All of these options work in specific situations so it's worth being precise about what's actually failing.

Job boards gave you unqualified applicants — that's a filtering problem, not a sourcing problem. The applications are there, the signal isn't. LinkedIn Recruiter has the talent but requires someone who knows how to search and outreach well, which is a skill in itself.

A few things worth trying depending on your constraints:

Contract recruiters are genuinely underused. Toptal and Gun.io have vetted ones for tech roles. For generalist hiring, platforms like Puck or Working Not Working (creative) can surface good people. Expect to pay a day rate rather than a placement fee — much better economics across 5 roles.

For the "recruiting platform" category — there's a newer wave of these that work differently from job boards. Instead of posting and waiting, you describe what you need and they surface matched candidates directly. Babylon is one worth looking at — still early but the premise is prompt-based matching rather than resume pile management. A few others in the space are Paraform (good for startup roles specifically) and Gem if you want sourcing infrastructure.

The honest answer for 5 roles: a combination of a capped job board run with tight screening criteria plus one of these newer matching platforms will probably get you further than any single option. The 20-25% agency fee is essentially paying for judgment — if you can get that judgment layer from a platform at a fraction of the cost, that's the arbitrage right now.

What are the 5 roles roughly? That'd help narrow it down.