HR Consulting firm wants large finders fee for basically posting on Indeed.

I'm a consultant and working with a client to organize their business better. They have been working with an HR services company and one of the things they asked the HR company to do is try to fill a position.

I got involved about halfway through the process. I asked for more details regarding their finders fee. They ask for 20% of the employees salary for the first 90 days.

When I asked them what all they do they said they post the position on indeed, which we still need to pay indeed their fee. They then went on to say, they'll send us any of the applicants that come through. Since they posted the position 85% of the applicants they sent us were unqualified which means they weren't vetting the applicants before sending them to us. The job required construction experience and they kept sending us applicants that have manufacturing backgrounds.

They do not schedule the interviews, they don't do any initial interview, they don't write offer letters and they won't send the offer letters. They will do drug test and background checks for an additional fee.

This particular position is for a salary of $85K/ year so from what I'm gather they expect us to pay a $20K finders fee for posting a job on Indeed. Luckily we haven't decided to hire anyone yet, so this will only be a concern if we continue to use them to fill the position.

Is this normal? I feel like I'm missing something - the payout definitely doesn't seem to match the work they are doing. I wrote the job position, which I figured they would at least do or help with which they did not.

Edit: I'm terrible at math, the payout to the HR company is $4,250 (20% of the 90 day salary of $21,250). Still this seems excessive for how little work they are putting in.