Hooked on Recruiting as a Team Sport - Issue 18
There's nothing more beautiful than the untapped potential of all the "recruiters" around you at your startup.
Founders often burn the midnight oil, combing LinkedIn and scraping their networks to find the next "one" to bring on board. Recruiting should be your top priority as you build your startup, but it can't be your priority alone. The sooner everyone else figures this out, the better.
What's going on?
Your startup is nothing more than a collection of people investing sweat equity in your idea. Early-stage building takes the entire team. One person is incredibly impactful for the future of your company. Impact is tenfold when everyone owns that future together. Perhaps you've leveraged the entire team for "all hands on deck" customer triaging, bug-bashes, or product brainstorming. But often recruiting begins and ends with a position in someone else's orbit — opening and then closing — in isolation. That's someone else's job who is hiring, right? We've all witnessed the "open job" announcements made by hiring leaders, the "hot jobs" bullet on the All Hands slide deck that brings a fleeting thought of "I don't know anyone" to those listening in. There's a lot of inaction or "just-in-time" recruiting, including the super passive approach of "I'll know it when I see it" when it comes to recruiting.
Why does it matter?
Your first and second-level connections and those from your team are the easy, low-risk hires. But that motion won't scale. Just as building a product takes a team, the same is true when building the human element of your business. Maybe you've tapped new hires for leads or referrals — at one point in time — but doing that alone brands recruiting as a transactional process, especially when a bonus payout is involved. Your employees have good intentions, but all too often, they lob a name or two over the fence with little to no understanding of the problem the business is trying to solve by hiring in the first place. Referrals also limit your ability to diversify your team because people know a lot of people just like them. As your startup grows, certain systems promote an unfortunate mindset that recruiting only happens when there’s an open role or when there's a monetary benefit attached. When you build this way, you miss the opportunity to make recruiting an integral part of your business where everyone is always on a mission to bring in the best people to build with —because they want to — not because they are paid to. This is the magic of creating a culture of recruiting. One where you tie the value of amazing people to the future growth and success of the business. Because ultimately, everyone is building value that can one day lead to meaningful outcomes.
What do others think?
"I believe in the broader sense of recruiting through connection, community, and friendships. The most successful people I know are always looking for ways to give first, help, connect, be mentors, and take time for a coffee with someone. It's natural. In that sense, you are always recruiting. Because being good and gracious sets you up for recruiting success either in an immediate sense or a longer-term one." - Anoop Gupta, Co-Founder, and CEO, SeekOut
What do we think?
A culture of recruiting is leader-led. It is infectious, especially when modeled early in the talent journey. When those coming into the company see others always recruiting, they, too, adopt this behavior. New hires will act with agency, have curiosity about the business, and refer great people better aligned with your startup's specific needs without being asked. In other words, they will pay it forward versus turning a blind eye to the open jobs that "aren't my problem." Because your startup's goals are everyone's to solve, recruiting isn't separate from this. Recruiting almost always leads to solving other problems you are tackling. It’s not just about filling open roles. When teams more intimately understand what challenges drive the need to hire, they can better evangelize this messaging throughout their networks, building awareness with new talent, new customers, and even investors. An incredible side effect of greater internal knowledge is that it creates more transparency between functions, strong team empathy, and shared purpose to solve the more complicated stuff together.
What do YOU think?
Take Action
Start building a culture of recruiting now. Make it the foundation of your recruiting philosophy. It's not a process; it's a strategic value to your business. Flip the script from operating in a transactional world where recruiting is only a funnel to push talent through vs. your team's competitive advantage in building a successful company.
Get the whole team united around what recruiting is but do not label it as a "job" — this positions recruiting as a transactional favor rather than the asset it is.
Hire leaders who love to build great teams. Not only do they understand the value of investing in recruiting conversations, but their passion is also infectious and will catch fire with other team members. They are your ambassadors.
Everyone you hire is a recruiter — always wearing a recruiting hat — thinking about the problems to solve and gaps to fill. This curiosity will help them connect with great talent to solve those problems. Change the mindset from transactional, "Who do I know?" to strategic, "What are we solving and why"? So everyone is connecting through curiosity, not to fill a job.
New hires? Start with referrals and continue with promoting ongoing connections and reach out. Every person on your team should be finding ways to connect and story tell about all the great things you are doing and building. They model this behavior for others coming in the door.
Promote a mindset of "hiring for the company" vs. "hiring for the manager." Hiring is a single moment, but the business constantly evolves, especially at a startup. The role you hire today will only sometimes be the role you need tomorrow. Err on attributes: Curiosity, grit, ownership, resilience.
Always be recruiting — especially right now. Proactively engage with great people to share perspective, help, and open doors later.
Designate time to build recruiting muscle. Create weekly time blocks for your team to connect, network, and talent scout. Make time in your stand-up to talk about valuable talent conversations everyone has had.
Leverage everyone to help sell and close. Everyone. Involvement instills pride and drives up team engagement. It elevates everyone's value — not just a select few —in getting great people on board. Connect people to this mission.
Remember that time you did a product hackathon? Hackathons are a great way to empower your team to breathe new life, features, or benefits into existing products. Make recruiting your product. Have your team come together and consider new recruiting strategies, tools, pools of talent, or outreach. Share what's working and what's not. Have a conversation.
Invest in your team. Give everyone interviewer training, and teach them "what good looks like" skills and attributes-wise. When people have confidence, they have pride. And with this training, they are a recruiting weapon.
We had other great ideas on connecting in this issue.
Tools, Events & Insights
Aspiring for Intelligence → A Talk With Alex Banks
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