Hiring the right people for your startup or scaleup is critical for growth. Hire the right people and you’ve got team players who build up the business and add invaluable skills and experience. Hire the wrong people and it could cost up to 50% of their salary, plus wasted time and resources.
While more established companies might turn to in-house recruiters, startups and scaleups don’t often have internal resources available. So external recruiters enter the room.
But as teams grow, costs can accelerate — rapidly. And as a separate function to your company, nuances about your brand and culture can be easily missed, resulting in mismatched hires.
What if there was another way? Embedded recruitment meets in the middle of internal and external recruiting. Here’s five reasons why you should consider it.
1/ Embedded recruiters allow you to focus on your core business
According to a study by Small Business Trends, founders spend 32% of their time on recruiting and hiring, a significant chunk that is often further wasted by a lack of knowledge and expertise.
“You may not know what recruitment tools to buy. You may hire the internal recruiter, when building your own internal recruitment department,” says Ross Summers, founder and CEO of embedded recruitment business Adaptor. “There are various different things that represent big risks.”
Mimicking internal recruiters, embedded recruitment effectively plugs in an experienced head of talent, without having to find and manage one yourself. This gives founders (and other team members) the ability to focus on the core business, knowing that hiring is in safe hands.
2/ Embedded recruitment lets you hire on a startup budget
It’s no secret that hiring is an expensive business. External recruiters can charge between 20% and 30% of a new hire’s salary while hiring your own HR staff means paying for their salary and expenses.
You don't have lumpy recruitment fees going up and down. If you're hiring multiple people per month, the monthly subscription model becomes far more cost effective
Instead, embedded recruiters typically charge flat fees. Adaptor, for example, charges a project fee for earlier-stage businesses with few hires or an ongoing flat monthly fee for teams that are hiring consistently.
“Your cashflow is flat, you know exactly what you're spending,” says Summers. “You don't have lumpy recruitment fees going up and down. If you're hiring multiple people per month, the monthly subscription model becomes far more cost effective.”
TalkRemit, a remittance company that helps customers transfer funds from Europe and Canada to 85 locations across the globe, went through a period of rapid hiring earlier this year. With the volume of remittance on the platform doubling, the company needed to increase its headcount significantly from the start of 2023 to now.
Adaptor helped the company hire across different facets of the business, and in different locations, through its two embedded recruiters. Jeremy Toyne, TalkRemit’s CEO, estimates that it saved the company over 25% in costs compared to its previous model, a mix of LinkedIn recruiting conducted internally and external agencies.
“We were doing a lot of the work. It was taking a lot of our time and we weren’t seeing a return on our investment,” says Toyne. “With Adaptor, we looked at the business case very carefully and we screened it several times to be absolutely sure ourselves. There was a clear saving.”
3/ Embedded recruitment scales as you scale
Startups move at a fast pace and are constantly changing. One month, you may need to hire six people, but the next, you may be set with the hires you have.
“It comes in spurts,” Toyne says.
This flexibility is a key benefit of embedded recruitment, which can scale up or down as hiring needs — and job markets — change.
4/ Embedded recruiters have the expertise of an external recruiter
External recruiters can seem appealing due to their deep industry knowledge, but embedded recruiters offer the same expertise, at a slice of the price.
It’s very different hiring for a startup or scaleup compared to a more established business
Many companies want an expert to prioritise diversity, equity and inclusion in their hiring, for example — after all, companies with an inclusive culture are six times more likely to be innovative and diverse teams make better decisions 87% of the time.
Startups also need a specialist to navigate changing candidate expectations and the demands of small, fast-growing businesses.
“It’s very different hiring for a startup or scaleup compared to a more established business,” says Summers. “These hires need to make things happen. You’ve got to be able to engage the right people: owners, developers, marketers, salespeople. We're always looking for people who are proactive.”
5/ Embedded recruiters are familiar with your brand and culture
One of the drawbacks of external recruiters is that they are well… external, meaning they are detached from the business and its unique culture.
We came to rely on a curated selection of qualified applicants from whom we were able to choose some excellent performers who’ve added real value to our team
“We actually understand the culture. An external recruiter can never do that. As much as they'd say they will. It's not possible,” says Summers. “We really understand the people that business needs.”
Toyne agrees, adding that since embedding the Adaptor team within the business, retention has increased, which he attributes to their willingness to learn more about the business and its culture.
“Not only did the Adaptor execs become fully integrated members of our own management team, but as a result of becoming close colleagues within a tight-knit group, they added a lot more value than purely cranking out candidates to interview,” says Toyne.
“Because they understood our needs, our culture and our values, for each role that needed filling we came to rely on a curated selection of qualified applicants from whom we were able to choose some excellent performers who’ve added real value to our team.”
If you would like more information on embedded recruitment and how Adaptor can plug into your business, please reach out to Ross Summers.
