Your internal recruiting team, staffed by Startup Talent specialists
An embedded recruiting consultant works inside your company as a member of your team. They use your email domain, appear to candidates as your recruiting team, work in your ATS, and sit in your stand-ups and hiring reviews. Startup Talent manages their process, their tools, and the quality of their work, so you get an experienced recruiting function without building one from scratch.
That inside position is what changes the results. A recruiter who knows your product, your team, and your hiring bar writes better outreach, screens against the real standard, and closes candidates with an honest picture of the company. A senior Talent consultant who knows your growth plan can design a hiring process that fits how you actually operate. Our clients see a 96% job offer acceptance rate.
Contact UsFrom hands-on hiring to Talent leadership
Our consultants range from the sourcers and coordinators who keep your pipeline moving to the senior Talent leaders who design and run the entire recruiting function. You can engage one level or combine several, and the same embedded model applies at every level. Many startups begin with a senior consultant to set the strategy and add recruiters and coordinators as the hiring plan grows.
Strategy and leadership
Lead and build your Talent function
Senior consultants and fractional Talent leaders partner with your founders and executives on how hiring gets done, then build the team and systems to carry it out.
- Recruiting strategy and function design. Audit your recruiting function and make recommendations across people, process, technology, structure, and hiring strategy.
- Headcount and hiring planning. Translate your growth plan and budget into a prioritized hiring plan with realistic timelines for each role.
- Recruiting technology. Select, implement, optimize, and manage ATS, sourcing, scheduling, interview, and recruiting technology.
- Hiring manager enablement. Coach hiring managers, build interview processes, train interview panels, and improve hiring decision-making.
- Recruiting operations and analytics. Monitor pipeline health, time to fill, conversion rates, offer acceptance, and the other metrics that inform hiring decisions.
- Employer brand. Shape the careers content and candidate messaging that tell your story to the market.
Execution
Run your hiring day to day
Recruiters, sourcers, and coordinators run full-cycle hiring inside your company. Team size flexes to your plan, so whether you have two critical hires or twenty open roles, you get the right level of coverage.
- Sourcing and pipeline building. Build qualified candidate pipelines for hard-to-fill technical, executive, and specialized searches.
- Screening and interviewing. Evaluate candidates against your role requirements, culture, and hiring bar.
- Candidate experience. Manage scheduling, communication, follow-up, and the candidate journey from first conversation through close.
- Offer strategy and closing. Develop offer strategies, manage negotiations, address objections, and close top candidates.
- Technical and go-to-market hiring. Hire across engineering, data, security, product, sales, marketing, customer success, and operations.
- Executive and leadership searches. Run searches from individual contributors through VP, C-suite, and other critical leadership hires.
Your embedded recruiting team, fractional or
full-time
You decide how much of the week you need and what level of expertise fits the work. The model is the same either way, with your consultants working inside your company as members of your team, billed hourly or on a monthly retainer with no placement fees to keep your cost per hire lower.
| Fractional embedded | Full-time embedded | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | You get any consultant on our team for a set portion of the week, and you can flex the hours as your hiring plan changes. | You get dedicated full-time support, from a single recruiter to a full team of recruiters, sourcers, and coordinators. |
| Level of expertise | You can engage any level, from a Recruiting Coordinator or Sourcer to a fractional VP of Talent. | You can engage any level, from a dedicated recruiter to a full team led by an interim Head of Talent. |
| Best fit | You are hiring for a handful of key roles, building your recruiting foundation, or need senior Talent expertise without making a full-time hire. | You are scaling at volume against an aggressive headcount plan, or your Talent function needs a dedicated owner and ongoing execution. |
| Typical stage | Seed, Series A, and Series B companies making their first critical hires and putting recruiting infrastructure in place. | Series A through Series E companies hiring across multiple functions and building out teams. |
Many clients move between the two models as they grow, and they keep the same team, the same process, and the same tools when they do. When hiring pauses, you can turn recruiting down or off and keep the HR and People support your employees still need.
Book a Free ConsultationRecruiting consultants at every level
Startup Talent was founded in 2014 and has grown from 3 consultants in 2023 to more than 40 today. Every consultant has done the work inside venture-backed startups, and our team covers every level of a recruiting function, from interview logistics to hiring strategy. You can staff a single seat or an entire Talent function.
Every role below is available on fractional or full-time hours. You can bring in a VP of Talent for part of the week, add a dedicated Recruiting Coordinator every day, or scale a full recruiting team up and down with your hiring plan.
Talent leadership
Senior leaders who set your hiring strategy, build the recruiting function, and partner with your executive team.
VP of Talent
Leads your Talent function, sets the hiring strategy, builds and manages the recruiting team, and partners with your executives on workforce planning.
Interim Head of Talent
Steps in as your full-time Talent leader during a growth push, a leadership transition, or the months before you hire a permanent Head of Talent.
Recruiting Strategy Consultant
Audits your recruiting function, recommends changes across people, process, technology, and structure, and can stay on to put those changes in place.
Full-cycle recruiters
Experienced recruiters who own searches from intake through close and represent your company to every candidate.
Executive Recruiter
Runs searches for VP, C-suite, and other leadership roles, and partners with your founders and board on the profile, the pitch, and the close.
Technical Recruiter
Runs full-cycle hiring for engineering, data, infrastructure, and security roles, including the searches your internal team has been unable to close.
Go-to-Market Recruiter
Hires across sales, marketing, revenue operations, and customer success, and calibrates candidates against your sales motion and stage.
Senior Recruiter
Owns hiring across product, design, operations, finance, and other functions, and partners directly with hiring managers on the hiring bar.
Recruiting specialists and support
Specialists who build your pipeline, run your logistics, and keep your recruiting systems organized as volume grows.
Sourcer
Builds the top of your funnel with targeted outreach and pipeline research, so your recruiters spend their time on qualified, engaged candidates.
Recruiting Coordinator
Runs scheduling, candidate communication, and interview logistics, which protects the candidate experience when volume increases.
Talent Operations Consultant
Owns ATS administration, recruiting reporting, process workflows, and the infrastructure that keeps your hiring function organized and scalable.
Employment Branding Consultant
Develops your careers content, candidate messaging, and employer brand presence to strengthen your market position and increase candidate conversion.
Tell us the roles on your plan, the size of your team, and the stage you are at, and we will recommend the team structure and level of expertise that fit your organization.
Learn MoreThe numbers our clients see
- 99%of open positions filled
- 96%job offer acceptance rate
- 78.6%reduction in cost per hire
- ~50%improvement in time to fill
- ~3,000hires delivered across 116+ startups
We build recruiting teams around the deadlines, targets, and goals in your hiring plan, and we deliver top tech talent at the pace your growth requires.
What it looks like from the inside
"Krista and team became the foundation upon which we built our talent group. In her team, we not only had trusted and dependable partners to help us build our team."
Hooman Radfar, Chief Executive Officer, Collective
"We completely up-leveled our end-to-end hiring process and filled +35 roles across all departments with world-class talent. You can count on Krista and her team to do what they say they're going to do."
Kourosh Zamani, Co-Founder & COO, Laurel (Time by Ping)
Need HR and People Operations support too?
The same embedded model covers HR and People, from day-to-day People Operations support to a fractional Head of People or interim CHRO. Either function can be engaged on its own, and many startups run both with one partner.
Frequently asked questions about embedded recruiting
An embedded recruiter runs full-cycle recruiting inside your company, including sourcing, screening, interviewing, scheduling, offer management, negotiation, and closing. They use your email domain, represent your company to candidates, work inside your ATS and recruiting tools, and hire against your company's hiring bar.
Startup Talent manages the recruiter's process, tools, training, backup coverage, and quality while they work directly with your hiring managers.
An embedded consultant can do both. Startup Talent consultants range from sourcers and recruiting coordinators to senior Talent leaders. A senior consultant or fractional VP of Talent can audit your recruiting function, set your hiring strategy, build your interview process, select your recruiting technology, and lead the recruiters who execute it.
Many startups combine levels, with a senior consultant setting the strategy and recruiters, sourcers, and coordinators running the day-to-day hiring.
A fractional VP of Talent is an experienced Talent leader who leads your recruiting function for a set portion of the week. They can own the hiring strategy, partner with your executives on headcount planning, build and manage the recruiting team, and set the process and metrics the team runs on.
A fractional VP of Talent can give a startup senior Talent leadership before a full-time executive hire makes sense. Startup Talent can also place an interim Head of Talent on full-time hours during a growth push or leadership transition.
Embedded is how we work, and fractional or full-time is how many hours you choose. In both cases your consultants work inside your company as part of your team.
Fractional hours give you a sourcer, recruiter, or fractional VP of Talent for a set portion of the week. Full-time hours give you a dedicated recruiter or an entire recruiting team when you are scaling hiring or need a dedicated owner for the Talent function. Many startups move between the two as their needs change and keep the same team, processes, and tools.
Startup Talent bills hourly or on a monthly retainer with no placement fees. Traditional contingent recruiting agencies commonly charge a percentage of a candidate's first-year compensation for each placement, while an embedded model gives startups ongoing recruiting capacity without a separate placement fee for every hire.
The hourly and retainer model can be particularly cost-effective when a company is hiring for multiple roles or needs recruiting support over an extended period. Cost depends on the level of consultant and the hours you choose.
A contingent recruiting agency works outside your company, presents candidates under its own brand, and is typically paid a placement fee for each hire. An embedded recruiter works inside your company under your brand and email domain, runs your process in your ATS, and is paid hourly or on a monthly retainer.
Because embedded recruiters learn your product, team, and hiring bar, they can build a hiring process your company keeps after the engagement ends.
The terms overlap, and many companies use embedded recruiting, fractional recruiting, and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) to describe similar models. Traditional RPO is often structured for enterprise hiring volumes and long contracts.
Startup Talent's embedded model gives startups the same outsourced recruiting capacity at fractional or full-time hours, with the flexibility to scale the team up, down, or off as the hiring plan changes.
A startup should consider dedicated recruiting support when founders and hiring managers can no longer manage recruiting effectively alongside their other responsibilities. This often happens when two or more roles are open at the same time or the company is entering a significant hiring period after funding.
The exact point varies by hiring volume, role complexity, and growth rate. A fractional embedded recruiter can add capacity before a full-time recruiting hire makes sense.
Startup Talent recruiters hire across technical and engineering, data, infrastructure, security, product, design, go-to-market, sales, marketing, customer success, operations, finance, and executive leadership roles for startups from Seed through Series E. Searches range from individual contributors through VP and C-suite hires.
Most engagements begin one to two weeks after the scope is confirmed. Start time depends on the level of consultant, the expertise required, and current availability. If you have an urgent hiring need, tell us your timeline, and we will identify the appropriate available consultant.
Yes. Embedded recruiting support can scale up, down, or pause as your hiring plan changes. You can increase recruiting capacity during a hiring surge, reduce or pause it when hiring slows, and turn it back on when the plan restarts.
If you also work with Startup Talent on HR and People Operations, that support can continue for your existing employees while recruiting is paused.
Yes. Startup Talent provides embedded HR and People Operations support on the same fractional or full-time model, from HR Generalists and People Operations consultants to fractional Heads of People and interim CHROs. Recruiting and HR can be engaged separately or together. Learn about our HR and People support.
