David works alongside in-house teams on the hard, urgent, or specialist searches.
Both models work. The right one depends on hiring volume, timeline pressure, and how much of your team's bandwidth you're willing to spend on sourcing instead of building.
Compare the modelsIf you're consistently hiring 10+ engineers a year, a full-time in-house recruiter amortizes well and builds institutional knowledge of your stack and team.
A one-off VP of Engineering hire, or a niche AI/ML search, rarely justifies a full-time hire but needs specialist sourcing fast.
An in-house recruiter costs a salary whether or not they're actively filling a role, and their network is limited to whoever they've built relationships with. An agency costs more per hire but only when a hire actually happens, and it brings a network built across dozens of companies and searches. Most growing companies use both, agency for the hard, urgent, or specialist roles, in-house for steady-state volume hiring.
The question isn't which model is better. It's which model fits the specific role you're hiring for right now.
David works alongside in-house teams on the hard, urgent, or specialist searches.
Book a 15-minute call. We work as an extension of your team, not a replacement for it.
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