When Hiring Pauses, Services for Short-Term Experts Open Up

The people are still there, but the capacity to hire has weakened

In a survey released in August 2026 by TheVC, 4,790 unlisted startups and small and medium-sized enterprises in South Korea employed 191,150 people at the end of June. That was up by 1,072 people, or 0.6%, from the end of 2025, leaving total headcount largely unchanged.

Net employment—the number of hires minus departures—was worse. Across 4,855 companies with continuous hiring and departure records, net employment in the first half of 2026 was minus 454: 454 more people left than joined. The groups of companies used to calculate headcount and net employment differ, so these figures should be read separately.

The gap between companies that had raised money and those that had not was wide. Employment at companies that had received new investment within the previous year rose 10.4% from the end of 2025, while employment at companies without new investment fell 2.1% over the same period. This does not mean investment is the only cause of employment growth, but it does show which companies are more able to hire immediately.

Profitability was another dividing line. Employment grew 4.8% at companies that posted operating profit in 2025 and fell 1.6% at companies that posted operating losses. A company without investment or profit is more likely to delay a decision that commits it to one person’s salary and associated costs for a long time.

Not every sector declined together. Gaming lost 839 workers and content lost 739, while manufacturing and chemicals added 484 and semiconductors and displays added 713. The opportunity is not a collapse in hiring overall. It comes from the way companies use people increasingly diverging according to their finances and the work they need done.

Sell against a project budget, not a salary budget

Consider the owner of a business software company with 12 employees. Customer inquiries are rising, but new customers keep getting stuck when they first use the product, and the staff member in charge copies consultation records three times across documents and messaging tools. The owner wants to hire an operations specialist, but is not sure the work will continue at a full-time level, so they postpone even posting the job.

For now, existing employees are covering the problem. When someone leaves, the owner searches through old conversations, while the team lead pauses core work to rebuild the work sequence. Even if they look for an outside expert, they must separately assess skills, arrange a contract, define the scope, and verify the result.

What this company can buy is not one person, but a four-week outcome: organizing the customer inquiry flow, creating reusable answers, and leaving an operating guide that still works when the person in charge changes. Even if the owner cannot approve a full-time salary, a project budget with a fixed deadline and deliverables can be considered separately.

The people holding the new budget are more likely to be the owner and the operating team lead than an HR manager. The owner is judged on how long cash will last and whether revenue improves. The team lead is judged on launch dates and whether the backlog shrinks. For them, the important details are not the number of applicants, but the work period, total cost, deliverables, and evidence of similar completed work.

The experience after using the service should change too. When an owner describes the problem to solve, the service should show two or three available experts and an expected timeline. After contracting, weekly results and remaining work should sit on the same screen. On the final day, the expert must hand over documents, account lists, the reasons behind decisions, and the next person’s tasks.

For job seekers, this model also differs from waiting for a full-time job listing. What matters is not a title, but which problem they can solve in a few weeks, when they can start and how much they can work, and what they will leave behind. People who have retired or taken leave can participate through completable projects rather than explaining their entire career again.

Many tasks still require human judgment. Understanding the company’s internal situation and defining the exact scope, assessing a candidate’s real capability, and approving whether the result is sufficient cannot be fully automated. Rather than building a huge job marketplace from the start, it is more practical to personally match people around one type of project and find the procedures that repeat.

Elsewhere, the project and the time came first

US-based Catalant lets companies post projects in strategy, operations, acquisition review, and similar areas, then lets independent experts submit proposals. It handles contracting, invoicing, and payment in one place, while client companies pay a service fee in addition to expert compensation. This is not a full-time hiring site; it is structured around corporate project budgets.

In a 2024 company announcement, Catalant said its expert network had exceeded 100,000 people and that it had worked with many large US companies. Company-reported figures need separate verification, but its combination of project definition and purchasing process—not simply introducing people—is worth noting.

Toptal, which has a US entity, connects developers, designers, product leaders, and finance experts with companies worldwide for remote work. A client states the role and duration it needs, tries a recommended person briefly, and can continue through part-time or full-time-equivalent engagements or hourly contracts.

Toptal charges client companies a separate service fee and expert work fees, and says in its own materials that its hiring success rate after a trial engagement is 98%. This figure is also company-reported, but the model clearly puts fast matching and the ability to replace a specialist at the center of the service.

France’s Gemploi goes one step further: it directly employs workers, then lets multiple member companies share them only on the days they need them. It covers roles such as accounting, HR, administration, and public relations—roles that one small company may not need five days a week.

Gemploi says it has hired more than 175 employees since 2011 and supplied staff to more than 300 member companies. Its claim that 98% of contracts are open-ended employment also requires verification because it is company-reported, but the structure shows companies buying only the time they need while workers hold a stable contract with one employer.

Four small things to build now

1. A four-week work solver

This service connects experts to clearly bounded work, such as organizing customer support, preparing documents for government support programmes, or redesigning sales materials. It is for owners of companies with around 10 employees who find it difficult to hire a dedicated staff member.

It is needed now because delayed hiring does not make the backlog disappear. The first screen should have three fields: the problem to solve, the desired completion date, and the deliverables the client must receive.

2. An expert shared across several companies

This service lets three or four companies reserve portions of one accounting, hiring, or information security specialist’s weekly time. It is for early-stage manufacturers and business software companies that need specialist support only for a few days each month.

It is worth testing now because one company increasingly cannot afford to employ one person in full. On the first screen, users choose the role and days they need this month, then see shareable experts and their remaining time.

3. A handover repository before someone leaves

This service guides departing employees through questions so they can record their work, accounts, business contacts, recurring schedules, and reasons behind decisions. It is for small companies without a dedicated HR team, where the owner or operations staff handles departures.

When net employment is declining and more people are leaving than joining, preventing lost knowledge comes before finding someone new. The first screen should show the days remaining until departure and the handover questions that remain unanswered.

4. A log that measures workload before hiring

Team members briefly record their recurring work and the time it takes each week. The service then helps show whether hiring, a short-term contract, or stopping the work is the better choice. It is for team leads at companies with around 15 employees where people say there is too much work but cannot tell whether it equals one person’s role.

The service becomes more useful as owners increasingly ask for evidence before approving long-term labor costs. The first screen should show work accumulated over the past four weeks, repeat counts, delayed items, and the next options.

What to check in 30 minutes today

Call three owners or team leads at companies with 10 to 30 employees for 10 minutes each. Ask whether they have delayed a hire within the past three months. Then confirm only two things: which work could be completed within four weeks, and who actually has approval authority.

If two of the three say they postponed hiring but have a specific project they would pay to complete, and that an owner or team lead can approve it directly, it is worth testing one project type first. If the project is vague or there is no budget authority at all, start with a handover repository or workload log rather than a people-matching service.

Why this matters where you are

Check whether small companies in your market are postponing full-time hires while still carrying work with clear deadlines and deliverables. The available budget holders, contract structures, and sectors may differ from the examples here. Start by identifying one project type that a buyer can approve and an expert can complete in a few weeks.