The Founder-Recruiter Connection: Startup founders can relate better to a day in the life of recruiters.

What are some specific areas in business where manual tasks are still prevalent?

In the age of AI and automation, most business functions that pop into our minds have already grabbed the attention of innovators and have been optimized for the needs of the current market. Sales, marketing, and finance are just a few examples. If you are thinking about anything related to recruitment, then I'm totally with you. Yes, I would also say 'recruitment' without any hesitation or second thoughts. Despite technological advancements, recruitment remains a process that still requires significant human input, from reviewing resumes and conducting interviews to negotiating job offers.

And, as a founder of a newly-initiated startup, I’d like to share a little about my experience in recruiting talent for my company, Humbird AI . It goes without saying that hiring is one of the very first activities that all startup founders do in their initial days of building the company. While hiring for Humbird AI, I first-hand experienced the many challenges of recruitment and how to hire new talent in today’s time. In this post, I'll take you through a day in the life of a recruiter from a founder's perspective, sharing my personal experience and providing a unique insight into what it's like to navigate the realities of hiring in the modern business world.

Founder-as-a-recruiter:

As a startup, we initially did not have a compelling need to have a dedicated HR, and preferred to handle our initial hires ourselves so we could select the best people to form our core team. Hiring talent for a new company with no established brand identity is very challenging. Founders must be good storytellers to attract talent, just as they do with investors and customers, by effectively communicating the vision and purpose of the company.

Here are the five recruiter activities that I found to be the most tedious during my experience hiring for Humbird AI

Activity #1: Hunting talent on LinkedIn

I would prospect talent on LinkedIn for product development, marketing, and design positions. I would have hundreds of LinkedIn tabs open within minutes and use templates from a notepad to send notes to candidates. I would just copy the template, paste it in the prospect's message box, change their name, and send. However, this process was time-consuming, disorganized, and error-prone.

I would often forget to change the name in the message before sending it. Additionally, keeping track of all prospects and following up with them was also challenging.

Activity #2: Gathering information from interested candidates

After the prospect shows interest and agrees to a conversation, I would have to follow up to get their resume and contact information. Mostly, candidates do not share their resume or contact information before asking, and it is a time-killer every time.

I would have to call and collect more information, such as their current CTC, expected CTC, and notice period, to further process the candidatures. This step was frustrating and consumed a lot of time for me. That’s because when I called the candidates, not everyone would pick up the call at the first attempt, and even when they did, they would? prefer to speak at a different time as they’d be occupied or in office.?

I always thought it would be great to use some tool to skip this process of manually calling candidates and getting the necessary information.?

Activity #3: Shortlisting applications and referrals

To find the best-fit candidates, we relied on referrals from our network and job postings on LinkedIn. Although the number of applications was low, the process of reviewing each and every resume was time-consuming. About half of the applications turned out to be irrelevant, and it took, on average, 30 to 60 seconds for each application to be rejected or advanced to the next stage. This stage itself consumed around 60% of the total hiring time, and the process was manual and more laborious too.

Activity #4: Conducting interviews

After shortlisting candidates, I would inform the founders and get their feedback in order to set up and conduct interviews. Our interview process was very lean, consisting of two rounds, each lasting around two hours. Most of the time, we would finish the process in a day’s time. However, scheduling interviews was the most challenging job; it involved making calls, negotiating for mutual slots, and pushing for the best slots to talk. While I tried using Calendly to streamline the process, it did not solve the problem.

Dealing with no-shows was frustrating, and I often felt overwhelmed with the workload.

Activity #5: Engaging with candidates throughout the process

Every candidate preferred a different channel for communication. A few of them preferred to communicate via email, whereas some wanted to converse via WhatsApp, and others were on Slack. We used Google Meet, Teams Calendar, and other task management tools to manage this whole process. We probably could use more tools in the hiring process and be more efficient, but using these tools alone felt overwhelming, especially when we were just handling 20 applications at a time. I wondered how recruiters manage with more open positions and applications.?

Takeaway

Recruiting talent for a startup is a challenging and time-consuming process that requires a lot of effort and attention to detail. As a founder, I found myself spending a significant amount of time every day on prospecting, shortlisting, interviewing, and following up with candidates. Even though I tried different tools and methods to automate and simplify these tasks, I often ran into problems and couldn't get the results I wanted. In particular, I struggled to find a comprehensive recruitment tool that was easy-to-use and startup-friendly. While some Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) showed promise, none of them fully matched our requirements in terms of customization, automation, and ease of use.

If you are a founder or recruiter for a growing company, chances are you have had a similar experience. While modern tools exist across various business functions to eliminate mundane and administrative jobs, recruitment remains a complex and human-driven process that requires a personal touch and a deep understanding of the company's culture and goals.

In my next article, I will share how this experience helped us craft a tool for talent acquisition teams: Humbird AI .