Direct answers on engagement, pricing, process, technology, and how we compare to the firms most often weighed against us. Don't see your question? Ask us directly.
How clients work with us — and how the math works.
It depends on the engagement model. Contract placements are billed at an agreed hourly or daily rate that includes our markup. Direct hire placements are typically a percentage of the candidate's first-year salary, due 30 days after start, with a replacement guarantee. Statement-of-work projects are quoted as fixed-fee or time-and-materials.
For high-volume MSP programs we offer tiered discount structures — the relationship has earned the volume.
Yes. For direct-hire placements, if a candidate leaves within 90 days for performance reasons, we replace them at no additional fee. Contract placements are covered by our standard contract-replacement policy.
No. We work alongside other vendors in MSP programs and on open searches. Inside Cox Communications' MSP program — with 30+ approved vendors — we've consistently ranked top three on submittal quality and time-to-fill. We earn the work, we don't lock it in.
None. We've placed individual senior hires for small businesses and we've staffed multi-year programs at Fortune-500 scale. The same operating standard applies on both ends.
How fast we move and what to expect at each step.
Average time from intake to first shortlist is 48 hours. Average time to placement (offer accepted) varies by role and process — typically 2–4 weeks for technical roles, 4–8 weeks for senior leadership. Our submitted-to-interview rate is 40% and our interviewed-to-offer rate is 48%.
We're fluent in SAP Fieldglass, Beeline, IQNavigator, and VectorVMS — onboarding is typically a 3–7 business-day process depending on your program's vendor compliance package. Our account managers handle the integration end-to-end.
A 30-minute working session with a senior recruiter and your hiring manager. We translate the role, team context, compensation band, timeline, and outcomes into a structured digital scorecard that drives the entire search. Scorecard reviewed and confirmed before sourcing begins.
Contract: project work, surge capacity, parental-leave coverage. The candidate is on our payroll. Contract-to-hire: try-before-you-buy, with a defined assessment window before conversion to direct hire. Direct hire: permanent placement, candidate starts on your payroll on Day 1, you pay our placement fee.
Why our submittals beat the industry baseline.
Two reasons. First, our recruiters complete a 52-week structured training program covering technical fluency, scorecard discipline, screening rigor, and offer management. Second, our domestic recruiter team has a 10-year average tenure on the same accounts — institutional knowledge that compounds.
Leap Tiger replicates client scorecards as structured digital models and ranks candidates against them. The AI does the heavy ranking work; our recruiters validate every shortlisted candidate before submission. AI ranks. Recruiters verify. You decide.
Standard NDAs on every search. Confidential searches available with sealed candidate profiles where the company name isn't shared with our internal staff until candidates are advanced. We've placed senior counsel and executives this way regularly.
About Leap Tiger, our AI Solutions practice, and the broader tech-enabled approach.
Yes — Leap Tiger is our in-house AI talent platform, originally built in 2002 to win our first major Communications client and continuously refined across 3,000+ placements since. It is not a white-labeled third-party ATS; it is our own scorecard-modeling, candidate-ranking, and recruiter-workflow engine. Read more →
Custom GenAI applications, agentic workflow automation, RAG-grounded knowledge systems, and AI-augmented operations. Six common use-case categories: customer retention, support automation, demand forecasting, dynamic pricing, predictive maintenance, supply-chain optimization. See AI Solutions →
Yes. We deploy SOC 2 Type II controls on AI engagements, design RAG pipelines around customer-controlled vector stores, and build agentic systems with human-in-the-loop and audit trails. Every system ships with the engineering and operations talent to keep it running.
How we operate in regulated industries and as a Diversity Supplier.
Yes. 3i People is NMSDC-certified (National Minority Supplier Development Council) as a Minority Business Enterprise. Engagements with us count toward your supplier-diversity goals, and we provide audit-ready supplier-diversity reporting.
We staff in financial services, healthcare, telecom, and public sector — all of which have specific compliance frameworks. FINRA fingerprinting, SOX-compliant access controls, OFAC sanctions screening, U-4 management for finance roles. HIPAA training, HITRUST awareness, FDA 21 CFR Part 11 for healthcare. CPNI controls for telecom. Compliance is muscle memory after 20+ years.
Across the United States and India. Our HQ is in Alpharetta, GA, with offices in Miami and Chennai. We staff for clients with global, U.S.-only, or specific-region requirements.
Direct answers on what makes our model different — without name-calling.
Three things, in order of impact. Calibrated submittals. Every shortlisted candidate is ranked against your scorecard via Leap Tiger and validated by a 52-week-trained recruiter before they reach you — not spray-and-pray résumés. Productized AI. Most peers don't productize their matching technology; ours has been refined across 3,000+ placements since 2002. Recruiter tenure. Our domestic recruiters average 10 years at 3i — they know your account, not just your req.
Bigger firms can deliver scale; smaller boutiques can deliver attention. We aim for both. Inside MSP programs we deliver SLA-grade volume (top-3 ranking among 30+ vendors at Cox over 14 years) — and on every individual requisition, you get senior recruiters with name accountability instead of a queue of junior staff.
Most ATS automation is keyword-matching dressed up. Leap Tiger is different in three ways: (1) it builds a structured digital model of your scorecard, not a generic role taxonomy; (2) it ranks on technical fit and cultural-fit signals, not just skills overlap; (3) it learns from every placement outcome, so accuracy compounds the longer we partner. See the platform →
Yes — NMSDC-certified Minority Business Enterprise. And no, supplier-diversity status doesn't come at the cost of quality. Our submittal-quality and fill-rate metrics inside Cox's MSP program (top 3 of 30+ vendors, year over year) are above the program baseline. The diversity credit is a bonus, not a substitute for performance.
If you're hiring purely commodity roles where résumé velocity matters more than match quality, a high-volume generalist firm will do fine. If you're looking for the lowest possible bill rate without regard for fit, we'll lose that bake-off. We're built for engagements where the quality of the match drives outcomes — and where the recruiting relationship is expected to compound over years, not single transactions.
Growth. AI transformation. Technology shifts. Workforce complexity. Delivery pressure.
Today’s business challenges rarely fit inside a job requisition. That is why we take a consultative, hands-on approach, aligning talent, technology, and business priorities to help organizations move forward with confidence.
No pressure. No obligation. Just an honest conversation about where we may be able to help.