Hiring in the technology sector transformed from feast to famine in twenty-four months. According to UnitedCode, the boom-to-bust cycle started late 2021, peaked through early 2022, and reversed course by mid-to-late 2023. This snapshot captures the aftermath of pandemic-era expansion and the advent of mass layoffs, with more than 264,000 tech employees losing their jobs in 2023. This situation forced technology companies to face a critical question: How do you build recruiting capacity that survives both explosive growth and sudden contraction? The 2025 RPO Buyer Trends Report reveals that 39 percent of employers now adopt hybrid recruiting models specifically to manage this volatility; however, most still don't understand which approach actually protects their business during market shifts.
Speaking to Lamees Abourahma, host of the RPOA's Talent Leader Council—an interview series featuring insights and proven recruitment best practices from top talent acquisition executives—Joe Cote, Managing Director at ZRG Embedded Recruiting, discussed how recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) can provide the risk-mitigation framework that tech companies need. His analysis revealed something unexpected: the choice between embedded recruiting vs in-house talent acquisition isn't just about hiring speed, it's about which model prevents catastrophic failure when your vice president of talent goes on leave, your funding round falls through, or your specialized AI recruiter gets poached mid-search. Below appears an edited version of the conversation.
Key Takeaways for High-Growth Tech Employers
- Risk Profile: Full-time recruiters create 30-90 day deployment delays and fixed costs during market downturns, while direct contractors introduce tool expenses and zero accountability infrastructure.
- ROI Payoff: According to Aberdeen Group research, technology companies partnering with RPO providers achieve up to a 15 percent improvement in recruitment ROI through reduced time-to-fill, lower cost-per-hire, and enhanced employee retention.
- Strategic Flexibility: Quarter-by-quarter RPO contracts eliminate the structural mismatch between fixed recruiting capacity and variable hiring demand that defines technology sector workforce planning.
When tech companies partner with RPO providers, the 30-90-day timeline to hire, onboard, and ramp a full-time corporate recruiter creates competitive vulnerability for Series A startups racing to build engineering teams.
Fixed recruiting capacity creates financial risk. Research shows that 57 percent of RPO providers integrate AI, automation, and predictive analytics into tech hiring workflows, capabilities that individual contractors must license separately.
Cote: The strategic value of using an RPO partner lies in risk mitigation when building out your talent acquisition function. You have three options when you need to bolster your TA team:
The Everest Group shows data from the global RPO market forecast, information technology represents a lead adopting sector due to continued skills shortages and agile hiring needs, with the market projected to reach $26.4 billion by 2030 at a 14.2 percent compound annual growth rate.
Fixed recruiting capacity creates financial risk. Technology companies experience hiring surges that don't follow predictable patterns—they follow funding cycles, product launches, and competitive pressures.
Cote: There's been a shift over the last couple of years, particularly the last 5. During the pandemic, hiring slowed, if not completely stopped. Then we saw an uptick towards the end of 2021 going into 2022; there was a significant surge that we almost called the "recruiter boom."
However, 2023 was a tougher year. It was a period of rapid hiring followed by realizations that companies may have over-hired, leading to layoffs across several FANG companies. Now, we're seeing a resurgence, especially with the beginning of AI evolution in the tech space.
There's been a strong focus on ensuring that financial resources, particularly those from the CFO's office, are used effectively to support a talent strategy rather than just a hiring plan. There's now a much more strategic approach permeating the rest of the organization.
Recent research shows that direct automation in RPO increased new-hire performance ratings by 25 percent through more precise matching in tech companies, a quality improvement stemming directly from accountability systems.
RPO provides accountability infrastructure. The recruiting accountability metrics for contract recruiters become crucial during periods when internal oversight becomes compromised, particularly for talent acquisition continuity planning during leave.
Cote: There is usually another layer; some sort of project management layer. Talent Operations layers monitor recruiter metrics to ensure hiring continuity during leadership transitions. This accountability layer is the most significant difference between having an RPO strategic partner and maybe a direct contractor.
For example, if you're a talent acquisition manager or vice president of talent, and you're going on maternity or paternity leave in 3 months, do you want that peace of mind with an RPO recruiting partner? Or do you just want that direct contractor you brought on as a 1099 to make a couple of hires and hope they're doing their job while you're gone?
Additionally, it's also not a potentially more costly option as a corporate recruiter. When you hire a corporate recruiter, it's usually a fixed cost to a somewhat variable problem that we are facing today in our market. I would much rather have the flexibility of an RPO partner to flex with me along the way.
The 2025 RPO Buyers Trends Report also reported that 64 percent of enterprises cite cost reduction and hiring efficiency as their main reasons for adopting RPO. AI talent requires outbound recruiting strategy. The question of how to hire AI engineers without internal recruiters becomes particularly acute given current market dynamics, where specialist roles such as AI, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure specialists remain in high demand.
Cote: For specialized AI talent specifically, that skill set is highly sought after and relatively new. Hiring for such specialized talent requires a different approach; it's not just about posting a job and hoping for applicants. Instead, it requires an outbound strategy in which recruiters actively reach out to candidates with hyper-customized messaging.
However, internal talent teams often find themselves bogged down with day-to-day recruiting operations, scheduling candidates, extending offers, and managing offer letters, which can limit their ability to focus on outbound sourcing. This is where recruitment process outsourcing companies may find a strategic advantage as we move into 2026.
According to research, 62 percent of employers using AI-enabled RPO platforms reported shortened recruitment cycles, with cycles averaging 21 days faster than traditional internal models. AI-powered sourcing tools accelerate candidate identification, reducing time-to-fill by 21 days. The question of how to scale the TA team after the Series A funding round represents a common inflection point where traditional models fail, making flexible recruiting contracts essential for quarterly technology companies.
Cote: The flexibility piece of RPO fits in really well with this speed of innovation within the technology market because all of a sudden, you have a big hiring surge. Quarter-by-quarter contracts enable cost flexibility. You can use an RPO partner to help you with that, and then when you're done with that surge, you can say, "Thanks so much for helping us with this surge. We'll use you guys again when we get another round of funding."
Another strategic advantage is that we look at hiring on a quarter-by-quarter basis. Quarter-by-quarter contracts enable rapid scaling up or down, protecting against fixed overhead during market contractions. We're not necessarily locking you into a year-long contract. It's much better to look at it quarter by quarter, because hiring, especially in the technology space, changes quickly.
The 264,000-plus tech layoffs in 2023 demonstrated how quickly companies with bloated fixed recruiting teams faced difficult decisions. Direct contractors offer a variable-cost structure but introduce tool expenses, flight risk, and a lack of accountability for infrastructure.
Tech companies partnering with RPO providers accelerated AI adoption by 40 percent. They achieved a 15 percent improvement in recruitment ROI by reducing time-to-fill, lowering cost-per-hire, and enhancing employee retention compared with internal-only models. The 39 percent of technology companies that adopted hybrid RPO models understand that flexibility isn't just convenient, it's essential protection against the boom-bust cycles that define modern tech hiring.
For more insights from other Talent Leader Council contributors, check out our TA Leader Council on the RPO Voice blog, which features interviews with top talent acquisition experts.