I dont know how to find the people to do that - its not in my wheelhouse.

You're not paying enough.

I think 1-5% is fair to find a job for me - 20% seems reasonable to find a person to take a job.

20% and you can shoot as many bullets at the target as you want is a better deal than 1-5% and you can shoot one bullet at a bunch of targets.

I'm also expecting to pay /something/ for the task, even if nothing suitable is found, hence why the expected fee is lower.

As it is, I've yet to find a company that offers this service for any price - yes, there are plenty of headhunting shops that offer the service to employers - but no one offering the opposite - 20-30 years ago, (I'm told by my friends who work in HR) this was indeed a service you could purchase, but no one offers it anymore.

If you think you're right, I encourage you to put your money where your mouth is and start this firm. But it'll hurt.

Now it's easy to see why some recruiters sometimes act the way they act. People are unlikely to lie just to earn a small fee, but when the numbers get big, the incentive changes.

The work required by an agent to place a 200K engineer isn't too much different than that of a 50K engineer, other than the 200K engineer likely being more marketable.

And the difference between 1% and 5% is substantial. I don't think I'd offer agent services for 1K, but for 5K I would.

I'm just trying to relo to another market from where I am.