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When you are leading an early-stage EdTech company, every decision is a trade-off, especially when it comes to hiring. You want to build fast, hire smart, and show traction. It’s understandable to think that opening two or three roles at once will get you there more quickly.
In theory, parallel hiring looks efficient. In practice, it often leads to chaos. You dilute focus, overextend yourself and your recruiter, and compromise the quality of the search before it even has a chance to deliver.
This is why one live role at a time is not a restriction — it is a discipline. It protects quality, pace and the economics of the search. It turns your recruiter from a reactive service provider into a trusted partner. And, ultimately, it helps you hire better people.
Here’s why.
Running multiple searches simultaneously gives the illusion of speed. But in early-stage companies, most roles are not well defined yet. Hiring processes are still forming. Founders are still calibrating what they actually need.
In this context, two half-baked searches do not make one successful one. They usually result in lots of calls, little clarity, and a distracted recruiter spread thin across conflicting priorities.
By focusing on one role at a time, you give yourself and your recruiter permission to go deep. You can refine the brief, learn from early candidate feedback, and iterate quickly. That means less wasted time and a much higher chance of closing the right person, fast.
In EdTech, reputation travels quickly. High-quality candidates often know each other. If one has a poor experience, you can be sure it will circulate.
Trying to fill several roles at once in a scrappy, early-stage setup usually leads to inconsistent communication, slow feedback, and delayed decisions. Candidates notice. And when they sense disorganisation, they disengage — or worse, they decline your offer.
When you commit to one live role, your recruiter can manage the candidate journey properly. Clear comms, structured interviews, and rapid decision-making become the norm. This not only improves close rates, but enhances your employer brand in a small and vocal talent market.
Early-stage founders often wear many hats, and sometimes unknowingly treat recruiters as a catch-all HR solution. When no boundaries exist, a recruiter can quickly become the person writing your job specs, researching salary bands, and sourcing for three different roles, all under the same monthly fee.
One live role sets a fair and reasonable boundary. It says, “We are working together on what matters most.” Yes, your recruiter can support you with feedback or templates, but they are not your internal talent team. Their time is focused on delivering what you actually need: a great hire.
Founders often believe they need to hire multiple people at once. In reality, one role usually unlocks everything else.
Do you need to build product, or is sales the bottleneck? Are you looking for someone who can close deals or someone who can ship code? Hiring one person in the right seat can create the clarity you need to delay or deprioritise other roles.
By committing to a single live role, you are forced to choose where the business needs support right now — not where it might need help in three months. That decision alone often brings more focus than any hiring plan ever could.
Recruitment is not charged by the hour, but it is front-loaded in terms of effort. Building a pipeline, running outreach, screening candidates, and managing feedback cycles all take significant time — most of which happens before you see results.
Running two roles at once without increasing fees doubles the workload while halving the value of each search. Your recruiter is stretched, your candidates feel the lack of attention, and your return on investment suffers.
Keeping to one role means the recruiter can go deep, not wide. The result is better quality, clearer communication, and a stronger chance of landing the right person — without compromising the process.
The one-role-at-a-time rule also gives your recruiter a clear pricing mechanism. If you need more capacity, great. Add it.
Whether that’s moving to a higher retainer tier, adding success fees for additional roles, or switching to a multi-role delivery model, you now have a clean, transparent way to scale the relationship. No awkward renegotiation, no resentment, no messy expectations.
A line that often works with founders:
“We focus on one live role at a time so we can move fast, protect candidate experience, and actually close the hire. If you need to run multiple roles, we can add capacity.”
It’s simple. It’s fair. It works.
Sometimes, your business does need more than one search at once, and that’s a signal that you’re growing up.
When a company is hiring for four or five roles across product, sales and ops, they are no longer in “founder-led hiring” mode. They are building an actual recruitment function. That’s when it’s time to move from a founder support retainer to a delivery model that matches scale and structure.
Here’s how that transition can look:
Best for: 30–50 person EdTechs with multiple teams
What it covers: 3–5 live roles at once, shared hiring roadmap, weekly check-ins
Why it works: Predictable workload, scalable model, acts like a fractional TA function
Best for: Time-sensitive hiring spikes, broken processes
What it covers: 3–6 month engagement with defined scope and SLAs
Why it works: Balances delivery pressure with structured project ownership
Best for: Hard-to-fill roles, senior or niche hires
What it covers: Monthly retainer with a lower success fee on placement
Why it works: Shared risk and reward while maintaining alignment
Best for: Exec, leadership and board hires
What it covers: One role, milestone-based fees, high-touch partnership
Why it works: Delivers depth and professionalism for mission-critical hires
If you are wondering which model fits your company right now, ask yourself:
If you are hiring across teams with several active roles, the one-role rule may no longer be appropriate, but that just means your hiring needs have changed. And the model can evolve with you.
What to say to founders at this stage:
“At this level of hiring, we move from pricing per role to pricing by delivery capacity. That gives you speed, predictability and structure.”
One live role is not about saying no. It is about saying yes to quality, to focus, to candidate experience, and ultimately, to success. It protects your recruiter’s time and your brand’s reputation. And when your needs change, it provides a clean foundation to grow from.
This model works because it respects the stage your business is at, and the stage you’re heading towards.
If you’d like help turning this logic into a sales script, pricing guide, or onboarding slide, just say the word. This is not a ceiling. It is a launchpad.
