Most technical hiring plans look fine on paper until the first few reqs open at once. The most challenging searches are the ones where, as soon as a req becomes urgent, your team realises:
- The title needs some work
- The salary band isn’t competitive
- There’s zero traction with candidates
- The tech stack requirements are so niche there are hardly any candidates out there who have all of those skills
Sorting out these challenges can take 2 to 3 weeks, per req. Now multiply that out by however many reqs are in play. Yikes. And while the team is sorting it out, the best candidates are taking interviews elsewhere. By contrast, an embedded recruitment team proactively:
- Researches the market
- Tracks competitor moves
- Creates talent maps
- Builds pipelines, so as soon as a req is in play, all the prep work is already in place: “we already know the market, the target companies, the salary reality, the candidate objections and the first outreach angle”
Embedded recruitment is ideal when…
- You’re hiring multiple technical roles in the next 3 to 6 months
- You’re expanding into a new geography or hiring for roles you’ve never hired for before
- Many of your roles share some characteristics
Building a Hiring Machine That’s Fast AND Fun for Candidates
There’s a common misunderstanding that a fast hiring process means getting candidates in and out of the process as quickly as possible. But that’s not actually the case. In our experience at EvoTalents, the hiring managers who rave about great recruiting experiences tell us three things stood out:
- Candidates got immediate responses when they reached out and clear feedback after every touchpoint
- Everyone knew exactly what to do and when
- The process was short and sweet, with each step adding value
These companies have removed the dead time in the process. None of this involves rushing candidates. It involves taking the waiting out. In comparison, dead time can look like:
- Four business days without an answer after reaching out to the recruiter
- Not knowing who is responsible for each part of the process
- Interviewing with managers who see them out of the context of other great candidates
- Redundancy in each step (e.g. the hiring manager doing another phone screen)
- Unclear messaging around the role and a drawn-out offer process
Candidates notice these things, and hiring managers tell us over and over how much easier their recruiting is when the experience is great. An embedded recruitment partner proactively:
- Helps define the ideal candidate profile and calibrates with you as more candidates come through the process
- Connects hiring managers to a holistic candidate shortlist with helpful context around each candidate
- Follows up for hiring manager feedback in a timely way and flags when this isn’t happening
- Designs and shares outreach messages to candidates
- Proactively sources passive candidates
- Tracks candidate responses to outreach and calls out trends
- Conducts phone screens with candidates
- Shares weekly reports on how the req is tracking and proposes next steps
On top of that, when your needs change (new funding, a pivot in your product, fresh requirements from your customer base, or a new exec hire), an embedded recruiter helps you course-correct the search in line with the new needs. Embedded recruitment is ideal when…
- You value a great candidate experience (for successful AND unsuccessful candidates)
- Hiring managers are over-booked and would appreciate offloading some of the recruitment admin
- Your last round of high volume hiring for tech roles felt like herding cats
Recruitment Feels Like a Set of Disconnected Projects, Rather Than a Connected Strategy
When priorities change mid-search, your whole team needs to respond accordingly. When you add more recruiters but they’re not embedded, it just feels noisier. Everyone is busy, and nobody has the full picture of the pipeline. A pivot or a new funding round can change several reqs in the same week, and each of them needs a decision. But an embedded recruitment partner:
- Tracks the market and trends
- Shares competitor hiring and layoff intel
- Creates talent maps so your team is able to have informed discussions and make smart decisions when priorities change
Embedded recruitment is ideal when…
- You’ve been burnt before by searches derailing when the business changed
- You’d like help planning for future hiring
- You’ve realised how disconnected and difficult your last technical hiring push was
Embedded Recruitment Can Look Different for Every Company: Here’s How to Figure Out What’s Right for Yours
Embedded recruitment is recruiting as a service. You get support from recruiters part-time or full-time for a set amount of time, and the level of support can be adjusted to what’s actually helpful for your team. Before engaging any partner, it’s worth thinking through whether embedded recruitment is the best next move. If most of the points above don’t apply and your company is only hiring two tech roles this year, embedded recruitment could be overkill, and a project-based approach makes more sense.
A full-time, in-house recruiter may also be overkill for your business. Just be sure to factor in all of the investment that goes along with a new hire: a salary, an onboarding process, management time, and energy towards making them want to stay. It might not be the right time to make that investment. For a lot of scaling teams, that decision makes more sense once the hiring volume has settled.
On the other hand, if several of the points above sound familiar, embedded recruitment might be the right move. There are three flavours:
- The embedded sourcing partner: your team has a humming process but just isn’t seeing enough great candidates
- The embedded talent intelligence partner: could be a really smart move if your company is hiring for a new team or into a new location
- The embedded hiring pod: your company is in a growth phase and there are lots of reqs in play across one or more locations
Pick wisely, though: an embedded sourcing partner won’t help when your interview process is busted, and an embedded hiring pod isn’t going to make up for a knowledge gap around a niche market. Before choosing, write down where your company is right now and what your hiring plans look like for the next six months. The answer usually makes it clear whether embedded recruitment will help, which of the three formats fits and what level of support makes sense.
