How Fractional Recruiting Can Accelerate Your Company’s Growth
Fractional recruiting gives you access to exceptional talent at reduced costs. Learn how fractional talent can benefit your company and how to hire them.
Fractional recruiting offers many attractive benefits, such as:
- Cost-effective talent
- Access to the right expertise
- Better scalability
- Fresher perspectives for growth
- Lower commitment and risk
Let’s explore the fractional recruitment model and the typical positions you can hire for.
Also, find out how to hire top-notch fractional talent for your company.
Further Reading:
- Find out why you should hire Fractional Executives and how to hire the best talent.
- Discover how a Fractional CTO can shape your company’s tech infrastructure and how much they cost.
What Is Fractional Recruiting?
Fractional recruitment refers to hiring exceptional talent or subject matter experts for a fraction of their workweek. The fractional worker dedicates a part of their time to your company while working for multiple companies or pursuing personal ventures.
So how is a fractional team member different from freelancers or part-time employees?
- Freelancers also have multiple clients, but they’re typically hired only for short-term projects.
- Part-time employees typically work for a single employer. Plus, they often handle repetitive tasks that don’t require specialized knowledge. Companies hire them to fill any working hours left after full-time employees have been scheduled.
- Fractional employees typically serve multiple clients on a fractional basis or ongoing retainer. They often have strategic and executive roles that require specialized, advanced or technical skills.
Some typical fractional worker positions include C-level executives, advisors, and engineers.
Who Should Hire Fractional Employees?
Companies at any stage of growth can benefit from fractional talent acquisition to fill talent gaps quickly and economically.
That said, fractional employment is especially beneficial for startups and SMBs (small to mid-sized businesses). Here’s why:
- Their teams often lack a specific type of expertise needed to accelerate growth.
- They don’t often have the budget to hire a full time employee with the relevant expertise.
For example, let’s say a startup is founded by product development experts and staffed with skilled engineers. They need to generate public interest in their product but they don’t have the budget to hire another full time employee.
They can fill this gap by recruiting an experienced fractional Public Relations specialist for eight hours per week.
And they’ll experience more benefits from hiring an expert team member than if they settled for a freelance marketer with less experience.
Let’s explore those benefits next.
5 Strategic Benefits of Fractional Recruiting for Your Business
Here are five significant reasons to employ fractional recruitment:
1. Affordable Talent
One of the best things about fractional talent acquisition?
You can access top-class professionals without the financial strain and commitments of hiring managers full-time.
Consider that the fully loaded cost of hiring an employee can be 1.2-1.4x their base salary, due to payroll taxes, benefits, and other overheads. With this in mind, getting the talent you need is not always feasible.
But with fractional hires, you only need to pay them for their work, usually on a monthly retainer.
No bonuses, equities, payroll taxes, 401(k) plans, or other employee overheads!
Bottom line: Fractional recruiting is a cost-effective strategy to grow your company.
2. Access to Expertise
Fractional hires bring specialized knowledge and skills — thanks to their wide range of experience working across industries and companies.
For example, a fractional COO (Chief Operating Officer) will have developed and executed many business strategies to scale companies. They’ll also have a keen eye for operational inefficiencies and know how to tackle them effectively.
So you get a seasoned fractional employee who knows what your company needs and how to do it in the best way possible.
Even better?
You can choose when to access their expertise based on the stage your company is in. You can hire them during crucial points in your company’s growth curve to make the most of their experience in scaling up similar businesses.
3. Better Scalability
The fractional employment model offers the perfect way to adapt to changing business environments or different stages of a company’s growth.
Use it to:
- Gain specialized support for specific projects.
- Address emerging roles and tasks.
- Fill in talent or leadership gaps during transition periods.
A fractional COO can be actively involved during rapid expansion, overseeing processes and devising and implementing sustainable growth plans.
Once the growth stabilizes, they can scale back their involvement.
4. External Perspective
Fractional professionals have a wealth of knowledge from working across a range of successful companies. They can infuse your organization with fresh ideas and perspectives.
They also tend to have a more objective and unbiased approach as they are external to your business.
For example, imagine you offer a healthtech product.
In this case, a fractional CTO with a strong background in healthcare technology can assess your company's existing tech infrastructure. They can identify areas for optimization and propose innovative solutions that align with industry trends and best practices.
- Fractional CTO
- Fullstack
- Product
- Founder
Health Tech Trailblazer: Engineering Lead at Mirror & Candid, Jawbone Innovator. Pragmatic Engineer & CTO
5. Lower Commitment and Risk
Hiring managers or senior executives is not easy.
A full-time employment contract has several rules and clauses that require commitment (e.g. work hours and termination clauses).
In contrast, a fractional executive goes by monthly retainers or other flexible work arrangements. These contracts can be easily adjusted or terminated based on your company’s evolving needs.
They also carry less financial risk because you pay them exclusively for their talent and expertise and don’t cover typical full-time overheads.
Pro Tip: If you’re looking to fill a full-time position down the line, hiring fractional talent helps you understand the role’s requirements. You can also better determine the specific Key Result Areas (KRAs) — defining the essential focus areas for employees.
Or, you can initially hire someone in a fractional role for a few months and then transition them into a full-time position if it’s a great mutual fit.
7 Common Positions for Fractional Hiring
As mentioned, companies typically leverage fractional talent acquisition for roles that require specialized experience, advanced skills or technical expertise.
Let’s have a look at some roles companies frequently hire for on a fractional basis.
1. Fractional C-Level Executives
Fast-growing startups often experience skills and knowledge gaps in leadership positions.
The founders are often technical specialists who need support in other business areas to grow the company further.
In such cases, you can hire a fractional leader, like a CFO, in a fractional capacity. The fractional executive can develop and execute strategic plans that align with your company’s goals and objectives.
Hire the best fractional CTO, fractional CFO, and fractional COO with Go Fractional.
2. Fractional Marketing & Sales Professionals
Fractional marketing and sales professionals know what it takes to attract customers and 10x your company’s revenue.
They can also mentor and guide your in-house marketing and sales teams on the latest industry knowledge and best practices.
What fractional positions can you hire for?
Here are a few:
- Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer): Develops and implements marketing strategies and campaigns; oversees branding and other creative and strategic initiatives.
- Fractional Communications Officer: Crafts and executes strategic communication and press relations strategies that generate public interest, build trust, and drive key business outcomes.
- Fractional Sales Manager: Leads your sales team and optimizes sales strategies for maximum profit.
Explore our exceptional fractional marketing and sales professionals.
- Fractional CMO
- Go To Market
- Branding
Brand and product marketing leader for high-growth companies. Expertise in customer segmentation, positioning, new product launches, and more.
3. Advisors
Advisors offer specialized expertise, knowledge, and connections in specific areas, such as marketing, finance, or operations, on a part-time or project basis.
For example, an advisor with relevant business connections and who knows Walmart's vendor guidelines, from packaging specifications to in-store promotional allowances can help you launch your product on this retail chain.
Additionally, they can facilitate partnerships with complementary businesses – say, between a cybersecurity software startup and an established cloud services provider. Or, an AI-driven customer service chatbot firm with a big e-commerce platform.
Why not hire a professional through Go Fractional to guide you?
4. Fractional Engineers
Hiring technical talent is a common challenge for startups and SMBs, especially those founded by people without a technical background or experience.
They have the business know-how but require technical skills at an affordable price.
The solution?
Hire a fractional engineer to:
- Optimize codebases.
- Gain insights on technical feasibility.
- Assist with quality control and product testing.
- Maintain scalable software functionality.
- Catch up on technical debt or backlogs.
You can also hire fractional technical talent to mentor your existing developers or build solid engineering teams from scratch.
Onboard a top-notch fractional engineer with Go Fractional.
- Fractional Product Engineer
- Fullstack
- Web3
Engineered Success: From Cameo to Snap, YCombinator Alum with Mastery in React, NextJS, and Web3.
5. Fractional Product Managers
Fractional product managers guide, define, plan, and run your product roadmap based on a nuanced understanding of the market and business goals.
They’ll help you:
- Improve your entire product development lifecycle.
- Conduct user research, understand user requirements and market gaps.
- Iterate on your current products for better traction.
- Set up product metrics and A/B tests to drive research and growth.
- Build wireframes and prototypes.
- Work with designers to create feature-complete product designs.
- Collaborate with engineers to deliver product features swiftly.
The best part?
Your business develops a product that resonates with your customers, and your team gets to hone their skills with the support of a high-end industry professional.
Hire a fractional product manager today!
6. Fractional HR Professionals
You can hire a fractional human resource professional to grow your team and maximize its potential without committing to full-time human resource staff.
They can help your HR team:
- Recruit new talent
- Improve work company culture
- Administer payroll
- Handle disciplinary tasks
- Upskill your team
- Reduce attrition
You can also hire fractional human resources staff to assess the effectiveness of recruitment drives, employee productivity software, onboarding programs, etc.
Find the perfect human resources executive for your HR team with Go Fractional!
- Fractional Head of People
- Recruiting
- Advisor
Startup Scaling Pro: Founded Waldo Labs, $2M in 2 Years; Expertise with 50+ Startups, Now Championing Mental Health Initiatives.
7. Fractional Designers
Fractional design roles include graphic, product, web, UX, and UI design.
Fractional designers can be a huge help to companies, especially early stage startups, with regular design work, but not enough to warrant a full-time employee.
For instance, they can help you:
- Establish and maintain brand identity
- Create on-brand marketing materials
- Ensure a user-friendly website or product
- Address usability issues within your product
- Create interfaces for new products
- Design and maintain new features
Having a fractional designer provides consistency, leading to fewer rounds of feedback and work that aligns with your brand.
Go Fractional offers the best fractional designers!
Effortless Fractional Recruitment with Go Fractional
Going about fractional leader recruitment on your own can be challenging.
You’ll have to define and advertise the job opening, conduct interviews, assess and shortlist candidates, set up contracts, onboard them… the hiring process can feel endless.
Want to streamline the hiring process and get the best fractional talent for your buck?
Try Go Fractional!
Our fractional recruiting services give you access to a vetted community of fractional executives, including CTOs, CMOs, COOs, and more. All our fractional team members are founders of successful companies or have worked in key leadership roles, so you get the best fractional talent in the world.
How Does It Work?
Here’s a quick breakdown of our process:
- Connect: We recommend fractional executives based on your business requirements, including private members we may not have listed on our website. If we don’t have the exact candidate you’re looking for, we’ll source and recruit such talent to our community — which we have done for multiple companies.
- Meet: You’ll meet with the potential fractional employee to discuss timelines, roles, responsibilities, and pricing. This is also an opportunity to ensure our candidate is a good fit for your company culture.
- Begin: Once you’ve reviewed the proposal and selected a start date, we’ll send the contracts accordingly.
But our fractional recruiting services don’t stop there.
Go Fractional handles the invoicing and conducts monthly check-ins to ensure your partnership goes smoothly. Plus, you can expect complete transparency and a single invoice — regardless of the number of fractional team members you work with.
The bonus?
You also gain access to the entire Go Fractional community of subject matter experts to tap into when you need them.
Connect with Go Fractional for the best fractional talent that drives exponential results.
