PSA for Startups – Why Startups Should Brainstorm with Specialized Recruiters on Critical Roles

Advertising jobs on LinkedIn and your website can make sense for certain roles. But what about the roles you needed to fill yesterday which are critical to meeting technical milestones either for commercialization targets or to get you to your next round of funding?

With these critical, often niche technical or commercial roles, you may not have the luxury of waiting for the right person to decide that they may want to look around for other opportunities and then just happen to find your job posting. The costs of leaving mission-critical positions vacant for too long can be severe. So, if you have made the cost-benefit decision that you do not have time to either sift through hundreds of resumes or wait fingers crossed that the right person finds you, the next step is finding the right recruiter for your specific needs.

First, find a recruiter with deep domain expertise in your specific sector, whether it is SaaS, HardTech, Biotech, AgTech or something else. Specialized industry knowledge allows a recruiter to become an invaluable partner in filling your urgent, mission-critical roles. With domain expertise, they have the context to immediately understand your needs and identify target candidates that will go beyond just keywords on a resume, identifying cultural fit, learning potential, and other intangibles which are critical for your startup’s success.

Secondly, find a recruiter that predominantly focuses on startups. Recruiting for startups is a much different animal than recruiting for Fortune 500 companies. Candidates who thrive in startups are drawn to the Founder’s vision, not bottom-line dollars and ancillary benefits. You must have a recruiter that understands how to pitch the vision of the company just like you pitch the vision to VCs. The seasoned startups recruiter will take the same tack with prospective candidates.

Building startups, irrespective of skill set, requires a lot of nuances, it is not black and white. Given this gray area, the final aspect of picking the right recruiter which is paramount is that you find a recruiter you can brainstorm with, someone you can trust and can take counsel from. Why I mention “take their counsel” is that your recruiting partner should have filled the role that you are looking for multiple times over, at different levels and company stages and will likely look at things differently, from more of a clinical point of view and just as importantly they will have navigated the challenges and pitfalls over and over. ?You want someone who will review your plans with a critical eye, surfacing potential issues and proposing solutions. Their outside viewpoint and depth of experience create tremendous value. They can supplement your own knowledge, helping you avoid costly hiring missteps.

I’ve actually had several calls this week with several seed stage companies that are working through various problem roles, and it is quite a magical thing to give counsel to and be a part of the brainstorming process for roles that can literally make or break a company. This is what gets me up in the morning after 20 years of building startups, the continued promise of creating new technologies and executing the vision of the founders.

So, when you are at that stage of a critical hire, leverage your network, find out who are the boutique search firms in your respective sector that have a long track record of building startups who will serve as a trusted advisor.

#Startups #VentureCapital #Biotech #Synbio #Agtech #GreenChemistry #AlternativeProtein #CarbonCapture