The IT market in Poland has undergone a significant shift in recent years. It’s no longer a market where a developer gets several job offers a week and picks the best one. Today the situation is reversed: the number of candidates on the market significantly exceeds the number of available IT job openings. Tech companies have scaled back hiring, many recruitment processes drag on for weeks and attract hundreds of applications per position, and specialists, even experienced ones, are increasingly facing a longer job search.
For companies and HR departments, this is numerically favorable, but not operationally easier. A large number of candidates means the need for efficient, precise selection: filtering out mismatched applications, verifying real technical competencies, and quickly reaching the small percentage of candidates who actually fit the role. It’s in this context that choosing the right IT recruitment model becomes a source of competitive advantage, not because there’s a shortage of people, but because finding the right person in a sea of applicants today requires an efficient process, experience, and the right tools.
In this article, we’ve prepared a practical ranking of IT recruitment models: from classic recruitment under a success fee model, through staff augmentation and project-based recruitment, to RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), EOR (Employer of Record), and a hybrid model powered by AI in IT recruitment. As an IT recruitment agency operating on the Polish market, we show which model will work best for your situation.
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Why choosing an IT recruitment model matters more than ever
Before we get to the ranking, it’s worth understanding what has actually changed in the IT job market in recent years:
- Oversupply of candidates in many areas: after years of dynamic growth in IT employment and waves of layoffs at large tech companies, the market today has a very large number of candidates, including experienced specialists, competing for a limited number of open positions.
- High application volume per job posting: IT recruiters and agencies today have to efficiently process hundreds of CVs, which, without the right process and tools, leads to longer recruitment times and the risk of missing the best candidates.
- Rising company expectations of candidates: employers today can afford a more selective approach and higher competency expectations than just a few years ago.
- Growing role of AI in IT recruitment: tools for automated sourcing, CV screening, and initial assessment of technical competencies help efficiently filter a large volume of applications and reach the best-matched candidates.
These are exactly the factors behind why a single, universal recruitment model is no longer enough. More and more companies and IT recruitment agencies in Poland are opting for an approach tailored to the specific position, budget, and mode of employment, including in the context of international recruitment and hiring specialists from outside Poland.
Ranking of IT recruitment models 2025/2026
1. Permanent recruitment under a success fee model
This is the most recognizable model of working with an IT recruitment agency. The agency sources and recommends candidates for a permanent position, and the fee (the so-called success fee) is charged only when the recommended person is successfully hired, most often as a percentage of the candidate’s annual gross salary.
Advantages:
– The client pays only for results, with no financial risk in case the recruitment is unsuccessful.
– The agency is strongly motivated to find a fast, accurate match.
– Standardly includes a recruitment guarantee (replacing the candidate if they leave within a set period).
Disadvantages:
– With a high volume of applications, the success fee cost can be higher than in hourly or subscription-based models.
– Requires a precise brief, so the agency doesn’t waste time screening mismatched candidates out of hundreds of applications.
Best for: companies building a permanent team, single, well-defined positions (e.g. senior developer, tech lead, architect), organizations that value paying strictly for results.
2. Staff augmentation (IT body leasing)
A model where an IT specialist (or an entire team) is hired out for a set period, without the need to employ them permanently within the company’s structure.
Advantages:
– Fast team scaling, sometimes within 1–2 weeks.
– Flexible scaling of the team up or down depending on the project phase.
– No costs of permanent employment (paid leave, sick leave, benefits).
Disadvantages:
– Lower level of identification with the company and product.
– Requires efficient management of the collaboration with an external provider.
Best for: projects with variable workload, temporary contracts, filling skill gaps.
3. Project-based recruitment
The IT recruitment agency is responsible for building an entire team for a specific project: from an analyst, through developers, to testers and a project manager.
Advantages:
– A single point of contact responsible for the whole recruitment process.
– A team selected specifically for the required technologies and business goal.
– Fast project kickoff without engaging the internal HR team.
Disadvantages:
– Requires a precise brief and a well-defined project scope.
– Can generate higher costs for short, simple projects.
Best for: software houses, companies delivering implementation projects for external clients, startups building an MVP.
4. RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing)
In this model, the recruitment agency takes over part or all of the recruitment process, from sourcing strategy, through employer branding, to the final selection of candidates from a large pool of applications.
Advantages:
– Scalability for mass hiring (e.g. opening a new office, building a several-dozen-person IT team).
– Access to advanced recruitment tools and candidate databases.
– Relieves the internal HR department of a high application volume.
Disadvantages:
– Higher cost of setting up the collaboration at the start.
– Requires strong process integration and communication between the company and the RPO partner.
Best for: large organizations and corporations planning rapid growth of their technology teams in a short time.
5. Modular RPO a flexible take on the RPO model
Classic RPO, however, can be too “rigid” for companies that don’t need to hand off the entire recruitment process externally, only its most time-consuming stages. The answer to that is Modular RPO: a model in which the client independently selects which elements of the recruitment process to outsource to the agency, paying only for the modules actually used. It’s a solution that combines the flexibility of staff augmentation with the comprehensiveness of classic RPO. In our offering, Modular RPO consists of seven independent modules that can be ordered individually or in any combination, depending on which stage of the recruitment process the company needs support with:
- Module I Pimp my job. We boost the appeal of your job offer: we refine role requirements, write comprehensive job descriptions and postings, run a salary benchmarking analysis, and audit your existing recruitment process.
- Module II Find my hidden gem. We review, filter, and screen incoming CVs, implementing effective preselection of applications and speeding up the creation of accurate shortlists.
- Module III Active search. We actively search the market for candidates: sourcing, screening, and shortlisting the best specialists, including those not visible on job boards.
- Module IV Screen’em all. We conduct in-depth candidate verification, gather relevant information about their skills and experience, and then prepare a shortlist along with recommendations. Module V Schedule hustle management. We take over the entire logistics of scheduling interviews, freeing the client’s team from this time-consuming, organizational part of the process.
- Module VI Final touch. We gather and relay feedback between both sides, support offer negotiations, and professionally handle recruitment decisions (including rejections), ensuring a positive candidate experience at every stage.
- Module VII Market Mapping. We carry out comprehensive market research: analyzing employment structure, current trends, and competitor activity, allowing you to better align your recruitment and business strategy and identify new opportunities for team growth.
Advantages of the Modular RPO model:
– You pay only for the stages of the process you actually need, from a single module to the full scope.
– You can outsource the most time-consuming and demanding stages (e.g. screening hundreds of CVs or scheduling interviews) while keeping full control over the rest of the process.
– The model scales easily as the company grows. Additional modules can be added as needed, without renegotiating the entire agreement.
Disadvantages:
– Requires the client to be aware of where the biggest “bottleneck” in the recruitment process lies, otherwise the choice of modules may not deliver the expected result.
– When ordering only individual, selected modules, part of the responsibility for the consistency of the overall process remains with the client.
Best for: companies that want to draw on the experience of an IT recruitment agency only in the selected, most problematic area of the process (e.g. only CV screening for a high volume of applications, only market mapping before entering a new market, only interview scheduling), instead of outsourcing the entire recruitment process.
6. EOR (Employer of Record)
A model increasingly chosen by companies hiring IT specialists remotely, including from abroad. In the EOR model, an external entity (the Employer of Record) becomes the specialist’s formal employer. It’s responsible for the contract, payroll, taxes, and compliance with local labor law, while the person works day-to-day exclusively for the client company.
Advantages:
– Enables the legal employment of an IT specialist in another country without setting up your own entity there.
– Shortens the onboarding time for a foreign employee from months to days or weeks. – Shifts responsibility for compliance with local labor law, taxes, and social contributions onto the EOR provider.
Disadvantages:
– A monthly EOR service fee (per employee) is added on top of the salary.
– Limited control over certain formal aspects of employment (e.g. contract details), which are governed by the EOR provider.
Best for: companies hiring IT specialists remotely from other countries, organizations testing a new market without setting up a local entity, internationally distributed teams.
How to choose a recruitment model for IT?
When making a decision, it’s worth answering a few questions:
1. What’s the time horizon of the need?
Short-term project → staff augmentation or project-based recruitment.
Building a permanent team → permanent recruitment under a success fee model.
2. What’s the scale of the recruitment?
A single position → success fee or staff augmentation.
Dozens of IT roles → RPO.
3. Are you hiring specialists from abroad?
If so, the EOR model lets you avoid setting up a local entity and shortens onboarding time.
4. How large is the volume of applications you need to process?
With a high volume of applications, Modular RPO can be key.
5. What’s your budget and preferred billing model?
It’s worth comparing the cost of success fee (a percentage of salary) with staff augmentation (hourly/monthly rate), RPO (subscription fee), and EOR (monthly fee per employee).
The role of an IT recruitment agency in Poland in 2025/2026
For companies planning to grow their technology teams in 2025/2026, partnering with a proven IT recruitment agency can be a decisive competitive advantage, not because candidates are scarce, but because finding the right person today requires experience, an efficient process, and the right selection tools. There is no single, universally “best” IT recruitment model; each of the models described above (success fee, staff augmentation, project-based recruitment, RPO, EOR, and the AI-powered hybrid model) works well under different business circumstances.
The key to success in 2025/2026 lies in flexibly matching the model to the company’s stage of growth, the scale of need, and the mode of employment (local or international), and, given the current market situation, also in efficient selection from a large pool of candidates. Companies that gain the biggest edge in the IT job market will be the ones able to combine different recruitment models, use modern AI-powered tools, and, at the same time, never lose sight of what still matters most in IT recruitment: understanding candidates’ needs and truly matching competencies to the organization’s business goals. As an IT recruitment agency in Poland, we help companies choose and implement the right model of collaboration. Whether you need a single hire under a success fee model, flexible support through staff augmentation, help with a specific stage of the process through Modular RPO, or to hire a specialist from abroad under an EOR model.