Fractional recruiting · Pre-seed to Series A
Schultz Staffing embeds with VC-backed startups as your in-house recruiter — running personalized outreach from your founder’s own inbox to reach candidates agencies never will. One flat monthly fee. No placement fees. No middleman between you and great people.
Companies Erich has hired for — in-house and through Schultz Staffing
Startups backed by Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, and NEA — teams with the highest hiring bars in tech.
Why Schultz Staffing
Contingency firms get paid when someone — anyone — signs. Schultz Staffing works the way the best startups already hire: an in-house recruiter, operating in your name, accountable to your standard. You get the function without the full-time headcount.
The contingency playbook
The Schultz model
What you get
Erich operates as your in-house recruiter — your email, your voice, your hiring bar. Candidates experience your company directly, never an agency in the middle.
Personalized messages sent from your founder’s or hiring manager’s inbox. It reaches senior talent that ignores recruiters — and roughly doubles response rates.
Sample profiles within 24 hours, sourced exclusively from top-tier companies in your space. You only spend time on candidates who clear your standard.
100+ hand-targeted outreaches per role, every week — not a database blast. First qualified candidates are on your calendar within one to two weeks.
No 20–25% placement fees, no surprise invoices. One predictable rate — typically less than a single contingency hire — with incentives aligned to quality.
Scheduling, follow-ups, and logistics handled end to end. Qualified candidates simply appear on your calendar, prepped and ready to interview.
How it works
Day 0
Walk Erich through your open roles, your must-haves, and what makes your startup worth joining. That story becomes the backbone of every outreach.
Within 24 hours
You receive 5–10 sample profiles to react to, so we lock in exactly who we’re hunting — before a single message goes out.
Week 1
100+ personalized messages per role, per week — sent from your founder’s inbox and LinkedIn to hand-picked candidates at top companies in your space.
Week 1–2
Interested, qualified candidates are scheduled directly onto your calendar — often within the first week. You just show up and interview.
Results
As Forethought’s in-house recruiter, Erich hired 20 engineers and leaders in eight months — in one of the most competitive markets in memory. The playbook: outreach sharpened around what genuinely set Forethought apart, and an interview experience candidates told their friends about.
FLORA, a generative-AI startup, needed a founding full-stack engineer with rare domain expertise — who’d also relocate to NYC. Targeted, founder-led outreach to engineers at the top companies in FLORA’s space surfaced the perfect candidate, signed within three weeks.
From 20-person seed-stage teams to scaling Series A+ startups — the bar stays the same.
Erich Schultz
Founder · Schultz Staffing
Meet your recruiter
Erich learned recruiting the way founders wish every recruiter had — in-house. Before founding Schultz Staffing, he built teams inside venture-backed startups like Earnest, Rutter, and Forethought, where he hired 20 engineers and leaders in eight months during one of the tightest talent markets in tech.
Today he brings that same playbook to early-stage teams backed by Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and more — companies with small teams, fresh rounds, and zero room for a mediocre hire.
When you work with Schultz Staffing, you work with Erich. No account managers, no handoffs, no junior sourcers — the person who scopes your roles is the person who fills them.
Pricing
Contingency firms charge 20–25% of first-year salary for every single hire. Schultz Staffing charges one upfront monthly rate — typically less than a single placement fee — so you can hire aggressively without the meter running.
FAQ
Agencies sit outside your company and get paid per placement, which rewards volume over fit. Schultz Staffing embeds as your in-house recruiter: outreach goes out in your name, candidates are calibrated to your bar, and you pay one flat monthly fee — so the incentive is making the right hires, not the most hires.
Get started
Share a little about your team and the roles you need to fill. You’ll hear back within one business day.
Prefer email? Erich@schultzstaffing.com