How to Hire If You've Just Downsized Your Recruiting Team

Updated October 2026

You just got approval to hire. Great! But your company no longer has a recruiting team on staff.

What do you do? Fortunately, efficiently and effectively hiring one or two staffers doesn’t always require a big team or budget.

Here are five tips to make great hires, even if you just let go of your recruiting team.

Write Effective Job Descriptions

If you haven’t been in charge of hiring until recently, you may not be practiced at writing effective job descriptions. Job boards can be a great way to attract candidates, but a poorly written or incomplete job description will add to your workload. Instead of qualified applicants, you can end up with a pile of resumes from candidates not suited to the job.

When writing an effective job description, don’t forget to:

Use inclusive language
Avoid clichés
Outline specific job duties
Focus on required skills and experience, not preferred ones
Include relevant keywords
Promote the company culture, benefits, etc. to attract top talent

Incentivize Employees to Make Referrals

Employee referrals offer several advantages. First, they can be fast, efficient, and inexpensive. Also, the candidate will be more comfortable with your organization because they already have a personal connection. Finally, if you have a great team, the people they know are more likely to be an excellent cultural fit.

To encourage employees to refer candidates, offer them incentives. These can be financial bonuses, but other rewards can be just as effective. Here are a few ideas:

Team lunch
Tickets to an event
Extra paid time off
Learning and development opportunities

You can also find the talent you need within your organization. Upskilling and reskilling existing employees can be an efficient way to bridge talent gaps.

Social media platforms can be a great way to find highly qualified passive candidates. These are individuals who may be interested in new opportunities, but they’re not actively applying to job postings.

Though cost-effective, social networking can be a time-consuming approach. You must be consistently active on one or two platforms, plus following through with potential candidates as you identify them.

Here are some key details to help you leverage the most popular social media platforms for recruiting.

Take a look at your company page to ensure it has interesting and relevant details for applicants. This could be anything from employee testimonials to event promotions.

Encourage current employees to update their own LinkedIn profiles. Ask them to choose your company as their employer. This will spread brand awareness.

Change the company page settings so it will be indexed by Google. This makes it easy to find.

To identify and connect with potentially qualified applicants for free, try the following:

Join relevant groups and participate. Be helpful—don’t sell!
Search for people by job title and location.
Look through LinkedIn’s suggested connections.

You can also use paid LinkedIn recruiting services. This is useful if you need to do a high volume of searches or want to contact people who aren’t connections.

Facebook

While Facebook is not typically seen as a recruiting platform, it does have many robust and active groups relevant to specific job titles and industries. Facebook groups can be a way to find and get a job description in front of potential candidates through those groups. You can also encourage your employees to share job posts with their personal network on Facebook or other platforms.

Portfolio Platforms

If you’re looking for candidates with design or programming skills, there are several well-populated portfolio platforms you can browse. When you find designs that align with your branding, you can identify the designer and reach out.

These platforms include:

Dribbble
DeviantArt
Carbonmade
Portfoliobox
GitHub
CodePen
Behance

Use Tech to Streamline the Process

You can also use AI and recruiting technology to reduce some of the administrative work involved in hiring. Applicant tracking software will automatically filter the first wave of resumes from any job posting, allowing you and your hiring team to focus on the best available matches.

Human Resources (HR) and recruiting software can streamline the process of recruiting and onboarding new employees. Many different software options are available, so you can find one that meets your needs and budget.

Consider Outsourcing

Outsourcing recruiting is likely your best option if:

You don’t have a recruiting team, and
The hiring process is taking away from other essential job duties

Rather than adding to your workload, a talent partner can support you throughout the hiring process and provide the recruiting expertise, technology, and resources your internal team may no longer have. This can include support with sourcing, screening, interviewing, and navigating compensation.

Find the Talent You Need

If downsizing has left your organization without the recruiting capacity it once had, you don’t have to rebuild the entire function internally. The right talent partner can give you access to recruiting expertise and help you find the people you need while allowing your internal teams to stay focused on their core responsibilities.

Whether you need to hire multiple people for a specific project or find a full-time specialist in a competitive field, connect with our team to discuss your hiring needs.

Insight Global is a talent, consulting, and AI company that delivers business outcomes in an ever-changing world. With access to top talent in more than 50 countries, our tech-enabled recruiters can build teams quickly. Our technical experts across Cloud, AI, Data, Enterprise Operations, and Applied Engineering deliver solutions tailored to each customer’s needs.