When clients ask about embedded recruitment, the practical question that comes up most often isn't about cost or contract terms — it's "but what do they actually do?" It's a fair question. The model is different enough from traditional agency recruitment that it's worth being specific.

The first week of an embedded engagement is almost entirely onboarding — and this is intentional. An embedded recruiter who doesn't understand your business deeply cannot represent it well to candidates. The early investment in briefing pays dividends throughout the engagement.

In the first week, expect your embedded recruiter to hold detailed briefing meetings with each hiring manager for every open role, review your current application process, understand your employer brand and what makes your organisation attractive to the right people, get access to your ATS and any other systems they'll need, and review any live job adverts or role specifications already in market.

They're building context. By the end of week one, they should be able to talk about your business, your roles, and your culture credibly to any candidate they speak to.

Once fully onboarded, a typical day for an embedded recruiter splits across a handful of activities:

Active sourcing — searching LinkedIn, job boards, sector-specific platforms, and their own professional network for candidates who match the briefs they're working. This is proactive, not reactive. They're not waiting for applications; they're looking for people who might be the right fit and reaching out to them.

Candidate conversations — calling and messaging candidates to introduce the roles, qualify their interest and suitability, and move promising people further into the process. A busy embedded recruiter will have 10–20 candidate conversations per day across multiple roles.

Pipeline management — keeping the ATS current, tracking where each candidate is in the process, following up on next steps, and making sure nothing falls through the gaps. This is less visible but it's what keeps the process moving.

Hiring manager updates — brief check-ins (usually no more than 15–20 minutes) with hiring managers to share pipeline updates, discuss candidates, get feedback on CVs, and align on next steps. Embedded recruiters typically communicate with hiring managers daily or every other day.

Interview coordination — scheduling interviews, briefing candidates beforehand, gathering feedback from interviewers, and keeping candidates warm between stages.

The difference from agency. An agency recruiter works this way across 10 or more client accounts simultaneously. An embedded recruiter does all of this exclusively for you — which means more context, better candidate conversations, and a much faster feedback loop.

An embedded recruiter typically takes full ownership of the recruiting process from briefing through to offer stage. This includes: writing or rewriting job adverts, selecting and managing job board advertising, sourcing and approaching candidates directly, conducting initial screening calls, coordinating the full interview process, managing candidate communications at every stage, and supporting the offer and negotiation stage.

They also tend to pick up process improvement work over time — identifying where the hiring process is slow or losing candidates, and suggesting changes. After a few weeks inside a business, an embedded recruiter will have a clearer picture of where the recruiting bottlenecks are than most people who've been there for years.

It's worth being equally clear about what sits outside the embedded recruiter's scope. They are not a generalist HR resource — employment law queries, performance management, and people operations issues sit with your HR team, not with them. They don't typically handle pre-employment checks such as references, right to work, or DBS, though they'll often coordinate with whoever does. And they're not responsible for onboarding once an offer is accepted — that hand-off sits with you.

The cleaner you keep the scope on both sides, the more effectively the embedded recruiter can focus on what they're there to do.

The organisations that get the most from embedded recruitment are the ones that treat the recruiter as an internal colleague rather than a supplier. That means giving them direct access to hiring managers, not routing everything through a single point of contact. It means providing feedback on CVs and interviews quickly — a recruiter who doesn't get feedback can't improve the shortlist. And it means involving them in conversations about the business, team culture, and what good looks like, rather than just handing them a job spec and waiting.

The embedded model works because of proximity and context. The more of both you give the recruiter, the better the results.

Thinking about whether embedded recruitment might be right for your next hiring phase? Book a free call and we'll walk you through how it typically works in practice for businesses like yours. You can also read our more detailed guide: Embedded recruiter vs. traditional agency.