A Dutch payments company is building an engineering hub in Kraków: twenty-five software engineers within nine months, a finance controller in Warsaw and, later, a country head. Its talent lead has used agencies in Amsterdam and expects the same playbook to work.
In the first fortnight three offers arrive. An IT recruitment boutique proposes a success fee per hire and a shortlist in three weeks. A contracting firm offers senior developers on B2B contracts, billed by the day. And a company she has never heard of offers customer-support staff from abroad, “on our payroll, fully legal”. When she asks for its KRAZ number, the reply is vague. Poland has a large, competitive and mostly professional agency market, and a public register that exists precisely so that the third kind of offer can be checked in two minutes.
Poland’s recruitment market grew up with the shared-services and IT boom. IT boutiques, contracting firms and the specialist arms of international groups compete for the same engineers, while staffing groups supply logistics and manufacturing with temporary workers, many of them foreign nationals. Every agency must be entered in a public register, temporary work has strict time limits, and since 2025 the rules on agencies that employ foreigners have tightened.
This guide explains how the market works in 2026, how Polish firms charge, which firms operate in three groups (recruitment, staffing and IT recruitment firms; executive search firms; HR consultancies and payroll providers) and the questions to settle before you sign. For job boards, contract types and notice rules, start with our Poland recruiting playbook; for other markets, see the worldwide guide to HR consulting and recruitment firms in Finding the Right Person.
- Every employment agency must be entered in KRAZ, the national register kept by the regional marshals; 8,549 agencies were registered at the end of 2024.
- Since 1 June 2025 a new labour-market act governs agencies; temporary-work agencies may supply foreigners who need permits only after two years in the register.
- A temp may work for the same client for at most 18 months in any 36.
- Contingency fees commonly run at about 15–25% of annual gross pay; IT contracting is billed as a margin on day rates, and senior search is retained.
- Pay transparency binds agencies too: since 24 December 2025 candidates must get pay information before the interview, and pay-history questions are banned.
How the recruitment and HR-services market works in Poland
Polish employers use agencies more than most neighbours, for a simple reason: competition for engineers, finance specialists and shared-services staff in Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław and the Tri-City is intense, and in-demand candidates receive several approaches a week. A national report on employment agencies published by the regional labour office in Rzeszów counted 8,549 registered agencies at the end of 2024: 4,049 offered domestic job placement, 3,679 temporary work and 3,134 personnel consulting, and agencies placed 197,271 people during the year.
The market has four layers. National staffing groups run temporary work, permanent recruitment and outsourcing. Polish recruitment firms, some with roots going back to around 2000, cover professionals and managers across the main cities. IT boutiques and contracting firms specialise in tech hiring, often on B2B contracts, where the developer invoices through a sole-trader business instead of signing an employment contract (umowa o pracę). Executive search firms, concentrated in Warsaw, take retained mandates for boards and management.
Fees at the time of writing (November 2026) follow the European pattern: contingency fees of roughly 15% to 25% of annual gross salary for permanent hires, often expressed as one and a half to three monthly salaries; staged fees for executive search; and for IT contracting, a margin on the contractor’s day or hourly rate. Replacement guarantees of around three months are common, matching the maximum probationary contract. Our agency fees by country guide compares Poland with other markets.
Two Polish realities shape every brief. Notice runs with tenure (two weeks, one month, or three months after three years with the current employer), so a senior candidate is usually three months away. And pay transparency binds the whole recruitment process: since 24 December 2025 candidates must be told the pay or range in the advert or before the interview, and no one may ask about current or past pay. An agency that still asks “what are you earning now?” exposes you, not only itself.
KRAZ, temporary work and the 2025 rules on foreigners
The Act of 20 March 2025 on the labour market and employment services replaced the 2004 employment-promotion act on 1 June 2025, as the ministry announced. The essentials survived: job placement, personnel consulting, career counselling and temporary work require an entry in the national register of employment agencies (Krajowy Rejestr Agencji Zatrudnienia, KRAZ), made by the marshal of the voivodeship where the agency has its seat, and agencies may not charge jobseekers for placement. What changed is the filter. According to legal commentaries on the act, the fee is now 1,000 zł per entry and per change, applications are electronic, and tax arrears, liquidation or an earlier removal from the register are grounds for refusal.
Temporary work has its own act, from 2003. The agency employs the worker and assigns them to you as the user employer. A temp may work for the same user for at most 18 months in any 36-month period, and temps may not do particularly dangerous work, replace striking employees, or fill a post whose holder you dismissed for reasons not related to the employee in the previous three months. Temps are entitled to conditions no less favourable than your comparable staff, and you remain responsible for health and safety on site.
The sharpest changes concern foreigners, a large share of Poland’s temporary workforce. Under the 2025 rules, a temporary-work agency may supply foreign nationals who need a permit or declaration only after two years in the register, must have premises where it serves them, and may not place foreigners through so-called outsourcing contracts outside the agency framework; inspectors can reclassify a sham outsourcing contract as temporary work. If an offer to supply foreign staff comes from a young company, check its KRAZ entry date before anything else.
Checking a firm takes two minutes: search its name or tax number in the public KRAZ register. Several firms in this guide, including Hays, Michael Page and Devire, print their register number on their websites.
IT recruitment, B2B contracting and executive search
Tech hiring is where Poland differs most from Western Europe. Many senior developers prefer B2B contracts for the tax treatment and flexibility, so contracting firms place them on long assignments and bill you a day rate with their margin built in, boutiques recruit them onto your payroll for a success fee, and RPO providers embed recruiters in your team for a monthly fee. For a hub build like the one in our scenario, companies often combine all three: a boutique or RPO for the core team, contractors for speed, and a search firm for the site lead.
B2B is legal but not a free pass. If a contractor works like an employee, with fixed hours, your supervision and one client, labour inspectors and courts can treat the relationship as employment, so agree with the contracting firm who carries that risk, and what it costs to convert a contractor to an employee. Our decision matrix for hiring channels helps decide which route fits which role.
Executive search is a Warsaw business. Retained mandates dominate at management-board (zarząd) level, and many firms also assess and recruit for supervisory boards (rada nadzorcza), which appoint the management board in Poland’s two-tier model. Senior candidates’ three-month notice and frequent non-compete clauses mean a search that starts in January rarely delivers a start before summer.
Recruitment, staffing and IT recruitment firms
The first group mixes Polish recruitment firms and IT specialists with the local operations of international groups. Each card describes what the firm says it does on its own website at the time of writing; none is a ranking.
Randstad’s Polish business offers temporary work and recruitment, outsourcing of HR and payroll, services and business processes, personnel and IT outsourcing, and publishes reports on foreign workers in the Polish labour market.
Grafton, which its global site presents as part of Gi Group, runs seven Polish offices and offers permanent recruitment, temporary work, service outsourcing, IT recruitment, recruitment process outsourcing and HR tools.
Hays lists permanent and temporary recruitment, management hiring, contracting, managed service programmes, RPO and HR consulting, and publishes a 2026 salary report. Its site shows agency register number 361 (Mazowieckie marshal).
PageGroup’s Polish business offers permanent recruitment, interim management, contract employment and recruitment, RPO and other enterprise solutions, and senior search through Page Executive. Its site gives agency licence number 6359.
HRK S.A. says its team has delivered projects since 2000 and its payroll consulting arm serves more than 230 clients. Its greenfield solutions support companies opening new sites in Poland, the situation in our opening scenario.
Devire lists permanent recruitment and executive search for management roles, IT outsourcing and B2B contracting, RPO, external employment, managed services and HR consulting. Its site gives employment agency number 3260.
Bee Talents presents itself as a recruitment partner for the tech industry, offering retainer and success-fee recruitment, RPO, HR and career consulting, recruitment audits and training for recruiters and hiring managers.
Executive search firms in Warsaw
Warsaw hosts the Polish offices of international search firms alongside boutiques dating from the 1990s. Expect retained, staged fees, research-led longlists and assessment of finalists, often with board-advisory work attached.
Bigram says it has operated for around 30 years. Alongside executive search it runs assessment and development centres, 360-degree feedback, competency models, appraisal systems, employee surveys, outplacement and employer branding.
The Polish Amrop member was founded in 1997 as dk Executive Search. It offers executive search, leadership advisory, executive assessment and board services, including C-suite search and succession.
Stanton Chase says it has served the Polish market for more than 23 years, with retained search, executive and team assessment, board services, CEO succession planning and executive onboarding.
HR consultancies, pay data and payroll outsourcing
Pay data is the most-requested HR consulting product in Poland, and pay transparency has made it a compliance tool: if you must publish a range, it had better be defensible. Payroll outsourcing is mature thanks to the shared-services industry and is the default for a foreign company’s first Polish entity; without an entity, compare an employer of record using our guide to hiring without an entity.
Founded in 1990, Sedlak & Sedlak is a Kraków HR consultancy focused on compensation. It publishes twice-yearly salary reports, studies of executive pay at Warsaw-listed companies and of benefits, and designs job evaluation and pay scales.
Mercer’s Polish site announces the change of name to Marsh. Services include reward strategy and executive pay, the cross-industry Mercer TRS salary report, benefits strategy including cafeteria plans, pension actuarial work and HR transformation.
ADP’s Polish business offers comprehensive payroll calculation and personnel administration, locally and as part of multi-country payroll, relevant for groups that want Polish payroll on the same platform as other European entities.
The firms at a glance
The table summarises all thirteen firms; more are listed in the free Kurums Solutions Directory for recruitment agencies and executive search. Listings are editorial and independent; no firm paid to be included, and inclusion is not a recommendation. Check licences, terms and references directly with each firm.
Comparing locations for a Central European hub? The German recruitment and HR firms guide and the French guide use the same structure.
Before you engage a recruitment or HR firm in Poland
Most problems with Polish agencies come from three gaps: an agency not registered for the service it sells, a contract type that does not match the work, and fee clauses that ignore how many agencies chase the same candidates. Settle these questions before the first brief, alongside the hiring manager intake question set.
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