Raising funding is easy. Scaling teams is not.
aston holmes
Securing funding is a milestone worth celebrating.
It’s validation of your vision, a catalyst for growth, and a signal to investors that you’re ready to accelerate.
But as the excitement settles, focus quickly moves to what comes next: building the team that will turn investment into impact.
Because while capital fuels ambition, it’s talent that creates capability.
The opportunity to build momentum
The months following a funding round are full of possibility.
Growth plans accelerate, new roles emerge, and fresh ideas begin to take shape.
New teams need to be built, new regions opened, and new leadership roles created. For many, the instinct is to hire fast – to show momentum, deliver early, and maintain investor confidence.
But the organizations that scale best understand that volume hiring isn’t business as usual. It requires a different rhythm, a different structure, and often, a different set of hands.
The question isn’t simply how to grow faster; it’s how to build capability with confidence and clarity, with little day-to-day disruption.
Dual priorities or prioritized expertise?
Internal talent acquisition teams excel at fulfilling the main business hiring objectives – the consistent recruitment that sustains operations, supports career movement and enables steady growth.
But post-funding, additional support and expertise is required to support the new phase of expansion – one that’s broader and equipped to scale faster.
Balancing both streams of hiring requires focus and support. While your internal team continues driving BAU activity, bringing in additional project-based expertise allows you to scale strategically and maintain momentum across every area of the business.
It's not about doing more with less – it's about adding capability where it creates the most impact.
Building a responsible scaling strategy
To deliver hiring at pace and protect your long-term infrastructure, the following four key steps should be considered:
Separate business-as-usual from project-based hiring
Treat your post-funding growth plan as a standalone project.
Define its scope, timelines and desired outcomes – whether that’s hiring 50 Engineers, launching a new commercial function or expanding teams into a new territory.
This distinction gives your internal TA team the space to continue delivering BAU hiring effectively, while a separate, focused project team handles the scale-up activity.
Build temporary capacity, not permanent overhead
High-volume hiring doesn’t require permanent expansion of your TA team. It requires temporary capability that can deliver impact, then scale down once the project concludes.
That’s where external talent partners add real value.
A model like aston holmes’ Dynamic Talent Solutions places experienced recruiters inside your organization to deliver focused hiring projects.
It’s an agile, cost-effective alternative to hiring an internal team you may not need six months later.
Strengthen leadership hiring with intent
As your business scales, leadership capability becomes the anchor for sustainable growth. Funding often brings new or redefined senior roles – the people who set direction, shape culture, and drive delivery.
A targeted Executive Search approach ensures these hires align with your long-term vision and investor goals, not just short-term growth demands.
The right leaders, in the right roles, build the stability and momentum that make scale possible.
Protect the candidate and hiring manager experience
Rapid hiring can create internal noise: too many requisitions, not enough feedback and inconsistent communication. This erodes brand perception and slows down decision-making.
But structure helps.
Set clear ownerships between internal and external partners, standardize communication templates and create a shared performance dashboard.
This keeps both candidates and hiring managers informed – and ensures the experience remains consistent, even when volumes rise.
The return on a balanced approach
When you structure hiring responsibly, you protect two critical things:
Your internal team’s effectiveness – they continue to deliver essential, ongoing recruitment without disruption
Your speed to scale – you access immediate external capability that can meet ambitious post-funding goals
This blended approach – internal focus plus external elasticity – ensures that every hire contributes to long-term capability, not short term relief.
Investing in capability, not just positions
Funding brings the means to grow. But growth depends on the people – and how effectively you bring them into the business.
By aligning your hiring strategy with your operating reality and partnering with specialist talent partners when scale demands it, you create a foundation for capability that lasts long after the funding cycle ends.
Because the best investment you’ll make post-funding isn’t necessarily in the systems or office space to house the growth.
It’s in the people that hold the capability to make your vision a reality.