When Should a Start-up Begin to Increase Recruitment?

Start-ups have to strike a fine balance when it comes to increasing recruitment. On the one hand, budgets may be limited and your time may be channelled into other priorities. On the other hand, without a larger team, you won't be able to grow and take on extra work.

That being said, you ideally need to have both the capital and the man-hours available in order to start a proper recruitment drive.

Obviously it varies depending on the nature of the role and the experience someone has, but the average salary in the UK is around £29,600. That's around £1,950 per month. In order to make a new hire, you have to ensure you can cover both the cost of another salary and all the payroll expenses which will go on top of that.

You also need to bear in mind that the average cost of hiring a new employee is £3,000. Since you're hiring externally, that will include things such as background checks, pre-hiring assessments, posting your ad on job boards and marketing.

It's worth calculating your own cost-per-hire metric, based around how widely you want to advertise the positions available, how many checks and assessments you want to carry out and what you can offer as a salary.

Factor in the time it takes to recruit as well, because a recruitment drive is always going to take some members of the team away from other priorities. The average recruitment drive lasts around a month, from the time an ad is posted to the point at which a candidate accepts the role.

In the early days, many start-up owners prefer to hire people they know, be they friends and family or former colleagues. At some point you need to start hiring from a wider pool. The best time for that is when you have the confidence that the business is viable, and the capital to start taking on more staff without overstretching your finances.