Fractional Recruiting for Small Business

What is fractional recruiting?

Fractional recruiting is a hiring partnership where a recruiter or recruiting team is embedded into a small business at a flat monthly fee, replacing both the contingent agency model and the cost of a full-time internal hire.

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WHAT

An embedded recruiter on a flat monthly fee.

The recruiter runs your searches end to end: sourcing, screening, scheduling, offers, and the first ninety days after the start date. No commissions, no per-hire invoices, no surprise fee when someone signs. The fee does not change when a role gets filled or when two get filled in the same month.

Metcalf Search delivers this as a pod with a single point of contact, organized around the STACK Method, our five-letter map of where hiring breaks. The full model, including how the pod works, is on the Fractional Recruiting page.

SO WHAT

Hiring is stealing your week.

You know the shape of it. The role has been open six weeks. The Indeed inbox is ninety resumes deep and three are close. Screening calls keep sliding to Friday. The one good candidate went quiet somewhere between the second interview and the offer. None of this is a character flaw. It is a process running on stolen hours.

Now the other version. Roles fill in weeks, not quarters. Candidates show up screened, scheduled, and warm. Offers go out on time and get signed. You spend your hiring energy on the one decision that is actually yours: who gets hired. That is the job we do.

NOW WHAT

Book the fit call.

The first call is thirty minutes and runs the same way every time. We ask what is not working in your hiring. We ask what the dream scenario looks like. We show you how the model works and where fractional is different. If it fits, we make you a concrete offer with a number in it. Then we stop talking. No drip campaign, no chase. If we are not the right tool, we say so on the call and point you somewhere better.

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There are three ways to buy recruiting.
They look nothing alike.

Staffing agency

An hourly markup, typically 35 to 40 percent over what the candidate is actually paid. Fast when you need fast. Rarely a long-term answer.

Contingency agency

20 to 30 percent of first-year salary when a hire is made. A $15,000-plus invoice for one person, and the support ends with the guarantee.

Fractional recruiting

A flat monthly fee. An embedded recruiter building your pipeline, your process, and your hires, across every open role.

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Common questions

What is fractional recruiting?
Fractional recruiting is a hiring partnership where a recruiter or recruiting team is embedded into a small business at a flat monthly fee, replacing both the contingent agency model and the cost of a full-time internal hire. The fee does not change when a role gets filled, and the work happens inside the client's hiring process, not outside of it.
Why is it so hard for small businesses to hire good people right now?
The reason small businesses struggle to hire is not skill or effort. It is time. Recruiting is a process, and a good process has to run consistently. Big Corporate, Inc. wins on hiring because they have a dedicated recruiter or a full TA team whose entire job, all day every day, is running that process for the business. Small businesses could not afford that level of dedicated recruiting function before fractional recruiting existed. That is what Metcalf Search was built for: to give small businesses the same consistent, dedicated hiring capability Big Corporate, Inc. has, at a fraction of the cost.
When does a small business need to start working with a recruiter?
As soon as they start hiring. Think of recruiting like tennis. Everyone knows the basic idea: hit the ball over the net. But ask the average person what "30 love" actually means, or whether they could score a single point against Serena Williams. Recruiting works the same way. You can play it as an amateur, and most small business owners do, but if you want to play at a professional level you need a real coach. The earlier a small business brings real recruiting expertise into the work, the less expensive every hire becomes for the life of the business.
How is fractional recruiting different from a staffing or contingency agency?
There are three buyer choices and they look nothing alike. A staffing agency charges you an hourly markup, typically 35 to 40 percent over what the candidate is actually paid. That margin is money that could have gone to paying better candidates more. Sometimes that is the right trade, the way a payday loan is the right trade when the car has to be fixed by Monday and you need to get to work. It is rarely a good long-term hiring solution. A contingency agency charges 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary when a hire is made, with a guarantee period after that of usually 30 days, maybe 90 if you negotiate well. That is a $15,000-plus invoice for one person with no support after the guarantee ends. How many of those checks can a small business afford to write in a year for a candidate the agency happened to have on hand and pushed the quickest? Fractional recruiting sits in a better place. The work is building your pipeline, your hiring process, and yes, getting people hired, the way an internal recruiter would for Big Corporate, Inc. The result is a consistent process you can run yourself over time, or keep the fractional recruiter on board to run for you while you focus on the business.
What is the STACK Method?
STACK is the framework Metcalf Search uses to organize hiring work and diagnose where the process is breaking down: Source (where qualified candidates come from), Tempo (the rhythm of the search), Assess (how to evaluate before offering), Close (turning offers into accepts), and Keep (how you retain people over time). Every hiring problem a small business has lives in one of those five places, which is what makes STACK useful as a diagnostic. Each letter has a dedicated page on this site.
What does it actually cost to make a hire?
The salary is the visible part. The hidden costs include sourcing time, interview hours across multiple managers, agency fees if applicable, onboarding ramp time before the new hire produces, and the cost of getting it wrong. A bad hire in a small business commonly costs 1.5 to 3 times the role's annual salary once turnover, re-recruiting, and lost momentum are added up. Recruiting is one of the highest-ROI areas a small business can invest in.
Forthcoming Book
The STACK Method, a small business hiring book by Jay Metcalf, shipping 2026.