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Fractional recruiter for Australian founders.

Embedded sourcing, interview design, offers and a real first-30-days plan — run end-to-end on a flat retainer, with no per-hire fees and no lock-ins.

Most Australian teams between 5 and 80 people are stuck in the same hiring trap. Contingent agencies want a 20% per-hire fee and vanish the moment an offer is signed. A full-time talent lead costs $150k all-in and spends half the year underutilised. So founders end up running loops on top of their day jobs — writing job ads at 11pm, scheduling on personal calendars, and losing good candidates to a competitor with a tighter process.

A fractional recruiter sits in the middle of that gap. “Fractional” means a senior operator on a flat monthly retainer, embedded in your Slack and your hiring meetings, owning the pipeline for an agreed cadence of roles. Not a list of CVs and a bill. The same person who scopes the role briefs the panel, debriefs the loop, drafts the offer, and hands the new hire over to onboarding.

The failure mode we see most often is not a sourcing problem — it is a process problem. Interview loops invented on-the-fly, no written rubric, three founders giving the same feedback in different words, candidates ghosted for a fortnight, offers extended with no comp benchmark behind them. By the time the hire actually starts, the manager has not blocked out onboarding time and the new joiner spends week one staring at a locked laptop. We fix the loop and we fix the handover, because a great hire who is onboarded badly will quietly check out by month three.

This service pairs naturally with our HR strategy and workforce planning work — most founders need a 12-month headcount plan before anyone touches a job ad — and with salary benchmarking and pay band design, so offers go out at the right number the first time. We work AU-only, so we know the candidate market, the going rates and the Fair Work obligations that wrap around an offer.

One last thing on tooling. We are tool-agnostic — Ashby, Lever, Greenhouse, Workable, even a tidy spreadsheet — but we will tell you when the system you have is the bottleneck. The point is not which ATS you use; the point is that every candidate gets a real reply within two business days, every interview is structured, and every new hire walks into a manager who has blocked out the time to onboard them.

Why us

Hire well, onboard well — without per-hire fees.

A senior operator embedded with your team for an agreed cadence of roles. Flat retainer, AU-only, no agency markup, no junior handoffs. The person who scopes the role is the person who runs the loop and writes the onboarding plan.

Email contact@flexhr.com.au

  • Flat retainer

    No per-hire fees, no lock-ins.

  • Embedded sourcing

    In your Slack, your loops, your debriefs.

  • AU-only

    Local market, local comp, Fair Work-aligned.

  • 30-day onboarding

    A 30-60-90 plan, not a welcome email.

What's in scope

What a hiring & onboarding engagement covers.

Step 1

Role scoping & job briefs

A working session with the hiring manager to pin down the actual job: outcomes for the first 6 months, must-have versus nice-to-have, level and band, comp range. The written brief becomes the source of truth for the ad, the loop and the offer.

Step 2

Sourcing & job ads

Job ads written for humans, not keyword spam. Active outbound on LinkedIn and the channels that match the role, plus a tidy referral push. We run the pipeline, screen calls and shortlists — you only see candidates worth your time.

Step 3

Interview design & loops

A structured loop with a written rubric, calibrated questions, and a clear debrief format. We train the panel, sit in on early interviews, and tighten the loop after the first three candidates so you stop relearning the same lessons hire after hire.

Step 4

Offer + first-30-days onboarding

Offer drafted with a defensible comp rationale, references run, contract issued, and a 30-60-90 onboarding plan handed to the manager — pre-boarding admin, week-one orientation, 30-day goals and a written probation milestone at day 60.

How it works

How a hiring engagement runs.

  1. 01

    Brief

    Week one: a kickoff with the hiring manager and founder, a written role brief with comp band and level, and a sign-off on the loop and rubric before a single candidate sees the ad.

  2. 02

    Run the loop

    Sourcing, screens, structured interviews, written debriefs, weekly pipeline review with you. Two-business-day SLA on every candidate touchpoint, including the no.

  3. 03

    Onboard

    Offer, references, contract, 30-60-90 plan handed to the manager. We stay close through probation and re-open the next role on the same retainer.

FAQ

Common questions about fractional hiring.

How does cost compare to a contingent agency or in-house recruiter?
A contingent agency typically charges 15–25% of first-year salary per hire, which gets expensive fast once you are running 5–20 roles a year. An in-house recruiter usually costs $130k–$170k all-in before they have anyone to hire. We sit between the two: a flat monthly retainer for an agreed cadence of open roles, with no per-hire markup and no lock-ins. Most founders find the spend lands closer to one in-house recruiter — but with senior judgement and no idle time.
Which roles do you actually run hiring loops for?
Engineering (back-end, full-stack, mobile, platform), product, design, GTM (sales, marketing, customer success) and operations roles up to senior IC and first-line manager level. We have run loops for senior engineers, product managers, AE/SDR teams, ops leads and finance hires across Australian startups. We will tell you upfront if a role is outside our wheelhouse — exec searches and very specialised technical roles are usually better served by a retained search firm, and we will say so.
What happens if a hire does not work out in the first few months?
We do not charge a per-hire fee, so there is no agency-style replacement guarantee — but because we are still embedded after the offer, we are part of fixing it. That usually means joining the early conversations, helping the manager run a clean probation review, supporting either a performance plan or a respectful exit, and then re-opening the role on the existing retainer. You are not paying twice, and the institutional knowledge of the search stays with us.
How do you protect candidate experience while moving fast?
Every candidate gets a real human reply within two business days, a clear picture of the loop before they enter it, structured interviews with a written debrief, and an honest update at every stage — including the no. We track time-to-feedback and decline-with-feedback rates, because in the Australian market a rejected candidate today is a referral, a customer or a future hire. Sloppy candidate experience is one of the cheapest things to fix and one of the most expensive things to ignore.
How does the onboarding handover work once someone signs?
The day an offer is accepted, we kick off a 30-60-90 plan with the hiring manager: pre-boarding admin (contract, equipment, accounts), week-one orientation, 30-day goals, a check-in cadence, and a written probation milestone at day 60. We stay in the loop through the manager, not the new hire, so the relationship that matters — manager and report — is the one that gets built. If you also engage us for HR ops, this plugs straight into payroll, policies and your HRIS.

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Ready to hire

Get a senior recruiter embedded with your team this month.

A 30-minute intro call, no deck. Bring the roles you are stuck on.

Email contact@flexhr.com.auSee current open roles