How to hire a recruiter

Hiring a recruiter is four steps: define the hiring plan, pick the model that fits it, scope the engagement in writing, then onboard them properly. Most engagements that go badly went wrong at step one or step three, not in the sourcing.

1. Define the plan before you talk to anyone

You cannot brief a recruiter on a feeling. Before the first call, write down:

• The roles that are genuinely approved and open, not the aspirational org chart. Approved headcount counts here even if the round has not closed yet.
• What each hire owns, expressed as two or three outcomes rather than a list of tools.
• An approved salary band per role. If nobody has signed it off, the engagement will stall at offer stage, which is the most expensive place to stall.
• Who is on the interview loop, and whether they have agreed to the time.
• The timeline, and what happens to the business if a role is still open in three months.

This takes an afternoon and it changes every conversation that follows. It also filters out the situations where you should not hire a recruiter at all.

2. Pick the model against the plan

Your plan	Model that fits	Why
One hire, no deadline, and you may not proceed	Do it yourself, or contingency	Your network and pitch beat anything external at this size, and contingency costs nothing if nobody signs. We run single-hire work too, and our three month engagement is $15,000 at the one to three role tier, covering every hire made in it, against roughly $37,500 for one contingency placement at 25% of a $150,000 salary
One senior or confidential hire	Retained search	You are buying a market map of a small pool, not volume. We run this on a flat monthly fee, which comes in below a percentage-based retainer
Hiring that has become consistent and ongoing, across several functions	Embedded or fractional	Flat fee, cost does not scale with the salary or the hire, you keep the pipeline. Three months to start at $15,000 for one to three live roles, against roughly $37,500 for one contingency placement at 25% of a $150,000 salary
Continuous hiring, indefinitely	In-house recruiter	At $110,000 to $140,000, rising to $150,000 to $200,000 for technical recruiters in the Bay Area and other major tech hubs, plus benefits, fixed cost spreads at steady volume

Choose by whether hiring is consistent and ongoing rather than one or two hires a year, by role difficulty, and by how long the need lasts. Company size is the wrong variable and it is the one most people use. Contingency is more expensive than a flat monthly engagement from the first hire; the single exception is that if you hire nobody at all, it costs nothing.

3. Scope it in writing

The five clauses that prevent almost every later dispute:

1. Roles in scope. A number of concurrent searches, and what happens when you open one beyond it.
2. Systems and ownership. Whose ATS the work lives in, and who keeps the candidates, notes and market map when it ends. Insist on yours. It is free to ask for at the start and nearly impossible to retrofit.
3. Month one deliverables. A market map per role, an agreed interview loop, a live pipeline on every role, a shortlist on at least one. Not a number of CVs.
4. Term and notice. Three months to start, then month to month. Three months is deliberate rather than a lock-in: it is long enough to learn the team, the roles and the process and to recommend improvements, and short enough that nobody is stuck. Anything longer without a break clause puts the risk of a bad match entirely on you.
5. What is included in the fee, and what is billed separately. Sourcing tools, assessments, background checks.

If a provider will not put month-one output in writing, that is the answer to whether they have a process.

4. Onboard them like an employee

The engagements that work treat the recruiting team as part of the company, because that is where the advantage of the model comes from.

• Company email addresses and access to your ATS, calendar and Slack.
• An intake session per role, not a forwarded job description.
• A named internal owner for each search, with authority to make decisions, matched by a single point of contact on their side.
• A weekly fifteen minutes on pipeline, blockers and any changes to the plan.
• An introduction to the interviewers, so scheduling is not a negotiation every time.

Skipping this is the most common own goal. A team kept at arm's length can only send you CVs, which is exactly the outcome the model is supposed to avoid.

What you are responsible for

Founders underestimate this and then blame the sourcing.

• Same-week feedback on every candidate, with reasons. Vague feedback produces a vague next batch.
• Telling them when the plan changes. Budgets shift and roles get reshaped. A recruiter who hears about it late spends weeks sourcing against a brief that no longer exists.
• Taking final interviews and closes yourself. At early stage the founder is the strongest pitch the company has, and delegating the close is where offers get lost. The caveat matters as much as the rule: founders are busy, and the thing that slips first is replying to candidates who are not a fit. That silence turns into reviews on sites like Glassdoor, and the next person you approach reads them. Founder-led is not automatically a better candidate experience, so hand the replies over even when you keep the close.

More on the working relationship in how to work with a recruiter as a startup.

Before you sign

Two checks that catch most bad fits: meet the people who will actually do the sourcing, the manager overseeing them and your point of contact, and ask them what they would need to see to tell you not to hire them. A provider willing to say the volume is not there yet, while still pointing at the process work worth doing before it is, is telling you something real. The specific questions to put in that conversation are in how to interview a recruiter, and the criteria you are judging against are in how to choose a recruiter for startups.