The Hire Standard Reviews, Alternatives, and More in 2025 for Startups
Dover
July 18, 2025
•
5 mins
The Hire Standard is a San Francisco-based recruiting agency that specializes in HR, executive, and administrative roles. They brand themselves as "matchmakers for modern business" and target companies that are redefining success. Drawing from over five decades of experience from their team, they focus on what they call "white-glove service" for support roles. They've built a reputation around executive assistant placements, with clients praising their ability to find candidates with direct experience.
While they've carved out a niche in administrative hiring, this narrow focus creates real challenges for startup founders. Most growing companies don't have the luxury of working with different recruiters for different functions. You need engineers, salespeople, marketers, product managers, and administrative support, often all at the same time and managing multiple recruiting relationships becomes a headache when you're trying to scale quickly.
Founded by Jaimie Lynn Feliz, The Hire Standard began as a boutique recruiting firm focused on creating connections and matching people with opportunities. The company proudly operates as a women-owned business in the San Francisco market.
Jaimie built the firm around her 20+ years of recruiting experience and network within the San Francisco tech ecosystem. Rather than trying to be generalists, they chose to specialize in administrative and operations roles, developing what they describe as sophisticated sourcing methods for these positions.
Core Services and Features
The Hire Standard has several key service offerings:
Service Portfolio:
Direct permanent and contract hires within leadership operations, people operations, executive support, administrative support, customer support and sales support.
Direct hire placement, contract/temporary recruiting, payrolling, and other sourcing support.
Geographic coverage spanning the US and on-site/remote/hybrid hiring within PST, CST, EST, and HST time zones
User Reviews and Feedback
Client Testimonials: The feedback from hiring managers is positive, particularly around executive assistant placements. "Jaimie Lynn did a great job addressing our need for a C-suite Executive Assistant. Jaimie sourced candidates with direct experience serving very demanding CEO type executives."
Professional Network Feedback: LinkedIn reviews from industry professionals highlight The Hire Standard's retention rates and quality of matches. One client mentioned: "This high retention rate speaks volumes about the quality of candidates they provide. Another aspect I deeply appreciate is the lack of pressure from Jaimie in decision-making."
Limitations Based on User Feedback
While reviews are positive, the feedback reveals some inherent limitations:
Narrow Specialization: Reviews focus on administrative and support roles, confirming their limited scope compared to startups' broader hiring needs.
Scale Constraints: The personal, boutique approach that clients praise also means they can't handle high-volume or rapid-scaling hiring needs that growing startups often face.
Geographic Focus: Despite claiming broader coverage, most success stories and testimonials center around San Francisco Bay Area placements, suggesting their network strength is geographically concentrated.
The Hire Standard excels within their niche, but leaves startups needing additional recruiting partners for technical, sales, and other critical roles.
Why Startups Are Moving Beyond Traditional Recruiting Agencies
The data tells a compelling story about why traditional recruiting is failing startups.
Hiring teams now conduct 42% more interviews per hire than in 2021 (20 vs. 14), contributing to a 24% increase in average time-to-hire (41 vs. 33 days).
This shows a fundamental breakdown of the traditional model. The average recruiter manages 56% more open job reqs (14) and 2.7× more applications (2,500+) than three years ago. For startups that need to hire quickly to take advantage of opportunities, this creates a perfect storm.
A sourced (outbound) applicant is 5× more likely to be hired than an inbound applicant, showing that proactive sourcing is one of the most efficient strategies for hiring top-tier talent.
Most traditional agencies work on contingency, meaning they only get paid when you hire someone. The pressure is to focus on speed over quality fit. You either don't make a hire and waste time, or you make a hire and pay $30,000+ per placement.
The fractional recruiting model solves these problems by aligning incentives around quality work rather than just placements.
Best Alternatives to The Hire Standard
Dover: The Complete Startup Recruiting Solution
Dover stands out as the best overall alternative because it combines recruiting software with on-demand recruiting services. Unlike The Hire Standard's narrow focus on administrative roles, Dover offers a complete platform for hiring across all functions.
Over the past 5 years, Dover has helped 1,500+ companies like Stripe, Scale AI, OpenSea, Benchling, and Vanta attract and hire top talent. Here's what makes Dover superior:
Feature | The Hire Standard | Dover |
|---|---|---|
Role Coverage | Admin/Operations only | All functions |
Pricing Model | High placement fees | Hourly fractional rates |
Technology | Basic agency tools | Free ATS + AI sourcing |
Flexibility | Fixed agency model | Scalable fractional model |
Average Cost | $30,000+ per hire | $2,000-$10,000 per hire |
Free ATS and Tools: Dover's ATS is lightweight, but powerful, built for busy founders and hiring managers. It's as easy to use as a spreadsheet, but includes everything needed to manage your first 100 hires without the pain of traditional platforms.
Fractional Recruiting Marketplace: Dover Recruiting Partners are vetted fractional recruiters who work as extensions of your team. Dover only accepts the top 2% of recruiters, giving you access to specialized expertise without full-time overhead.
AI-Powered Speed: The platform uses AI to score candidates, automate sourcing, and simplify the entire hiring process. You spend time on qualified candidates instead of sifting through hundreds of applications.
The key advantage is flexibility. Use Dover's free tools for basic hiring needs and scale up with fractional recruiters when you need specialized help. This approach perfectly matches the hiring needs of growing startups.
Other Notable Alternatives
Riviera Partners: Focuses on executive searches for technical leadership roles. While excellent for senior hires, they're expensive (25-30% of salary) and take 3-6 months per search. This makes them unsuitable for most startup hiring needs.
Korn Ferry: Global executive search firm with intricate assessment tools. However, they're even more expensive than Riviera and primarily serve large enterprises rather than startups.
Traditional recruiting agencies still operate on the contingency model with high placement fees. They lack the technology integration and startup-specific expertise that modern companies need. For a complete comparison, check out our startup recruiting agencies ranking.
How Dover Changes Startup Recruiting
Dover's approach solves the fundamental problems with traditional recruiting. Instead of paying $30,000+ per hire to an agency, you get access to a marketplace of experienced fractional recruiters who work as extensions of your team.
Free Tools Foundation: Every startup gets access to Dover's free ATS, sourcing tools, and job board integrations. This gives you the foundation to manage your hiring pipeline without paying anything upfront.
On-Demand Expertise: When you need specialized help, you can instantly access Dover's network of vetted recruiters. Each recruiter has 10-15 years of experience and specializes in specific roles or industries.
Technology Integration: Dover's fractional recruiters use the same platform, so there's no disruption to your process. All candidate data, communications, and pipeline management happens in one place.
Transparent Pricing: You pay hourly rates (typically $80/hour) instead of large placement fees. This means you can get help with sourcing, screening, and interviewing without the financial risk of traditional agencies.
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