In short
Use a recruitment agency when the role matters, your own network has been exhausted, and nobody internally has the hours or the reach to run a proper search. If the role is easy to fill from inbound applications, or you have not yet written down what good looks like, an agency will not fix either problem — it will just make the wrong hire arrive faster.
Key facts
- Strongest case
- A role your network cannot reach, needed on a date
- Weakest case
- Outsourcing a role definition nobody has agreed yet
- Usually cheaper first
- Founder-led search for roles you know well
- Volume changes the answer
- Sustained hiring favours in-house capacity
The question behind the question
Founders rarely ask whether to use a recruiter in the abstract. They ask it at a specific moment: a role has been open for weeks, the inbound applications are wrong, and the people they already know have all said no.
That moment is a useful signal, but it is not by itself an answer. The real test is which of the three scarce things you are short of — reach, hours, or clarity. Only two of those can be bought from outside.
What you are actually short of
Find the row that matches your situation before you decide who should run the search.
| What is missing | Symptom | What actually helps |
|---|---|---|
| Clarity | Every shortlist feels wrong and the goalposts move between interviews | Write the brief first — a search cannot fix an unagreed role |
| Reach | You know exactly who you want and cannot get in front of them | External search, or a warm introduction campaign you run yourself |
| Hours | The role is clear and reachable, but nobody has time to run it properly | External search, or an in-house recruiter if this repeats all year |
| Assessment confidence | You can source people but cannot tell strong from plausible | A structured process and scorecard, not more candidates |
| Nothing — it is working | Good inbound, strong referrals, offers accepted | Keep going; do not add a fee to a process that already works |
Two of these are solved by better inputs, not by a supplier.
A five-minute decision test
Answer honestly. Three or more yes answers usually means external help earns its place.
Is the role written down and agreed?
One page: outcomes, must-haves, the evidence you would accept, and who decides. If not, do this first — with or without a recruiter, the search depends on it.
Has your own network been genuinely worked?
Not a LinkedIn post. A list of named people, asked directly, with follow-ups. Most founders stop at about a third of what their network could give them.
Does the date matter?
If slipping a quarter is fine, founder-led search is often the cheaper route. If a funded plan, a customer commitment or a delivery date depends on it, the cost of waiting is real.
Does anyone internally have ten hours a week for this?
A serious outbound search is a part-time job for as long as it runs. If those hours would come out of shipping or selling, that is a cost too.
Will this repeat?
One or two hard hires a year suits external search. Sustained hiring across a year eventually justifies in-house capacity, sometimes alongside external help on the hardest roles.
Signals that an agency is the wrong answer right now
Each of these is fixable, and none of them is fixed by a fee.
- The team disagrees about whether the role is senior, and nobody has resolved it.
- The salary you can offer has not been sanity-checked against the market you are hiring in.
- Two previous hires into this team left within a year and the reason has not been examined.
- You want someone to sift inbound applications — that is coordination, not search.
- The role only exists if the next round closes.
The cost question, honestly
External recruitment is not free and should not be presented as if it were. The conventional model charges a percentage of first-year salary, invoiced at or shortly after the start date, which for an early-stage company lands as one large payment in the same month as the first salary and the onboarding costs.
Startup Staffing exists because that timing, rather than the amount, is what makes recruitment hard to plan at this stage: our fee is a monthly percentage of salary that runs while the person is employed and stops when their employment ends. Whether that is better for you depends on how long the hire stays and how you value cash now against cash later — the calculator shows the crossover point rather than asserting one.
Common questions
- Is it cheaper to hire without a recruiter?
- Often, in fee terms, for roles you already know how to find. It is rarely free: founder and engineer hours spent sourcing and interviewing are real costs, and a slipped hire has a cost of its own. Compare the fee against those, not against zero.
- When does founder-led hiring stop scaling?
- Usually when more than one serious role is open at once, or when the founder running the search is also the person the company cannot afford to have distracted. The trigger is concurrency and opportunity cost rather than a specific headcount.
- Should we hire an in-house recruiter instead?
- If you expect steady hiring across a year, in-house capacity usually wins on cost per hire and on candidate experience. Below that, an in-house recruiter can end up under-used between roles, and many teams run a mix.
- What should we expect from a recruiter for a technology startup?
- A written brief they can defend, a named search approach rather than a database dump, honest market feedback including bad news, structured feedback on every candidate, and clear commercial terms including what happens if the hire leaves.
Talk it through
A short, direct conversation about the role, the market and whether the SUS model fits what you are trying to do.
Talk to usAny percentages or figures shown in this article are illustrative examples used to explain the model. They are not quoted rates, market benchmarks or salary data.