Enter your hiring roadmap — how many people, in what timeframe, at what budget — and get a recommended resourcing strategy: founder-led, internal team, embedded / RPO or agency.
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Your hiring roadmap
Be honest about volume, timeline and how much founder time you can actually commit.
15 hires
1 hire50 hires
24 months
3 months36 months
£90,000
£40k£250k
How much cash can you realistically put behind hiring?
What kind of roles dominate the roadmap?
Recommendation
Your roadmap points to: Embedded Recruiter / RPO.
Rule of thumb: ~20+ hires over the next 2 years → build an internal team. 1–2 crucial hires with nothing else planned → try founder-led first, then an agency if you can't fill it. In between → embedded / RPO is usually the best value.
Founder-Led Hiring
Poor fit
£27,000
~2% of salary per hire in tools, ads and referral bonuses — but your time is the real cost.
~8 hires/year is very hard to sustain founder-led without dropping other priorities.
You have some time, but sourcing and closing will compete with running the company.
Cheapest cash cost of any method, and you build hiring muscle you'll keep forever.
Build an Internal Team
Viable
£180,000
~£7,500/month fully loaded per recruiter (1 recruiter modelled).
You're near the threshold where an internal hire starts to pay off — viable if hiring continues beyond this roadmap.
A salary is a fixed cost — at volume, cost-per-hire drops far below agency fees.
They build your talent brand, pipeline and process as a permanent asset.
Embedded Recruiter / RPO
Recommended
£432,000
~£18,000/month retained for the duration of the plan.
~8 hires/year is the sweet spot: serious volume, but not enough to justify a permanent team.
Flexible — scale the engagement up or down, and hand over playbooks when you insource later.
Feels like part of your team; candidates get a better experience than via agencies.
Agency / Executive Search
Poor fit
£270,000 – £405,000
20–30% of first-year salary per hire, only on success.
Using agencies for 15 hires is the most expensive route at £270,000–£405,000.
No upfront cost; you only pay on success.
Nothing compounds — when the engagement ends, the pipeline and learnings leave with them.
Costs are directional estimates consistent with the Hiring Costs Calculator — actual quotes vary by market and provider.
