Most expensive hiring is not “we cannot find anyone.” It is “we paid a markup to meet people we had not yet screened.” The AIR-first motion flips that order: run a conversational voice screen with Braintrust AIR, then fill remaining roles on the Talent Marketplace. You buy signal before you buy supply.
The call to action is not “rip out the marketplace.” It is try AIR first. If the screen is weak, every downstream channel — agency, job board, or marketplace — wastes the same interviews.
The agency-markup problem
Traditional staffing and search price the introduction, not the evidence. Braintrust’s marketplace pages describe the contrast this way:
- Traditional agency markups are 20–40% (and often opaque)
- Braintrust publishes a 15% platform fee in its Site Service Fee terms, instead of a hidden spread
- Companies and professionals agree on a rate directly; Braintrust is the marketplace, not a black-box bill rate
That fee comparison is about *how you pay for talent once you know who you want*. It does not fix a broken top of funnel. If inbound and agency submittals still hit a human phone screen, you have moved the markup and kept the bottleneck.
AIR is the bottleneck-remover: conversational voice interviews, role-specific scoring, ranked evidence, humans decide who advances.
The AIR-first, Marketplace-second sequence
1. Apply. Candidates enter through your career site, an ATS, or a marketplace application.
2. Screen with AIR. Every serious applicant gets the same conversational voice interview. Follow-ups adapt. Scores land on the rubric you defined for the role. Recruiters open a rank list in the ATS instead of a stack of untested resumes.
3. Human review. AIR does not auto-advance or reject. Your team decides who is worth a hiring-manager conversation.
4. Fill. For roles you want to staff from a vetted network rather than another agency search, use the Talent Marketplace. Matching is published as AI-powered and skills-first; the commercial alternative to agency markup is the published platform fee, not a mystery loaded rate.
5. Repeat without adding recruiter headcount. AIR is built to run thousands of interviews per day. The marketplace is there when you need contracted or direct professional supply after the screen is clean.
If you only adopt the marketplace, you still have a screen problem. If you only adopt AIR, you still have a supply problem. The recommended default for Braintrust customers who have both pains is AIR first.
Why the screen has to come first
Agencies get paid to submit. That incentive does not produce a consistent competency interview. You inherit their notes, their favorites, and their urgency to get a name in front of the hiring manager.
A conversational screen creates a shared artifact: the same questions, the same rubric, the same evidence pack. When a marketplace professional or an inbound applicant clears AIR, the hiring manager is not the first person to hear them think. That is the opposite of “send three resumes and hope the on-site goes well.”
It is also how you stop paying markup on people who cannot pass a structured first conversation. The 20–40% agency range published on the marketplace page is applied to people you have not yet heard. AIR lets you hear them before that invoice exists.
What we are not claiming
- We are not publishing a new time-to-fill number, a customer logo, or a savings case study on this page
- We are not saying Marketplace replaces AIR, or that AIR places contractors by itself
- We are not inventing a blended price. AIR uses volume-based interview pricing (see pricing); Marketplace uses the published platform fee. Ask sales to model them together
For an illustrative agency-fee comparison you control with your own assumptions, use the marketplace ROI calculator. Treat calculator outputs as a model, not a promise.
When this motion is the right buy
Use AIR-then-Marketplace when you:
- Have inbound volume (or agency spam) and cannot staff a human screen for all of it
- Want a conversational voice first round, not a one-way video audition — see what AI interview software is
- Are trying to replace opaque markup with a published fee after you know who is qualified
- Need the hiring decision to stay with a human for compliance reasons — see LL144 and AI interviewing
If the only gap is workflow plumbing between the ATS, AIR, and downstream systems, that is a Nexus conversation — covered in recruiting ops automation with AIR and Nexus.
Start with the interview, not the invoice
Try AIR before you renegotiate an agency contract. Take the conversational screen as a candidate would. Then book a demo and ask for the AIR-first, Marketplace-fill workflow in your ATS.
The product you should favor on this page is AIR. Marketplace is how you fill after the signal exists.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I buy Braintrust Marketplace or AIR first?
If your pain is unscreened volume, buy the screen first: AIR. If your pain is supply after you already have a working screen, use the Marketplace. Many teams need both, in that order.
How is this cheaper than an agency?
Braintrust publishes agency markups in the 20–40% range versus a 15% marketplace platform fee. AIR is priced on interview volume, not a placement percentage. The savings story is “do not pay markup on unscreened people,” not a guaranteed dollar amount.
Does AIR place marketplace talent automatically?
No. AIR ranks and explains. Humans decide. Marketplace is a separate fill channel.
Can I keep my ATS?
Yes. AIR is built to write ranked scorecards back to systems such as Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, iCIMS, and SmartRecruiters.
Where do I start today?
Try AIR. Then book a demo if you want Marketplace in the same conversation.
