The problems with in-house recruiting

Talent acquisition is the lifeblood of any growing company.

But building and managing an in-house recruiting team is often a mistake.

As businesses scale, the temptation is to keep all functions, including recruiting, under direct control. 

However, for most companies, we’ve observed investing in a dedicated internal recruiting team is an inefficient use of resources that fails to deliver optimal results. Here are the four main reasons why.

1) High Fixed Costs

Maintaining an in-house recruiting team is expensive. Beyond salaries, there are costs for training, management oversight, tools, and technology.

You need to find and hire people with the right recruiting expertise, and then develop recruitment as an entirely new function within your company. 

2) Labeled "Back Office" 

Too often, internal recruiting teams are not given the strategic priority they deserve. Talent acquisition gets labeled a back-office function focused on mundane administrative tasks.

In reality, recruiting is a critical business driver that requires dedicated expertise. The quality of a company's talent defines its trajectory and ability to execute. Recruitment should be a core strategic focus, not an afterthought.

3) Inability to Surge

Hiring is not a constant process. There are peaks and valleys in hiring needs. A slowdown like we saw during the pandemic can leave you with an oversized recruiting team and wasted overhead.

On the flip side, new initiatives, products, markets, or geographies can create sudden spikes in hiring needs.

Companies with fixed-size internal recruiting teams struggle to meet these demand peaks. 

They're forced to hastily engage expensive external agencies that charge high rates and lack context on the company.

Ironically this negates the entire purpose of building the recruiting team in-house and ends with a “worst of both worlds” scenario.

4) Starved for Resources

Because recruiting is often treated as a support function rather than a core business priority, internal teams are chronically under-resourced.

Recruiters are expected to deliver high-quality candidates at scale but aren't given the headcount, tools, or strategic input required for success.

At Ztek Consulting, we solve these challenges by offering Recruiting-as-a-Service (RaaS). We focus exclusively on recruitment, building bespoke teams optimized for each client's unique needs.

By developing a deep understanding of your business and continuously refining our processes, we deliver better results at lower costs than most in-house teams. One of our recent clients reduced cost-per-hire by 25% while slashing time-to-fill by 50%.

When recruitment gets the dedicated focus it deserves, talent acquisition becomes a massive competitive advantage rather than a risk.