide any specific details about the guarantee.
Robert Half and Toptal are both beneficial for different hiring needs.
Toptal is an excellent freelance platform for hiring quality talent. Because of the time they invest in curating the best talent, you’ll spend less time to find the right freelancer.
If you’re looking to hire vetted developers, designers, or finance experts for a project with a budget of $2,000 USD or more, go with Toptal.
With an abundance of freelance talent online, it’s hard to imagine the need for paying an extra 75% for a temp hire when you get those benefits on Toptal at relatively no extra cost. That said, Robert Half can help you hire employees that Toptal doesn’t have access to at the moment.