When hiring becomes urgent
Urgent hiring has a few common causes. A funding round sets a growth plan with a date attached. A customer contract needs a team in place to deliver it. A product launch moves up. A key leader leaves and their team needs backfilling. Or a quarter of slow hiring finally catches up with the roadmap.
In each case, the work is the same: many searches need to start at once, and nobody on the current team has the hours to run them. Founders and hiring managers fill the gap themselves, which slows everything else they own.
The quickest route to more hires is more recruiting capacity, from people who already know how to run a search well. You do not need to design a recruiting function first. You need experienced recruiters working on the roles that matter most this quarter. If the urgency comes from a recent round, our recruiting after funding guide covers that situation in more depth.
Experienced recruiters who start ready
Speed comes from experience. An experienced embedded recruiter - a Maverick - has run many searches before yours, so they need less ramp time to learn your business and start sourcing.
Mavericks has more than 50 experienced recruiters and over six years of embedded recruiting, with more than 1,600 hires made across 150+ companies. That depth lets us match recruiters to the functions you are hiring for, whether that is engineering, product, AI, go-to-market or G&A.
Every Maverick works with Mav, the AI companion that helps with research, preparation and follow-through, so less of their time goes to busywork. Behind the scenes, MavsHQ, our recruiting operations and analytics platform, keeps activity and reporting consistent across searches.
Your recruiter joins your applicant tracking system, calendar and communication tools, then runs searches from intake to offer. Your hiring team makes the decisions. See Embedded Recruiting for the full scope.
What to have ready for a fast start
You do not need a polished process to get started. A few things make the first weeks much faster:
- A ranked list of roles. Know which searches matter most, so your recruiter starts there.
- Hiring managers who can meet. A short intake conversation for each role sets the brief, the criteria and the interview plan.
- Tool access. Access to your applicant tracking system, calendars and Slack lets your recruiter work as part of the team.
- A feedback rhythm. Agree how quickly interviewers will respond after each stage. Slow feedback costs more time than slow sourcing.
- Offer guidance. Clear compensation ranges and approval steps prevent delays at the end.
If some of these are not in place, your Maverick can help set them up as part of the work. Teams building a recruiting function for the first time often start this way.
Add sourcing and coordination as volume grows
When the plan is large, a recruiter alone can become the next bottleneck. Two add-ons help a fast-growing team keep pace.
Embedded Sourcing adds dedicated sourcers who map the talent market, research relevant people, send outbound messages and screen for fit. They hand qualified candidates to your recruiters, who manage the pipeline and close offers. This is the right add-on when the top of the funnel is thin or a role is hard to fill.
Embedded Coordination adds a coordinator who handles interview scheduling, calendar changes and next-step follow-ups. At high interview volume, this gives your recruiters hours back every week.
You can start with recruiting alone and add either one as volume grows, or start with all three. We agree the mix with you and adjust it as your plan changes. For a broader look at adding support to an existing team, see the recruiting capacity guide.
What happens in the first conversation
The first conversation is about your plan, not a sales pitch. We ask which roles are open, which ones are most urgent, who the hiring managers are and what is slowing hiring down today.
From there we recommend a shape for the support: how many recruiters, whether sourcing or coordination would help, and which searches to start with. We are direct about start timing, which depends on your needs and our available capacity. We also tell you when another option fits better. If you need one highly specialized hire, a contingency search may be the better choice, and we will say so.
Once we agree scope and terms, your Mavericks join your tools and start with the highest-priority roles. You get a detailed weekly recruiting update and weekly or bi-weekly syncs from the start, so you always know where each search stands.
Engagements are a monthly, predictable cost for dedicated capacity, with no per-hire fees. Our recruiting agency alternative guide explains how that compares.