The board approves the plan. Twenty roles this quarter, across engineering, sales and operations. Your talent team is two people, and one of them already spends most days in interviews.
Most companies in this spot reach for one of two answers: hire more recruiters, or hand the roles to an agency. Both can work. Neither works as well as it looks on paper, and there is a third option most teams overlook.
Option 1: Hire more recruiters
Adding headcount feels like the safe choice. It is also the slowest one.
Ashby's 2026 Talent Trends Report tracked 54 million applications and 93,000 jobs at its customers between January 2021 and March 2026. It measured the time from opening a job to making the first hire. The median was 60 days for business roles and 75 days for technical roles. Seniority stretches it further: 52 days for junior roles, 63 for mid-level and 71 for senior.
A recruiter is a business role, so that is roughly two months on the clock for hiring the recruiter, before they fill a single seat for you. Hire a senior recruiter and it is closer to ten weeks. Add notice periods and a few months of ramp, and a new recruiter is often fully productive half a year after you decided you needed one.
Then there is the cost after the surge. If hiring slows next year, you are carrying a salary, benefits and a stack of tool licenses for a smaller pipeline. Recruiting teams are among the first cut in a downturn for exactly this reason.
Headcount makes sense when the volume is permanent. For a burst, it is fixed cost chasing a temporary problem.
Option 2: Hand the roles to an agency
Agencies bring speed, reach and a network you do not have. For a critical leadership search, a good firm is worth every dollar. We know, because we run one.
For twenty roles at once, the math changes. Contingency fees typically run as a percentage of first-year salary per hire, and across a full hiring plan that adds up fast. You also hand over how your company is presented to candidates, and the knowledge built during each search leaves when the engagement ends.
Agencies are the right tool for the hardest few roles. They are an expensive way to handle volume.
Option 3: Add capacity, not headcount
The third answer is to give the team you already have more reach, by handing the repeatable work to software that does it well:
- Mapping the talent market and sourcing candidates
- Writing outreach that reads like a person wrote it
- Screening and shortlisting against what the hiring manager actually wants
- Scheduling and supporting interviews
- Handling references, offers and background checks
This is the gap COBOTA was built for. It runs the full recruiting workflow in one platform, for about half the cost of a recruiting coordinator, and it is working the day you switch it on. No requisition to open, no ramp to wait out. On roles run through COBOTA, time to hire fell from 63 days to 28.
Your recruiters keep the work only a person can do: the hiring manager conversations, the candidate who is weighing two offers, the judgment calls.
How to decide
Ask four questions about your plan.
- Is the surge permanent? If hiring stays high for years, a mix of new headcount and software makes sense. If it is a burst, avoid fixed cost.
- How varied are the roles? Many functions at once is where a small team breaks first, because each one needs its own market map and outreach. A plan heavy on engineering stretches furthest: in Ashby's data, technical roles take about 15 days longer to fill than business roles.
- Which roles are truly critical? Send the two or three hardest searches to a specialist firm. Run the rest in house.
- Where does your team's week actually go? If most of it is sourcing, outreach and scheduling, that is work you can hand off today.
The bottom line
A bigger hiring plan does not have to mean a bigger talent team. It has to mean a team with more reach. Before you open a requisition for another recruiter or coordinator, price the alternative.
Want to see it on one of your open roles? Book a short demo with COBOTA.
Sources
- Ashby, Recruiting Operations Benchmarks, 2026 Talent Trends Report (May 7, 2026): median time to first fill of 60 days for business roles and 75 for technical roles; 52 days junior, 63 mid-level, 71 senior; 54M applications and 93K jobs, January 2021 to March 2026.
- COBOTA platform data: time to hire reduced from 63 days to 28 on roles run through COBOTA.