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Startup StaffingSUS

Compare the options

How startups can hire, honestly compared

Six sensible ways to fill a role, described on the same terms: when each fits, what it does to cash flow, how much work stays with your team, what you are committing to, and the risks. SUS is one of them, not the answer to everything.

Which approach fits us?Model the numbers

At a glance

A first cut on the two things founders weigh first: when the money moves, and how much of the work stays inside the business. Read the detail below before deciding anything.

ApproachWhen the money movesInternal workloadTends to fit
Contingency agencyNothing until you hire. Then a single invoice at or shortly after the start date, usually payable in days rather than months.Low to moderate on sourcing. You still own the brief, the interviews and the decision, and you may be reviewing candidates from several agencies at once.The role is well understood and reasonably common in the market.
SUS monthlyWhat we provideNo large payment at hire. A monthly amount that starts small and continues for as long as that employee is employed, so the cost tracks the payroll it sits against.Similar to using any external recruiter: you own the brief, the interviews and the decision, and Humand's team does the sourcing and assessment.Protecting working capital matters more than knowing the total cost on day one.
Retained searchMoney leaves before anyone is hired. Instalments are spread across the search, so part of the fee is spent even if the search is paused or abandoned.Moderate but structured. Expect real time on the brief, calibration, and interview panels — a good retained process asks a lot of the hiring team.Senior, confidential or genuinely scarce roles where the market has to be mapped rather than searched.
In-house recruiterA fixed monthly payroll cost that starts before the first hire lands and continues through quiet periods, plus tooling such as job boards and a hiring system.Highest ownership, lowest external dependency — but you also carry the management, the tooling and the ramp-up time before that person is productive.A steady, predictable volume of hiring that keeps one person genuinely busy.
Direct sourcingNo recruitment fee. The cost is founder and engineer time, plus any tooling or job advertising you pay for.Highest of any option. Sourcing, screening, scheduling, chasing and closing all land on people who also have another job.The first few hires, where the network is warm and the founder's pitch is the product.
RPOA recurring contracted cost for the service period, largely independent of how many hires land in a given month.Low on day-to-day coordination once embedded, but high on governance: someone senior has to own the relationship, the process design and the quality bar.Sustained, high-volume hiring across several teams at once.

The six approaches in detail

Each one is described on the same six dimensions, so you are comparing like with like rather than a sales page against a straw man.

Contingency recruitment agency

An agency works your role on a no-hire-no-fee basis and invoices a percentage of first-year salary if you hire someone they introduced.

Startup Staffing does not provide this. It is here because it is a real option.

Cash flow
Nothing until you hire. Then a single invoice at or shortly after the start date, usually payable in days rather than months.
Internal workload
Low to moderate on sourcing. You still own the brief, the interviews and the decision, and you may be reviewing candidates from several agencies at once.
Speed and control
Often the fastest route to a shortlist for a familiar role, because the agency is working from an existing network. Less control over depth: a contingency recruiter is rationally spending time where the odds are best, which may not be your role on a given week.
Commitment
No fee unless you hire. A rebate or replacement period usually applies if the person leaves early, on a sliding scale that shrinks over the first few months.

When it tends to fit

  • The role is well understood and reasonably common in the market.
  • You want candidates in front of you without committing budget before a hire happens.
  • You are happy to run more than one agency on the same role.

Risks

  • The largest single cash outflow lands in the same month as the salary, the equipment and the onboarding.
  • Rebate windows are short. A leaver at month seven is normally your loss, not the agency's.
  • Effort is not contracted, so an unusual or slow role can quietly get deprioritised.

Questions to ask

  • What exactly triggers the fee, and what counts as an introduction?
  • What is the rebate scale, and is it a refund or only a replacement?
  • Is there an opt-out or transfer clause if we later hire the candidate for a different role?

Compare placement fees with the monthly model →

Monthly-fee recruitment (the SUS model)

Recruitment delivered in the normal way, but the fee is an agreed percentage of gross monthly salary, invoiced each month while that employee stays with you.

This is the model Startup Staffing provides.

Cash flow
No large payment at hire. A monthly amount that starts small and continues for as long as that employee is employed, so the cost tracks the payroll it sits against.
Internal workload
Similar to using any external recruiter: you own the brief, the interviews and the decision, and Humand's team does the sourcing and assessment.
Speed and control
The process is the same as a conventional agency search, so speed depends on the role rather than the fee model. The trade-off is administrative: an ongoing monthly line to track per employee instead of one closed invoice.
Commitment
Monthly billing tied to a named employee. Billing stops when their employment ends, and the ongoing arrangement can be closed early by agreeing a buy-out in writing.

When it tends to fit

  • Protecting working capital matters more than knowing the total cost on day one.
  • You are hiring more than one person and several placement fees at once would be painful.
  • You would rather the recruiter's income depended on the hire still being there in six months.

Risks

  • Over a long tenure the cumulative monthly total passes what a single upfront fee would have been, and keeps rising unless you agree a buy-out.
  • The total is not fixed on day one, which some finance teams dislike for budgeting.
  • It is a longer-lived commercial relationship, so the terms deserve more scrutiny than a one-off invoice.

Questions to ask

  • What is the percentage, what is it a percentage of, and when does billing start and stop?
  • At what month does the cumulative total pass a conventional placement fee at our salary levels?
  • How is a buy-out calculated, and is it written into the agreement?

Read the model and the agreement in full →

Retained search

You engage one firm exclusively and pay in staged instalments across the search, typically at kick-off, at shortlist and on completion.

Startup Staffing does not provide this. It is here because it is a real option.

Cash flow
Money leaves before anyone is hired. Instalments are spread across the search, so part of the fee is spent even if the search is paused or abandoned.
Internal workload
Moderate but structured. Expect real time on the brief, calibration, and interview panels — a good retained process asks a lot of the hiring team.
Speed and control
The highest control and the most transparency into pipeline and market coverage, in exchange for a slower, deliberate process. Exclusivity means you are relying on one firm's reach.
Commitment
An exclusive engagement with staged payments, defined deliverables and an agreed timeline. Refund terms on the early instalments are limited compared with contingency rebates.

When it tends to fit

  • Senior, confidential or genuinely scarce roles where the market has to be mapped rather than searched.
  • You need a committed, evidenced process with agreed milestones and reporting.
  • The cost of the wrong hire in this seat is far larger than the fee.

Risks

  • You pay whether or not the search concludes in a hire.
  • Exclusivity removes your fallback if the firm turns out to be a poor fit for the role.
  • Overkill for a role the market can supply readily.

Questions to ask

  • What is delivered at each instalment, and what happens if we stop the search?
  • Who actually does the work — the person selling it, or a delivery team?
  • What does the market map look like, and how will coverage be evidenced?

Internal talent acquisition hire

You employ a recruiter or talent partner who works only for you, and hiring becomes a salaried function rather than a per-role cost.

Startup Staffing does not provide this. It is here because it is a real option.

Cash flow
A fixed monthly payroll cost that starts before the first hire lands and continues through quiet periods, plus tooling such as job boards and a hiring system.
Internal workload
Highest ownership, lowest external dependency — but you also carry the management, the tooling and the ramp-up time before that person is productive.
Speed and control
Maximum control over process, messaging and candidate experience. Speed depends entirely on one person's network and bandwidth, and specialist or unusual roles may still need outside help.
Commitment
An employment relationship: salary, notice, and the same duty of care as any other hire. The commitment does not flex with your hiring volume.

When it tends to fit

  • A steady, predictable volume of hiring that keeps one person genuinely busy.
  • You want employer brand, candidate experience and pipeline to compound inside the business.
  • Hiring managers have the time to work with a recruiter every week.

Risks

  • Hiring volume dips and you are paying for capacity you are not using.
  • One person cannot be a specialist in every function you need to hire.
  • You are hiring a recruiter before you have a recruiter to help you hire one.

Questions to ask

  • How many roles per quarter will we genuinely have for the next year?
  • Who manages and coaches this person, and against what definition of good?
  • What do we do about the roles that fall outside their expertise?

Agency or in-house recruiter? →

Direct sourcing by the founding team

Founders and engineers hire from their own networks, inbound applications and outreach, with no recruiter involved.

Startup Staffing does not provide this. It is here because it is a real option.

Cash flow
No recruitment fee. The cost is founder and engineer time, plus any tooling or job advertising you pay for.
Internal workload
Highest of any option. Sourcing, screening, scheduling, chasing and closing all land on people who also have another job.
Speed and control
Complete control and the strongest candidate experience when a founder runs it well. Speed collapses when the warm network is exhausted or when the team gets busy, and roles can drift for months.
Commitment
No external commitment at all. The commitment is internal time, which is rarely tracked and easy to underestimate.

When it tends to fit

  • The first few hires, where the network is warm and the founder's pitch is the product.
  • Roles where credibility comes from a peer rather than a recruiter.
  • Budget is genuinely unavailable and time is the resource you have.

Risks

  • Network hiring narrows the candidate pool and can entrench a team's existing blind spots.
  • A drifting role has a real cost in unshipped work, even though nothing appears on an invoice.
  • Without a structured process, decisions rest on impressions rather than evidence.

Questions to ask

  • Who owns this role week to week, and what happens when they are heads-down?
  • How many suitable people does our network actually contain for this role?
  • What is the cost to the business of this seat being empty for another quarter?

Templates for running the process yourself →

Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)

A provider takes over part or all of your hiring function under a service contract, usually charged as an ongoing fee for capacity rather than per placement.

Startup Staffing does not provide this. It is here because it is a real option.

Cash flow
A recurring contracted cost for the service period, largely independent of how many hires land in a given month.
Internal workload
Low on day-to-day coordination once embedded, but high on governance: someone senior has to own the relationship, the process design and the quality bar.
Speed and control
Built for throughput at consistent quality. Less suited to a handful of unusual roles, and it introduces a third party into your candidate experience.
Commitment
A service agreement over a defined term, with scope, service levels and notice periods rather than per-hire triggers.

When it tends to fit

  • Sustained, high-volume hiring across several teams at once.
  • You want a repeatable hiring process operated for you, including reporting and coordination.
  • Scaling headcount fast enough that per-role fees would be unmanageable.

Risks

  • Genuinely oversized for most early-stage startups.
  • Fixed cost continues if your hiring plan slows or stops.
  • Employer brand and candidate experience are partly delegated.

Questions to ask

  • What is in scope, what stays with us, and how is quality measured?
  • What are the notice and exit terms if our plan changes?
  • Is our hiring volume really at the level this model is designed for?

The two decisions people actually agonise over

Longer side-by-sides for the comparisons that come up most, each written as a decision rather than a verdict.

The third comparison — a monthly recruitment fee against a one-off placement fee — has its own page with worked illustrative figures and the crossover month, so it is not repeated here: monthly fee vs placement fee.

What tends to fit at each stage

Described by situation rather than funding-round labels. These are tendencies, not rules, and your cash position can override all of them.

First few hires

Founders are still the pitch, the network is warm and every pound of runway is visible.

Direct sourcingSUS monthly

Run it yourself while the network holds. Bring in outside help for the first role where your network runs out, and pay attention to what the fee does to your cash position that month.

First specialist or hard-to-find role

The role needs skills nobody on the founding team can assess by keyword, and the warm network has nothing.

Contingency agencySUS monthlyRetained search

The choice here is mostly about consequence. A well-understood specialist role suits contingency or a monthly fee; a scarce, senior or confidential one may justify a retained process.

Several hires in one plan

A funded hiring plan with multiple roles landing over two or three quarters.

SUS monthlyContingency agencyIn-house recruiter

Model the whole plan before choosing. Several placement fees clustered in one quarter is a different cash problem from the same total spread monthly — and if the volume is sustained, an in-house recruiter starts to make sense.

Continuous hiring across teams

Hiring is a permanent function, not an event, across more than one team.

In-house recruiterRPOSUS monthly

Build the function in-house and use external partners for the roles it cannot reach. RPO becomes relevant at genuinely high volume; we do not provide it, and we would say so rather than sell you something else.

Common questions

How should a startup decide how to hire engineers?
Start with three facts about your own situation: how many roles you will genuinely run in the next year, how scarce the skills are, and how much cash you can move before a hire exists. Continuous volume points towards building in-house capacity; scarcity points towards a deeper external process; tight cash points towards structures that pay after the hire rather than before it.
What is the difference between a monthly recruitment fee and a placement fee?
A placement fee is one invoice, calculated as a percentage of first-year salary and due at the point of hire. A monthly recruitment fee is a percentage of gross monthly salary, invoiced each month while that employee stays and stopping when they leave. The first fixes your total on day one; the second protects cash at hire and ties the recruiter's income to retention, at the cost of a total that keeps rising over a long tenure.
Is the monthly model right for every startup?
No. If you expect very long tenure and you have the cash available at hire, a fixed upfront fee may suit you better, because the cumulative monthly total eventually passes it. The model earns its place when cash timing matters, when you are hiring several people at once, or when you want the recruiter exposed to whether the hire stays.
Does Startup Staffing offer retained search or RPO?
No. We describe them here because founders reasonably ask how they compare, but we provide recruitment on the monthly-fee model through Humand's recruitment team. If a retained process or an RPO arrangement is genuinely the right answer for your situation, we would rather say so.
Can we change approach later?
Yes, and most companies do as their hiring volume changes. What matters is understanding the commitment you are entering now — notice periods, exclusivity, rebate windows, buy-out terms — so that changing approach later is a decision rather than a negotiation.

Take it further

Related reading

Guides from the resource hub that cover the thinking behind this page. Each one is written by us and reviewed before publication.