How to choose a recruiter for your Australian startup

Most founders choose a recruiter the way they choose a coffee catch-up. They take the call with whoever was referred, pick the person they liked, and move on. Likeability is a fine tiebreaker, but it tells you nothing about whether that person can find someone you would never have found yourself.

This is how we would choose a recruiter if we were on your side of the table.

Start with what you are actually hiring

The right recruiter depends on the kind of hire in front of you.

• One hard role, such as your first senior hire in a function you do not know well, a leader, or a role where the best people are not looking. You need someone who will shape the brief with you and go out and find people. This is exclusive or retained search.
• Several similar roles with a clear spec, where your employer brand already pulls applicants. Flat-fee, subscription or embedded models can be cheaper and faster.
• A role you can fill from your own network or a job ad. You may not need a recruiter at all.

Our breakdown of what a recruiter costs an Australian startup covers the pricing side of each model.

The questions worth asking

How will you go to market for this role?

Listen for whether they will headhunt or just advertise. The strongest candidates for most startup roles are already employed and not reading job ads, which we wrote about in The person who'd change your trajectory didn't apply. A good answer names where they will look, who they will approach and roughly how many people they expect to speak to.

How will you position the company?

Early hires need to believe in what you are building. At early stage, clarity on your mission, vision and who you are as an employer is what moves people, and budget only becomes the deciding factor once you are hiring specialists. A recruiter who cannot explain your product, stage and why someone should join back to you after one briefing will not be able to sell it to a candidate either.

How will you check the hire is right?

Ask what happens between a CV arriving and a candidate landing in front of you. Look for structured interviews, some form of assessment beyond the CV, and reference checks the recruiter runs properly. If the answer is that they send you CVs and you decide, you are paying for sourcing and doing the assessment yourself.

Who will actually do the work?

At some agencies the person who wins the business hands the search to someone more junior. Ask who will speak to candidates and who will be on your calls.

Have you hired this kind of role at this stage before?

A recruiter who places finance leaders in listed companies is working a different market from a seed-stage startup hiring its first finance person. Ask for a founder you can call who hired a similar role through them.

What is the fee calculated on, and what is the guarantee?

Ask whether the percentage applies to base salary, base plus super, or the full package including bonuses. Ask how long the replacement guarantee runs and what triggers it. Three to six months is typical in Australia.

Warning signs

• A flood of CVs in the first week. Volume that fast usually means database matching with little screening behind it.
• Pushing big-company candidates on big salaries. People from large corporates can bring the wrong expectations to a startup and cost you the speed that is your advantage, especially in early roles.
• No questions about the business. If the briefing is all about the job description and nothing about your goals, runway and what the role needs to achieve, the search will be built on the wrong thing.
• A fee they will not explain. A good recruiter can tell you exactly what you are paying for and when.

Brief on outcomes

Whoever you choose, the best thing you can give them is a clear picture of what the hire needs to achieve in their first year. Founders hiring their first senior specialist often cannot describe the day-to-day work, because the domain is new to them. That is normal. Brief on the outcomes you need, and use the interviews to see how strong candidates would get there. The best of them will help you shape the role.

How Kairos works

Kairos is a Melbourne-based recruitment agency for Australian startups and scaleups. We run every search as an employer branding campaign, with role design, founder-led content, headhunting, and assessment beyond the CV through behavioural interviews, Taly profiling and video CVs for customer-facing roles. Behind every search sits Aussie Founders Club, a community of 4,000+ Australian founders and startup people. If you are weighing up recruiters for a role, book a discovery call and ask us all of the questions above.