Some job searches don't need Marqee. If you already know the exact five companies you want to work at, your network is warm inside all of them, and you have the calendar space to run the whole thing at high quality, do it yourself. You'll save the money and you'll learn something in the process. Nothing on this page is here to talk you out of that.
Other searches do need Marqee. If you're mid-career and every week off the market costs you a week of salary, if you've been at it for two months and the interviews aren't landing, if you're trying to move quietly while still employed, or if the search has become the second job you don't have the hours for — the calculus is different. This page is a straight look at both sides so you can decide which one you're actually in.
A note on how we've framed things. "DIY" here doesn't mean cheating yourself with a bad résumé and a shrug. It means you, taking the search seriously, using the free tools available to anyone, spending the hours it actually takes. And "Marqee" doesn't mean magic. It means a real, named human running the mechanical and judgment-heavy parts of the search while you keep your day job, your evenings, and your ability to sleep. Neither option is a shortcut. Both are real work — the question is who does it and what your hours are worth.
What a real week of searching costs, in hours.
A typical week, drawn from what candidates who take the search seriously actually spend. Ranges are wide on purpose — some weeks you get momentum, some weeks you don't.
Doing it yourself
Hours per week, at a serious pace.
- Research & role hunting3–5 hr
- Résumé tailoring per application2–4 hr
- Outreach — recruiters & referrals1–3 hr
- Actual submissions & forms2–4 hr
- Interview prep for the ones you land1–2 hr
- Reflection & tracking30 min
A managed search
The strategist runs the search. You review and prep.
- Reviewing drafts & approving sends45–90 min
- Interview prep with your strategist30–45 min
- Weekly readout & direction15 min
- Research & role huntinghandled
- Tailoring per applicationhandled
- Outreach & submissionshandled
You save 8 to 17 hours a week. Not vaguely — those are the hours a strategist absorbs.
What that adds up to. Over a ten-week search, that's between 80 and 170 hours you don't spend on job boards. That's a working month. If your evenings and weekends are worth anything to you — kids, sleep, a life outside the search — that's where the hours come back.
Illustrative typical ranges, not a guaranteeWhat a serious search actually costs, in dollars.
Everyone quotes the sticker price of the concierge and forgets the ambient bill of the DIY version. Both are real. Here they are, side by side.
Doing it yourself
The ambient bill of a serious solo search.
- Premium job-board subscription~$40/mo
- Résumé template + writing tools$20–100/mo
- One-off coach or reviewer (optional)$150–500
- Job-board credits, mock-interview apps, misc.$0–40/mo
- Lost income while searchingper-week salary
- Your own time — 10–19 hr/weeknot free
A managed search
Weekly plans, cancel anytime, no lock-in.
- Basic — $29/week~$126/mo
- Pro — $49/week~$213/mo
- Executive — $99/week~$430/mo
- Setup fee$0
- Lock-innone
- Time you owe the search~2 hr/wk
The number nobody puts on the DIY column. The largest cost of a job search isn't the tools you buy — it's the salary you're not earning yet. If Marqee shaves two weeks off your search and your target compensation is $120,000 a year, that's roughly $4,600 you don't leave on the table. At $150,000, it's about $5,800. At $200,000, it's about $7,700. The concierge fee is a rounding error against a shorter search.
Illustrative math · assumes a linear pro-rated salaryThe right question isn't "can I afford Marqee?" It's "can I afford another month of searching?"
One more line on the DIY number. The out-of-pocket total on the left column looks small next to the concierge fee — until you notice the last two rows. Lost income is the biggest line on any job seeker's ledger, and the 10 to 19 hours a week you'd otherwise put into higher-value work are the second biggest. We're not saying you should charge yourself billable rates for résumé work. We are saying the DIY column isn't the sixty-dollar number at the top; it's the six-thousand-dollar number at the bottom.
Illustrative · your numbers will differInterviews per month, illustrative ranges.
Interview volume is the honest signal of whether a search is working. Ranges below are typical, not guaranteed — market, seniority, and geography all move the numbers.
Highly variable. Some months a lucky referral produces three at once. Some months an unresponsive market produces none. The average across a solo search tends to sit at the low end of this range until something changes — either the market lifts, or the outreach volume goes up dramatically.
The target range depending on plan tier, seniority, market conditions, and how confidential the search needs to be. Executive searches skew lower and higher-quality; earlier-career searches on Pro often cluster at the top of the range. We don't promise this — we optimize for it and give you a weekly readout so you can see it.
All numbers on this page are illustrative typical ranges. Marqee doesn't guarantee interviews, offers, or any hiring outcome — we can't, because we don't make the hiring decision. What we manage is the shape of the work: research, materials, outreach, submissions, and the readout you use to steer week over week.
Why the volume gap is bigger than it looks. Interview count isn't just a function of applications sent — it's a function of how many of those applications reached a human, how well-tailored they were, and how many warm channels ran in parallel. A DIY search tends to be sequential: research one company, tailor one résumé, send one application, wait. A managed search runs those tracks in parallel, and adds the outreach and referral layer on top. That's what pulls the interview number up, not any secret about the applications themselves.
Illustrative · not a promiseWhat you keep either way.
A good job search leaves you a sharper professional even if you never buy a single thing. Whether you go the DIY route or run it with a strategist, these skills come with you into the next role, and the one after that.
- Targeting judgment. The muscle for reading a job description and knowing whether it's actually a fit, or whether the title just looks nice. Both routes force you to practice this until it's fast, and the judgment survives long after the search is over.
- Outreach voice. Your own written voice for cold notes to recruiters and hiring managers — brief, specific, warm without being fawning. Once you've drafted or approved enough of them, you can write one in three minutes, and the voice becomes yours.
- Positioning your work. Learning to describe what you actually did in a way that lands with someone who wasn't there. The exact reps differ between DIY and managed, but the outcome is the same: you can tell your story cleanly, in a résumé line or on a call, without stumbling.
- Interview stamina. The rhythm of prepping for a loop, holding energy across a full day of calls, and doing a five-minute post-mortem afterward. This one only comes from reps, and you get reps either way. It's a skill that pays back at every future job change.
- Negotiation confidence. Knowing what to ask for, when to stay quiet, and how to sequence the conversation so the recruiter is negotiating with themselves. You can learn this from a coach, a book, or a friend who's been through it — but nothing replaces having actually done it under pressure.
- A clean market read. By the end of any real search, you know your target compensation band, where your niche is hiring, which teams are growing, and where the interesting problems are. That intelligence stays with you for the next move, and the one after that.
Which side of the line are you on?
Two lists. Pick honestly. If you find yourself nodding at the left column, you probably don't need us. If you're nodding at the right, keep reading.
Run it yourself.
- You genuinely enjoy the hunt. Some people love the research, the puzzle of tailoring, the recruiter chess. If that's you, we'd be robbing you of the fun part. Go run it.
- You're not time-constrained. You have a real 10–19 hours a week, week after week, that you can protect from your other obligations without it costing you sleep or family time.
- Your network already opens the doors. You can text five people and get five warm intros this week. When the referral channel is already open for you, an outreach engine adds less at the margin.
- You're between jobs on purpose. Sabbatical, career reset, deliberate break. You have the runway, you don't need the search to end fast, and you're using the time to explore what you actually want next.
Bring in the concierge.
- You're mid-search burnout. You've been at it two, three, six months. The applications are getting sloppier because you're tired. The energy that used to go into targeting now goes into just getting one more form submitted. That's the point where a strategist is worth every dollar.
- Your interviews-to-offers ratio is bad. You're landing some interviews but nothing is converting. Your problem isn't volume — it's positioning, or interview prep, or which roles you're saying yes to. A concierge fixes the leak.
- You're mid-career and every week off the market is expensive. When your target comp is six figures, the pro-rated cost of an extra month is thousands. Buying two weeks of speed pays for itself many times over.
- You want to move quietly, or your bandwidth is somebody else's. Confidential search while still employed. A demanding role that already eats your calendar. A caregiving situation. A visa timeline. In any of these, offloading the search to a human isn't a luxury — it's the only way it happens.
Do the math on your search.
Estimate what a shorter search is worth to you at your target compensation, or book a 15-minute intro to talk through whether Marqee is the right call for your situation. Either way, no pressure.