For a small consulting agency, hiring can become a growth constraint long before a lack of client demand does. Vuk Stajic, founder of CRM strategy and implementation firm MVRK, says his team now has seven people in six countries, even though none live in the United States, Canada or the United Kingdom, the agency’s main markets. His account points to a practical cost-control option for smaller firms: find candidates where they already share expertise, then manage screening and selection directly.
Stajic says he has hired each team member himself, without spending on job advertisements or recruiter fees. That doesn’t mean hiring carries no cost. The owner still invests time in writing a clear role description, reviewing candidates, interviewing and building working relationships. His experience suggests that for a founder with a focused hiring need, that effort can be an alternative to paying an intermediary.
Client demand created the need to hire
Stajic spent the first three years of his business working alone. As the agency gained traction, existing clients wanted to continue working with him, leaving him with a capacity decision: reduce the client load or bring in help. He chose to expand the team rather than turn away work he valued.
That decision reflects a familiar trade-off for a services business. Additional capacity can help a firm serve more clients, but hiring also adds coordination and management responsibilities. For a solo operator, the first hire can be especially consequential: the person needs to deliver work reliably while fitting into a small organization that may not yet have formal hiring systems.
MVRK’s early hiring process relied on a recruiting agency in the Philippines. Stajic had worked on a Salesforce implementation for that firm, which staffed talent in North America, and approached it with requirements for his first team member. The agency presented candidates; he selected one he believed could do the job. That employee remains on the team, according to Stajic.
The initial arrangement gave the founder access to a hiring channel he already knew. Later, the worker wanted to continue directly with him, and they formed a direct working relationship. Stajic advises checking any signed terms before making a similar change. His experience with one agency and one hire is not evidence that every intermediary adds little value; it does show how a recruiting relationship can serve as an entry point while a company learns what it needs.
Online communities can widen the candidate pool
Stajic’s later approach starts with a different premise: a firm that can operate remotely may not need to restrict its search to its city, state, province or country. The relevant boundary is often the work itself. Some roles require in-person presence, but for remote consulting work, a wider search can expose an employer to people beyond its immediate network.
His preferred channel has been online communities, particularly industry-specific groups on Reddit. These forums let practitioners exchange knowledge and build visibility over time. For a small business, that creates a way to encounter potential candidates without paying for a job listing, while also giving candidates a chance to see how the founder communicates and what the company does.
There’s a distinction between posting a vacancy into a community and participating in it thoughtfully. Stajic says he follows each group’s rules when sharing a hiring request. That matters because communities have their own expectations, and a post that reads like unsolicited advertising can undermine the trust that makes the channel useful. A hiring message should fit the group, explain the opportunity plainly and direct interested people to a defined next step.
Rather than ask applicants to begin with a resume, Stajic uses an intake form with questions intended to help assess fit. Applicants who appear promising can then be invited to interview. The form gives the founder a consistent starting point for comparing responses and can surface information that a resume alone may not make easy to assess.
That process shifts some early screening work from a recruiter to the business owner. It can keep direct hiring costs low, but the time commitment remains real: the employer must decide what questions matter, review submissions consistently and follow up with candidates. A simple form is most useful when it reflects the actual work and helps distinguish relevant experience, communication and expectations.
Use a trial period to assess the working relationship
After screening and interviews, Stajic says he offers extended initial-term contracts to candidates who seem like a good fit. The arrangement gives both sides time to see how the working relationship functions, with the option to extend if it goes well or separate if it doesn’t.
That approach recognizes that hiring decisions involve more than credentials. In a distributed team, communication habits, follow-through and the ability to work across distance all affect delivery. An initial contract can make those factors visible through actual work, though it still requires clear expectations about scope, timing, compensation and review. Stajic’s account doesn’t detail those terms, so the model should be understood as his practice rather than a universal template.
Recruiting firms can still be useful when a company needs specialized reach, speed or support with screening. Stajic’s experience instead makes the case for weighing that expense against the founder’s capacity to recruit directly. A small business with a narrow role and access to credible professional communities may be able to handle discovery itself; an owner whose time is already stretched may reach a different conclusion.
The economics depend on the founder’s time
“Zero dollars” describes Stajic’s spending on job ads and recruiter fees, not the full cost of building a team. Time spent sourcing, vetting, interviewing and onboarding has an economic value, and a poor hire can create costs through rework or lost client confidence. The financial question for a founder is therefore whether direct sourcing produces a stronger return on that time than paid recruitment would.
Stajic’s path combined an agency connection for his first hire with direct sourcing through online groups for subsequent team building. The result he reports is a seven-person operation serving clients in three countries, with employees based in six different countries. It’s a specific example, not a guarantee that every community will yield qualified applicants or that every remote role can be filled this way.
For service businesses facing more demand than one person can handle, the useful takeaway is that candidate discovery can begin in the places where skilled people already exchange ideas. A well-defined role, a respectful community post, a structured intake process and a measured initial engagement can make direct hiring more manageable. The next growth decision then rests on a clearer view of both sides of the equation: the cost of finding talent and the capacity the new hire can add.
