I had a meeting recently with a company that’s squarely in our sweet spot.
Small team, just over 20 people. Planning to grow by 50% this year.
That’s a big jump. And they’re smart; they know that contingency recruiting won’t make sense for much longer. They’re asking the right questions:
Do they keep doing contingency recruiting?
Is it time to build a hiring function?
Should they bring someone in-house?
What even is the right model?
They’ve got big goals, solid people, a real product…and no clue how to scale hiring in a way that doesn’t make everyone want to throw things.
All of that is fine. That’s literally what I help with.
But here’s what stood out:
For a company full of engineers who live in metrics and dashboards and decision trees, hiring was still running almost entirely on gut feel.
And no, I’m not saying they were wrong.
I’m saying they didn’t have the data to know.
You’d Never Run Product This Way
You wouldn’t make roadmap decisions based on what feels like the right priority.
You wouldn’t choose a feature based on vibes and half-remembered stories from three years ago.
But somehow, hiring gets treated like an exception.
Here are just a few examples of what I mean:
“Candidates from agencies don’t stick around as long.”
Cool, what’s your average tenure for agency candidates vs. direct vs. referral? I understand that it feels worse because you forked over 20-25% of their salary for their placement fee, but what does the data say?“We’ve had bad luck with our own job postings.”
Compared to what? Are you actually tracking how different sources perform over time?“Referrals are always our best hires.”
Amazing. What does “best” mean? Beyond tenure, if you look at your “A” employees, what source are they coming from? How many of the % of your hires have come from referrals? How does their tenure and impact compare to other sources? And say only 5% of your hires are coming from referrals, why haven’t you doubled down?
You get the idea. The hunch might be right. But until you actually look, you don’t know.
Your Hiring Function Needs a Health Check
Let’s say you find out your average agency hire stays 20 months. Is that good? Bad? Better than your direct applicants? Worse than your referrals? How does that compare the the tenure of your competitors? What action would you take if you found out your competitors retained their team an average of 2 years longer than you?
What if you discover that your referral hires stay 33% longer… but you’re not offering a referral bonus. You’d happily pay a contingency firm 20–25% of salary, but not give your own employees $5K to refer someone great?
Make it make sense.
Or maybe you’re seeing turnover in a certain team. Before blaming the source: agency, inbound, whatever: take a look at onboarding, team dynamics, compensation, manager consistency, expectations. Because most of the time? The real problem isn’t where the person came from. It’s the environment they landed in. And…regardless of the source, you still made the decision to hire them and need to take ownership over that decision.
Contingency Isn’t a Hiring Strategy
This is also where I push clients to think beyond “Do I need a recruiter?”
Because if you're just throwing roles out to a few contingency firms and hoping someone sends a decent resume, that’s not a hiring function.
Recruiting is a strategic lever.
It impacts every part of your business.
And if you want to scale, you have to treat it like it.
That means:
Auditing where your best hires came from
Looking at tenure by source, team, and manager
Measuring time to fill and time to ramp
Tracking who’s referring, and who’s staying
Spotting bottlenecks in your funnel
Getting honest about where you're losing people
Data doesn’t replace gut. But it should inform it.
Hiring Is Hard. But It Shouldn’t Be Blind.
If you’re a team of 20 and you want to be 30, 40, 60: your hiring model has to evolve.
That’s not a guess. That’s math.
The earlier you build a scalable hiring engine, the less chaotic (and expensive) everything feels later.
The problem is, most teams don’t realize they’re behind until they’re already drowning.
They’re caught up in interviews. Their sourcing isn’t working. They’re settling for maybes. They’re reacting to roles instead of hiring for what’s next.
And they think it’s just part of the startup grind.
It’s not.
It’s fixable.
Let’s Get Strategic
I don’t just send resumes.
I help companies build a real hiring function.
And part of that is looking at what the data says, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Because once you know what’s working (and what’s not), you can stop guessing and start growing.
Here’s your move:
👉 Reply to this email to book a free Hiring Health Check.
We’ll look at your current hiring model, where the gaps are, and what your next step should be, whether that’s embedded support, in-house hiring, or something else entirely.
No fluff. No pressure. Just clarity.
See you next Monday,
Robin
#gorogue
Get a List of the Best HRIS Software for Your Company
Stop wasting time on endless research and confusing options.
Our HR Software experts provide you with tailored recommendations from our database of 1,000+ vendors across HRIS, ATS, Payroll, and HCM.
✅ 15 minutes vs. hours of demos
✅ 1:1 help from an HR Software expert
✅ No spam, no sales pressure