It is one of the most common questions we hear from founders: when do we bring in a Head of Talent? Hire too early and you are paying a senior leadership salary to manage two open roles. Hire too late and hiring becomes the thing that caps your growth.
There is no single right answer, but there are useful signals.
Signs you might be ready
- You are consistently running 8–10+ open roles at once.
- Hiring is taking meaningful time from your founders or senior leaders every week.
- You are spending heavily on agencies with inconsistent results.
- You need to build a function - process, employer brand, a small team - not just fill the next req.
Signs you are not ready yet
- Your hiring is lumpy - bursts of roles followed by quiet periods.
- You need delivery and expertise more than you need a permanent leader.
- You are not yet sure what “good” looks like for the role, so you would struggle to hire the right leader anyway.
The stage in between
Most scaling companies hit a window where they have outgrown founder-led hiring but cannot yet justify a full-time Head of Talent. That gap is exactly where fractional and embedded support earns its keep: senior expertise to design the system, plus hands-on capacity to run live roles - without committing to a permanent salary before the shape of the function is clear.
The goal is not to avoid hiring a Head of Talent forever. It is to make that hire at the right moment, into a system that is already working.
When you do bring someone in full-time, they inherit a functioning operation rather than a blank page - which means they succeed faster, too.
If you are weighing this decision, let’s talk it through. A discovery call is free and there is no pitch attached.