Need recruiting help? How to tell what type of recruiter is best
Katy Culver
Business Operations
March 1, 2024
•
4 min
You might consider an agency recruiter because:
They work on contingency: you only pay if you make the hire
They have a huge active candidate pool ready to be tapped
They will pre-screen candidates before you speak with them
What are the downsides to working with an agency?
Contingency model misaligns incentives — any candidate in the seat is better than the right candidate (read more on why contingency recruiters don't actually align incentives)
You’ll pay 30% of starting salary or nothing at all (which means you don’t actually make the hire — also not a great outcome)
They tap into the pipeline they already have vs. creating it for you specifically
They don’t build any infrastructure for you to handle the candidates and run a great process
How does Dover compare?
Dover’s sourcing is tuned to exactly what you want in candidates across 100+ data points… and we also know which candidates are most likely to be active out of 300m profiles
Dover isn’t paid based on the hire, we work with you until you’re happy with the results
Dover’s cost per hire is 3-5x cheaper than contingency
Dover sets you up for success by building in recruiting infrastructure and training your team
Learn how this founder switched from contingency recruiting to Dover and hired in 3 weeks.
Alright — let’s say you need more than sourcing help. You’re considering bringing on a recruiter in-house to own full-cycle recruiting and drive to hiring outcomes.
You might consider hiring an in-house recruiter because:
You want to ensure the recruiter is fully embedded in your team and culture
You want expert support to develop hiring best practices
You want them to build your recruiting infrastructure
You want to offload hiring altogether and have someone drive the outcomes
You need to hire a ton of new roles this quarter
What are the downsides to hiring in-house?
You need to ensure you always have enough hiring needs for them
They need to bring in their own tool stack, set it up, and train the team on it
You need to hire someone with the right expertise to both run hiring strategy and manage execution
You’re responsible for their onboarding, training, and professional development as a full-time team member, which requires additional management time from you
How does Dover compare?
Dover’s expert recruiter is fully embedded in your team as well. They get to know your culture and team as one of your own
Dover has helped 500+ top startups make 2000+ hires, so we know what best practices look like across a range of companies and have worked with just about every industry niche
Dover’s team brings software and service, so we have our own all-in-one hiring suite. No time spent evaluating or setting up new software tools, we are experts and can train your team on how to use it.
Dover has flexible support that you can spin up and down as needed, based on your hiring needs and internal capacity
See how this Head of People Ops pulled in Dover rather than scaling an in-house team.
If an in-house recruiter feels like too much of a commitment at this time…
You might consider bringing on a fractional recruiter because:
You don’t have enough hiring needs to justify bringing someone on full-time
They have specific expertise hiring in your industry niche
They are relatively inexpensive and you can turn off support whenever you need
What are the downsides to bringing on a fractional recruiter?
They’re just one person, so they’re a single point of failure — if they’re OOO or sick, your hiring comes to a halt
They need access to tooling as well, and may charge more for access to those
They’re process isn’t easily auditable since it’s typically more manual
They don’t have efficiencies of scale
How does Dover compare?
Each of Dover’s recruiters are backed by a complete support team behind the scenes to enable: 24/7 sourcing, fast scheduling, same-day phone screens, and <10 min support. So OOO and sick days don’t hold up your process.
Dover has helped 500+ top startups make 2000+ hires, so we know what best practices look like across a range of companies and have worked with just about every industry niche — no one person has this much experience
Our all-in-one hiring software stack is baked into the price. It’s custom-built for our use cases and we can train your team on how to use it as needed.
Dover’s slack integration makes recruiting seamless, so we meet you where you work best
Dover’s process is 100% auditable and offers complete transparency for you
Dover has flexible support that you can spin up and down as needed
See how this team of 12 hiring managers relied on Dover to scale from 90 to 130.
Dover has a track record of success with high-growth companies who have an even higher talent bar:
Book time with our team to learn more about how we help companies hire top talent.