Your first recruiter, or an agency: how to decide
Somewhere between twenty and eighty people, hiring stops being something the founders can do on the side. The question that follows is usually framed as a binary: hire a full-time recruiter, or use an agency. It is the wrong framing, because the answer depends on the shape of your hiring, not the size of your company.
Start with two numbers. How many hires do you need to make in the next two quarters, and how many of them are the kind you cannot afford to get wrong? A team hiring twelve mid-level engineers has a volume problem. A team hiring a VP of Engineering and a founding designer has a precision problem. They need different things.
Volume problems want ownership. Someone has to run the pipeline every day: intake, sourcing, screening, scheduling, offers, and the constant low-level coordination that eats a founder's week. If the volume is going to be there for a year or more, a full-time recruiter is the right call. If the volume is real for the next two quarters but you are not sure about the two after that, an embedded recruiter month to month gives you the ownership without the headcount decision. That is the case Satoriq InHouse is built for, and it is why we help clients hire their own recruiter when the volume proves durable.
Precision problems want a search. A first VP hire sets the ceiling for everyone who comes after them, and the people you want are not applying to anything. A search is a different kind of work: calibrating the role with the founders, mapping the market, going to people who are not looking, and running a process that closes. A full-time recruiter in their first month should not be spending it on this, and an embedded recruiter can run it but it will consume their quarter.
Most teams at this stage have both problems at once, which is why the binary framing fails. The practical answer is often a search for the two or three roles that matter most, plus embedded capacity for the rest, and a plan to bring recruiting in house when the volume justifies it.
One more number to keep in view: the cost of the seat staying open. A senior role that sits empty for five months costs more in lost output than any fee you will pay to fill it. Whatever you choose, choose it quickly.