020. How big company recruiters can kill your startup, and how to spot the ones that will send it to the moon

OK, I have a very non-HR approved opening for today’s post: A while back I stumbled upon a tweet that said, “S*x with love and sex without love are two totally different things.”?

It makes a good point, and it’s the same for recruiting, here me out: Recruiter at a big company vs. Recruiter at a startup – it’s called the same thing, but these are two totally different jobs. But I don’t think most founders understand that, and it leads to disastrous results. Yes, the surface goal of a Startup/Corporate recruiters both is to hire people into the company – but how that’s done could not be more different.?

As a former startup recruiter, and now Founder/CEO of Workflow leading a team of Fractional Recruiting/People support to high-growth teams – I have seen so many companies pick the wrong type of person for their first recruiter hires. Every mishire at a startup is costly and painful, but I don’t know if one can do as much damage as the wrong recruiter. If you trust an empty-headed corporate drone whose only real skill is being a professional extrovert, your startup might be set back potentially years. You’ll have to undo the consequences of their poor judgment, i.e. hordes of more mishires, along with the subsequent damage on productivity and culture.????

Yikes. But I got you. In this post, I’ll provide some very specific contrasts between Corporate vs. Startup recruiters profiles – so you can bring in someone great, whose judgment you can trust and capabilities can flourish in the unique environment that is a hypergrowth startup.?

Note, I’ve written previously about the qualities that you should look for in every startup employee, e.g. whether they are a Builder or Copy-Paster, and if they possess what I call “The Startup Factor.” But today, I’m focusing specifically on recruiters, and 3 things you should look for:?

1. Quality, not quantity, oriented
2. Can sell without relying on brand
3. Passionate outsiders?

1. Quality, not quantity, oriented

I once was advising a Recruiter at a client company with 15 employees. He came to me quite stressed, saying, “My founders require me to produce extensive weekly reports on metrics but I’m already stretched so thin.” I told him, “You can stop that. The founders are wrong in this case.” He was taken aback – he’d? come from a larger company, where metrics were the way you proved your performance. But startup recruiting is NOT a numbers game.?

I told him, “At this size, all these metrics show is how busy you are. As a startup recruiter, your job should be much more holistic, experimental, and focused on the quality, not quantity, of candidates you bring in.”?

The founders in question were making a common but critical error in their recruiting: assuming quantity leads to quality. This is the wrong strategy for a startup. Yes being data-driven is important, the benefits are severely limited in a startup context. In fact, it often leads to early-stage companies to neglect something far more important - a focus on quality and building from scratch the process that enables it. 0 -> 1 recruiting is far more of a creative process than what Big Company recruiters are used to.?

Pro-tip on what to look for: A quality-oriented recruiter cares about onboarding. A quantity-oriented recruiter does not give a sh*t about it.?

Quality-oriented recruiters aren’t looking to fill some quota or check off tasks lists. They want to make the company successful by bringing in great employees, and know that great onboarding is a part of that. Here’s the logic: great recruiters are acutely aware of what it feels like to work their butt off to get a candidate in the door – then have the company promptly fumble it with a poor onboarding process. So a positive sign is a recruiter with evidence of having taken initiative on onboarding projects, when they didn’t have to.

Another positive sign is caring about DEI: quality-focused recruiters are often the closest to broken hiring systems that hold back strong underrepresented candidates, but allow weak but overrepresented candidates to “fail up.” Often people become DEI advocates because it’s simply the morally right thing to do, or they’re from an underrepresented background themselves. But the most effective can take their passions to the next level and apply them in business, focusing on the impact while also building strong, quality-oriented processes.???

2. Sell without a brand?

“Recruiting is sales.”

This statement is… yes, technically true, but the absence of nuance leads to many folks to a misunderstanding on what they should be looking for. They think sales is about sweet talking customers into buying things. But good recruiting, like good sales, is about finding a good mutual fit, which can’t be forced.

Thinking of recruiting purely as sales leads to a trap around stereotypes about what salespeople look like and do. Effective sales is about connecting a customer with a problem to the solution, which your company has (already) built. But startup recruiting is aligning a problem to someone also looking for problems to solve, between employers and employees.

That’s why the best startup recruiters can effectively balance this two-sided market, and they do so by selling without an established brand. What you need is 0 -> 1, but the corporate recruiter who came "so highly recommended by a VC” is likely to be more of a 24 -> 25, good at maintaining what’s already working. Proceed with caution.?

Startup recruiters work with potential, not pedigree. This is a fundamental principle of the HireEd System, Workflow’s proprietary method for startup recruiting. HireEd focuses on installing strategy, tools, and processes that actually deliver ROI in the startup context, instead of copy-pasting big company initiatives that end up being a waste of time. Training and process, not metrics and automation! (See above section.)?

That brings me to this hot take: the best recruiters don’t come from big-brand companies. In fact, the more well-known and respected the company, the more their recruiters will struggle in your small startup. Because they could rely on a fancy company brand, that recruiter likely did not have to actually get creative, or fight to get great talent in the door and close them.

The better the company brand, the worse the recruiter. Quote me on that one. Of course it’s not 100% true 100% of the time – plenty of gems exist at the big companies, but they’re less likely to be on the market looking to start from scratch as a recruiter at an unknown startup. No one’s ever explained this to you, but now you know.?

Pro-tip on what to look for: If you’re a founder bringing in a recruiter, don’t get dazzled by logos – in fact, the presence of “exciting” logos on a recruiter’s resume should be a signal for even MORE careful evaluation. (e.g. Are AppAmaGooBookSoft recruiters truly the best? Or is it just easier to hire when you can throw money at them?)

Invest the time to design your process to focus on the right things, and you won’t get distracted by pedigree. (Workflow can help you with that, and we can connect you to our alumni of HireEd-trained recruiters ??)???

3. Passionate outsiders?

All right, this one may be a little controversial too. Apparently I am extra spicy today!

What’s the mental image that comes up when you think of a “recruiter”? My mind jumps to the stereotype of a very polished, charming extrovert. Shiny hair, perfect clothes. Always ready for a confident handshake and can talk their way into anything.

This picture might not be far off for many corporate recruiters. But when I think of the actual best startup recruiters I know – from HireEd alumni, mentees, my follower community, etc. – they don’t fit this stereotype at all. Honestly, that group is full of people who are a bit of weirdos – nerds, former theater kids, ex-non-profiters, ex-academics, those who have achieved socioeconomic mobility, etc. Very few country club / trust fund types here.

I have a theory that the best startup recruiters tend to identify as outsiders. They’re great at what they do because they give a sh*t – and they give a sh*t because they know what it feels like to fight their way into something. A startup environment is the perfect opportunity for those hungry to prove themselves, but won’t know what they are truly capable of until they’re placed in an open greenfield and told, “OK, now go build.” Great startup recruiters are motivated by continually learning how to spot and be a shepherd to other hungry, high-potential startup talent. I know this because this is me. I am one of the weirdos.????

Pro-tip on what to look for: Recruiters who aren’t necessarily the most “shiny” / don’t totally fit in. Obviously they should be able to represent the business well – but they don’t need to be as polished as you might think. In many ways, being a little bit less polished can be good. Many of the candidates you want to hire at your startup will be anyway.?That's what makes startup recruiting fun. ?

In closing

Here’s the invitation for startup leaders building their People/Talent teams: First, recognize the word “Recruiter” means very different things in different contexts. Second, you want to be very intentional about this hire – it truly may be THE most important role to get right. Avoid the trap of rushing through the process and ending up with the recruiter you think you’re supposed to hire. While some corporate recruiters can make the jump to startups successfully, the majority won’t.

As mentioned, bringing on the wrong recruiter can do an unfathomable amount of damage to your company.? It’s one thing to end up with a sales mishire and having to fire the customers they brought in, but correcting a recruiter’s mistakes and having to address the mishires they make is a whole ‘nother ball game.

The reverse is true too – the right recruiter for your startup will be a game-changer. The right person, with the above 3 qualities, can bring in hordes of talented, mission-driven, employees eager to dream big and start building with you, who in turn will attract even more talent. With the combination of skills and passion, a great startup recruiter will be a true partner to you as you build for massive scale. Hard to think of a more powerful resource in your startup journey, so let’s make sure you get it right.??

I have more upcoming posts planned about the ways that while the startup recruiting / People space is broken, understanding the landscape is the way to creating a massive competitive advantage, so please subscribe and tell your friends ???

Also! Workflow has upcoming capacity for 1 more client, starting in late February. If you’re a hypergrowth startup interested in benefitting from best-in-class Recruiting & People Ops temporary resourcing, let’s talk!?

Jennifer Kim is the CEO/Founder of Workflow, an education and consulting company that trains the next generation of startup leaders on all things Recruiting, People Ops, and DEI. Through its flagship program, the HireEd Accelerator, Jen and her team have taught hundreds of startup leaders to make hiring a competitive advantage. Previously, Jen was Head of People at Lever and advised dozens of top startups. She is known for her hot takes on tech industry and culture as @jenistyping.