A Staffing Firm's Own VP of Delivery Search, Explained

Say two senior recruiters just left within a month of each other, and the founder is now covering client escalations personally on top of running the business. That's the kind of gap that usually forces a decision between a full-time VP of Delivery, hired through Hunt Club's referral-driven search process, or a fractional operations leader sourced through Bolster's marketplace to stabilize things while a more deliberate search runs.

There's a real irony in using Hunt Club, since its own model of referral-driven, peer-vetted sourcing resembles what a strong staffing firm's own recruiters do for clients every day. That similarity is actually useful: it gives your own leadership team a clear frame of reference for evaluating whether Hunt Club's process is delivering the kind of candidate quality your firm would insist on for its own clients.

A full search through Hunt Club is the right call if the firm genuinely needs a permanent leader who will rebuild the delivery team and own client relationships for years, not just patch the immediate gap.

Bolster's self-serve marketplace flips the usual dynamic: instead of your firm sourcing candidates for someone else, you're on the browsing side, evaluating fractional or interim operators directly. For a staffing firm specifically, this can be a fast way to get an experienced operations leader stabilizing client relationships within days rather than weeks, buying time for a more thorough permanent search if one is actually needed.

The tradeoff is the same one your own clients face when they use a marketplace instead of a managed search: more of the vetting burden lands on you, without a recruiter pre-screening candidates against your specific culture and client base.

Put SHRM's 2025 numbers next to your own rate card for a minute: the nonexecutive average lands at $5,475 per hire, and the executive average climbs to $35,879 once every fee, job posting, and hour of internal recruiting time is counted¹. A retained Hunt Club search for a permanent VP of Delivery will track toward that executive figure, which is worth comparing honestly against what your own firm typically charges clients for a similar-level placement.

SHRM's 2025 data also found nonexecutive roles taking a median 44 days from requisition to offer accepted, with executive searches often running longer². If that timeline feels slow, remember it's roughly the same range your own recruiters quote clients, which is a useful gut check on whether your expectations for this search are realistic.

Apply the exact interview standards your best recruiters use with candidates: specific, verifiable placement outcomes, not just years of experience or a polished pitch. Ask for a concrete example of a client relationship the candidate rebuilt after it went sideways, and press for what specifically they changed.

It's easy for a staffing firm to get sloppy on its own hiring while being rigorous for clients, mostly because internal urgency crowds out process. Resist that; the standard you sell to clients is the standard worth holding for your own leadership team.

If the firm's real problem is a structural gap in delivery leadership that predates the two recruiters leaving, that's a Hunt Club-shaped permanent hire. If the departures created a temporary crisis on top of an otherwise stable structure, a fractional Bolster engagement to stabilize things, followed by a calmer permanent search later, is usually the better sequence.

Don't let the urgency of the moment force a permanent decision faster than the situation actually requires. That's advice your own firm would give a client in the same position, and it's worth taking as seriously internally as it would be coming from one of your own senior recruiters advising a nervous hiring manager.

Use these rules to decide between the two routes:

• If delivery leadership was already a structural gap before the two recruiters left, treat it as a permanent hire suited to a Hunt Club search.
• If the departures created a temporary crisis on an otherwise stable structure, stabilize things first with a fractional Bolster engagement.
• Run a calmer permanent search after stabilizing, rather than forcing a rushed hire while the founder covers client escalations personally.
• Share a short, factual plan with remaining staff, including roughly when they should expect updates, instead of staying silent.

Recruiters who stayed after two colleagues left are watching closely for signs of instability, and silence from leadership tends to read worse than an honest, incomplete update. Share a short, factual plan: whether you're stabilizing with fractional coverage, running a permanent search, or both, and roughly when they should expect more clarity.

This matters on either platform, but it matters more if you choose the faster Bolster route, since staff may assume a fractional hire is a placeholder rather than a real solution unless you explain the reasoning behind that choice directly.