Fractional Recruiter vs Full-Time Recruiter: Which is Right for Your Startup?
Dover
April 18, 2025
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5 min
In the scrappy early days, when your team is relatively small, it’s common for the CEO or a leader to handle sourcing candidates, posting jobs, and scheduling interviews between demo calls and product releases.
But as your company starts to grow (and your calendar starts looking like a game of Tetris), you’ll eventually hit a point where hiring becomes a job of its own.
How do you know you’ve reached that tipping point? Here are a few telltale signs that it might be time to get some dedicated recruiting help:
Too Many Open Roles: You have more open positions than you can realistically manage yourself, and if you’re trying to fill multiple roles at once under a tight timeline.
Founder Bandwidth Is Maxed Out: You find yourself conducting phone screens between customer meetings or spending late nights combing through LinkedIn. These tasks start eating up a big chunk of your time that you could spend on product or customers.
Lack of Hiring Expertise: You are great at building your product, but not necessarily an expert in sourcing, interviewing, and closing candidates. You mess up key steps in the hiring process and lack much-needed structure to set it up for success.
Inconsistent Candidate Experience: If interview scheduling is chaotic or follow-ups slip through the cracks because no one is fully focused on recruiting, it can hurt your ability to land great talent.
Aggressive Growth Plans: Perhaps you’ve just raised a round and plan to double your team in the next six months. That kind of rapid scaling is nearly impossible without someone dedicated to talent acquisition.
Rule of Thumb: If hiring is consuming more than 20% of your time, or you anticipate hiring around 5-10 people per quarter going forward, it’s probably time to bring on fractional or full-time recruiting help.
If you’ve ticked any of these boxes, the next step is clear: you need a recruiter. But the next question is, what kind of recruiter?
Should you hire a full-time, in-house recruiter for your startup? Or would a fractional (contract) recruiter be a better fit for now? Let’s dive into the differences between the approaches.
Now that you’ve acknowledged you need a recruiter, how do the two main options stack up? Both fractional recruiters and full-time (in-house) recruiters can help you level up your hiring game, but they come with different advantages and trade-offs. Here’s an overview of the pros and cons of each approach:
Aspect | Fractional Recruiter | Full-Time Recruiter |
Flexibility | + High: Hired on contract basis so it’s easy to scale up/down based on hiring needs | - Low: fixed commitment, no matter if things are slow. You need to keep paying salary |
Onboarding/start time | + Quick: starts in days when hired from marketplaces | - Slower: need to recruit them, which can take weeks to months |
Cost | + Cost-effective for short-term needs. | - High fixed cost (on top of salary, benefits, equipment, and possibly equity in the long run) |
Expertise | + Often specialized in niche roles and industries | - Likely a generalist who doesn’t specialise in one particular industry |
Availability | - Part-time (10–20 hrs/week), limited hours | + Fully dedicated and available during work hours |
Internal Presence | - Low: not embedded in daily operations | + High: deep understanding of culture and team |
Candidate Experience | May be less aligned with brand, but can hire the right fit. | Strong employer branding and consistency |
Continuity | - Contracts end, possible disruption when growing faster. | + Long-term stability and planning |
Onboarding | + Faster to onboard and fill the roles | + Slower but more integrated long-term |
Best For | Short-term, niche, flexible hiring sprints | Long-term, consistent hiring needs |
When it comes to flexibility and speed, fractional recruiters tend to have the upper hand for early-stage startups.
Need hiring help for a short burst? You can hire a fractional recruiter for a month or two, then scale down. By contrast, a full-time recruiter is a permanent team member (great for stability, but not as easy to scale down)
For example, imagine your startup plans to hire five people in the next quarter, then probably slow down for a bit to focus on other goals. A fractional recruiter can start sourcing candidates next week, work intensively for that quarter, and then smoothly roll off once those roles are filled. You’re not stuck paying a salary when there’s nothing to hire for.
In terms of speed, fractional recruiters can often jump in faster. Fractional recruiter platforms can help you quickly find a vetted recruiter ready to go. Onboarding a fractional recruiter might take a couple of days of sharing your job requirements and culture basics, compared to finding a full-time recruiter that takes 4-8 weeks (posting a job, interviewing, negotiating an offer, etc.). Only after your new recruiter joins can they begin hiring for other roles (which could be almost two months later than if you had gone fractional).
For immediate flexibility and burst capacity, a fractional recruiter is your best bet.
Specialization and Focus
Early-stage startups often need to hire for a variety of roles: one day it’s a backend engineer, the next day a product marketing manager. This is where specialization comes into play. Fractional recruiters often have specific domains of expertise.
These recruiters have deep networks in their niche, and may already know lots of candidates in a given field or know where to find them.
"Our startup’s fractional recruiter had a decade of experience hiring engineers. She was talking tech with candidates from day one," recalls one CTO. "That kind of targeted expertise is hard to find in a single in-house recruiter."
On the other hand, a full-time recruiter is focused solely on your company and will gradually become a jack-of-all-trades for your hiring needs. But this matters if your priority is being able to hire candidates holistically to fit your company’s culture.
There’s also an element of toolset and process. Many fractional recruiters come armed with their own recruiting tools, and subscription accounts. They’ve honed their process across multiple companies. Your in-house recruiter, especially if they’re the first, might have to set up a lot from scratch (like your applicant tracking system, interview processes, career page content, etc.).
That can be a pro or con depending on whether you want someone to introduce best practices (fractional) or build a custom process internally (full-time).
In short, if your hiring needs demand highly specialized knowledge, vary widely across departments, and need short-term help, a fractional recruiter is your best option.
Cost Comparison
Cost is often the make-or-break factor for startups choosing between fractional and full-time recruiters. Each approach has a different cost structure, so let’s break it down.
A fractional recruiter is typically paid as a contractor. As we covered in our guide on fractional recruiter cost, these recruiters usually charge in one of a few ways:
Hourly: for example, $150-$250 per hour for highly specialized recruiters. If they work 10 hours a week, that’s $1500-$2500 for that week.
Monthly Retainer: a flat fee per month for a set number of hours. Many fractional recruiters charge a retainer of around $10,000-$20,000 per month for roughly 15-20 hours per week of work.
Per Placement (Contingency): less common for fractional arrangements, but some operate like traditional agencies, charging a success fee per hire (often 15-25% of the hired person’s first-year salary). So hiring one engineer on a $120K salary might cost $18K-$30K in fees.
Which is cheaper? It depends on your hiring volume and timeframe. Let’s compare scenarios:
Hiring Option | Typical Cost | Best For |
Fractional Recruiter | $10K-$20K per month (or $150/hour) | Short-term needs: a few hires over a few months. Pay for only what you need and no more. |
Full-Time Recruiter | $100K+ per year (plus benefits) | Ongoing hiring needs; numerous hires spread throughout the year. Fixed cost, but becomes cost-efficient if constantly recruiting. |
Agency Recruiter (Contingent) | ~20% of each hire’s salary | One-off or very hard-to-fill roles; can be most expensive if you have to fill many roles (fees add up quickly). |
If you only need to hire a handful of people in the next quarter, a fractional recruiter’s monthly fee might end up significantly less than what a full-time recruiter’s salary would be for that period (and far less than paying 20% per hire to an agency for multiple hires).
Ultimately, fractional recruiters offer a way to turn recruiting into a variable cost: you pay for talent acquisition when you need it. If your startup doesn’t need a set number of hires every month throughout the year, a fractional recruiter is most cost-effective.
Decision Criteria: Choosing the Right Approach
Still on the fence? Let’s boil it down to the key factors that can help you make a decision. Every startup’s situation looks different, so here are some guidelines to help you choose an option that suits your current situation:
When a Fractional Recruiter Makes More Sense:
You have a short-term hiring surge: If you only need heavy recruiting for the next few months (for example, after a big fundraise or product launch), fractional talent lets you scale up for that period without long-term commitments.
Hiring volume is moderate or variable: Perhaps you have 3 roles to fill now, then maybe nothing for a quarter, another burst later. A fractional recruiter can adjust to your hiring pace.
Budget is tight (but roles are critical): You can’t quite justify a full-time recruiting hire in your burn rate, but you also can’t afford to leave roles unfilled. Paying for a few months of a fractional recruiter bridges that gap.
Need specific expertise: Maybe you’re hiring for a role that no one on your team has experience with. A fractional recruiter who specializes in that domain can better navigate the talent pool than a generalist.
Not ready for HR infrastructure: Very early startups might not have HR or recruiting processes at all. A fractional recruiter can bring immediate processes and structure to your hiring without you having to build an internal recruiting function from scratch.
When a Full-Time Recruiter Makes More Sense:
Continuous hiring needs: If you anticipate significant hiring needs every month for the foreseeable future, an in-house recruiter will likely be more cost-effective and efficient. For example, if you need to consistently hire 5+ people each quarter, a full-timer pays off.
You want a dedicated team member on culture and talent: Companies building a strong culture often benefit from having someone internally who champions that culture in the hiring process. A full-time recruiter will be deeply embedded and can work closely with leadership on long-term talent strategy and employer branding.
Long-term growth stage: You’re moving from scrappy startup to growth mode (maybe Series B and beyond). Investing in internal capabilities like a recruiting team starts to make sense to support scaling. An in-house recruiter can even help hire other HR/team members down the line.
You’ve found the right person: Sometimes the decision is opportunistic: you meet an amazing recruiter who understands your vision, and you want them on the team full-time. If you have the budget, bringing them in-house could elevate your hiring to the next level.
Multiple concurrent hires across functions: If you’re hiring across various departments continuously (eng, design, sales, etc.), a full-time recruiter can coordinate these internally.
These criteria aren’t strict rules. Some startups start with a fractional recruiter to handle immediate needs, then transition to a full-time recruiter when they hit a certain scale.
Others might hire a full-time recruiter but still occasionally bring in fractional/contract help for peak hiring periods or specialized searches. The two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive; they can complement each other as your company grows.
Conclusion: Finding the Right Fit
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