How should a technology company budget for recruitment?

Recruitment budgets in scale-ups are rarely designed. They accumulate: agency fees for the roles that stalled, tooling picked up during a peak, contractor cover between permanent hires. A useful budget starts from what the company intends to hire, not from last year's invoices.

Start with the hiring plan

Translate the annual plan into a role-level view: how many hires, at what seniority, in which markets and by when. The budget then becomes an output of that plan rather than a lump sum negotiated with Finance. Anything that cannot be tied back to a planned role is a candidate for challenge.

Separate core and exception hiring

Predictable, repeatable roles have very different economics from scarce, specialist or leadership hires. Split the budget into a core operating cost for continuous demand and a smaller exception envelope for the searches that genuinely need external specialist reach. Treating both the same distorts the numbers.

Include full internal and external cost

A complete budget includes fully loaded internal team cost, technology, sourcing tools, background checks, external providers and hiring-manager time. Comparisons that only look at agency fees will always favour internal delivery even when internal capacity cannot realistically deliver the plan.

Model low, expected and high scenarios

Hiring plans move. Build three scenarios so the budget can flex without renegotiation: a low case where volume slows, an expected case aligned to plan and a high case for accelerated growth. Each scenario should identify what changes: which supplier mix, which internal capacity and which trade-offs on speed or quality.

Price the cost of delay

For revenue-critical or product-critical roles, estimate the business cost of the vacancy remaining open. Even a conservative estimate reframes the conversation: a shorter, more expensive search often becomes the cheaper option once delay is included.

What this means in practice

Agree the operating model and budget together rather than approving supplier fees vacancy by vacancy. Document the assumptions used and revisit them when the hiring plan, market or role conditions change.

The Saiyō view

Saiyō sees recruitment economics as an operating model question rather than a procurement one. The objective is predictable cost, faster access to strong candidates and less repeat work, which is why annual hiring commitments and economies of scale sit at the centre of the Embedded Headhunting model.