Recruiters charge a percentage of on-target earnings, not because it reflects the effort involved, but because they hunt. They search for whoever fits a job description, send over candidates who’ve likely never heard of your company, and certainly don’t connect with what you’re trying to build.
The price tag pushes early-stage companies to try hiring on their own. That’s an even bigger trap. It ties up the people who should be selling, building, fundraising, and moving the company forward, and the distraction is expensive in ways that never show up on an invoice.
The Right Way to Hire
Hiring is a marketing problem. The best candidates aren’t looking for a job. They need to be attracted to your company through storytelling, video, and messaging that speaks to your values and vision. When you get that right, candidates come to you already aligned. They know who you are. They want in.
And that alignment matters far beyond the hire. Studies show that employees who feel connected to a company’s values are significantly more likely to stay. In fact, research suggests that nearly 75% of employees who work for a company whose values align with their own say they plan to remain with that employer long term. The inverse is equally telling when employees feel disconnected from the mission, turnover follows. Replacing a single employee can cost anywhere from 50% to 200% of their annual salary when you factor in lost productivity, recruiting, and onboarding. Hire the wrong person and you don’t just lose time. You lose money, momentum, and the opportunity cost of what your team could have been doing instead.
This is why how you hire matters as much as who you hire. When candidates are attracted to your company because of what you stand for, retention takes care of itself. The fit was never just about the job description. It was about the vision.
What Pivot and Edge Does
Pivot and Edge takes a marketing-first approach to hiring. We market to candidates where they live, work, and play and attract them to your company through video and targeted messaging.
To do this right, you need a team with skills across marketing, writing, videography, and social media, backed by a best-in-class recruiting process built for speed and accuracy. And it needs to come at a fixed price so you know exactly what five hires will cost before the project begins. No percentage games. No surprises.
That’s not how traditional recruiters work. That’s why we’re not one.
