Different Hiring Problems Require Different Hiring Models

Organisations often choose a hiring model before they have properly defined the hiring problem.

What hiring capability does your organisation actually need right now?

If your organisation needs to hire multiple roles, does paying an agency fee for every appointment make commercial sense?

Does your internal Talent Acquisition team always have the capacity or capability it needs?

The default response is typically one of two options: manage the work internally or engage an external recruitment or executive search firm.

Both models have their place. However, hiring demand does not always fit neatly into either one.

Sometimes an organisation needs experienced recruitment capability embedded within its team for a defined period.

Sometimes an established Talent Acquisition function needs additional senior capability or short-term capacity to manage increased demand.

Sometimes organisational growth, change or transformation creates a strategic recruitment program involving several important appointments.

Sometimes it is one business-critical, confidential or hard-to-fill senior role that requires dedicated search expertise.

These are different hiring problems, and they do not necessarily require the same solution.

Start with the hiring problem

Before deciding how to approach the market, it can be useful to ask:

• Is this an isolated appointment or part of a broader hiring requirement?
• Do we lack capacity, specialist capability, or both?
• Is the need immediate, temporary or likely to continue?
• Does the role require a proactive search beyond advertised candidates?
• Could additional market mapping or talent intelligence improve the decision?
• Will the process create valuable market intelligence (such as market maps, talent pools and candidate longlists) the organisation should retain and use again?
• What level of support does our internal team genuinely need?
• Which delivery and pricing model makes the most commercial sense?

The answers may point towards a traditional recruitment process. They may also reveal the need for a more flexible or scalable solution.

Search

For a business-critical senior appointment, a comprehensive search process can identify and engage relevant candidates who may not be actively looking.

This is particularly valuable for confidential, specialist or hard-to-fill roles where advertising alone is unlikely to reach the strongest available talent.

The process can incorporate market mapping, proactive candidate identification, structured assessment and detailed shortlist presentation…supported by a competitive and transparent fixed-fee model.

It can also create valuable intellectual property beyond the immediate appointment. Market maps, talent pools, longlists and candidate insights can become organisational assets, informing future hiring, succession planning and workforce decisions.

Traditional agency models often focus primarily on filling the immediate vacancy. A search process designed around the organisation’s broader needs can ensure the underlying research and market intelligence are retained, rather than losing their value when the assignment ends.

‍Talent Projects

Where the challenge is broader than one appointment, project-based support can provide additional recruitment capability without increasing permanent headcount.

This may include:

• Embedded recruitment support for a defined period
• Talent augmentation alongside an existing internal team
• Strategic recruitment programs supporting growth, change or transformation
• Talent intelligence and market mapping
• Additional short-term capacity during periods of increased hiring demand

The delivery model can scale according to the organisation’s priorities, internal resources and required outcomes.

Identify the problem…tailor the solution

The objective should not be to fit every requirement into a predetermined recruitment model.

It should be to understand the problem first, then shape the right capability around it.

At deliberatepractice, our Search & Talent Projects offering complements our established recruitment, leadership, careers and people advisory practices. It enables us to support clients with business-critical appointments, strategic recruitment programs and flexible talent acquisition capability.

Different hiring problems require different hiring models.

The most important question is:

What hiring capability does your organisation actually need right now?