Unlocking Growth: Scaling Your Startup without Internal Recruitment

In the world of VC-backed startups, the quest for success hinges on a few factors such as financing, product & scalability. And until AI completely runs the world, startups need the right people in place to have a shot at coming out on top.

But what if your startup lacks the resources for external talent partners and doesn’t have an internal recruiter to spearhead the hiring process?

If you’re armed with a robust network, solid funding, and unwavering confidence in your ability to bootstrap recruiting, then by all means, go for it. But proceed with caution.

You might think that getting accepted into Y Combinator & attempting to build the ‘Copilot for x’ is your golden ticket to talent paradise. While I admire the optimism, here’s a dose of reality: the Winter Batch of YC’s 2024 accelerator alone saw a whopping 236 startups make it through, and guess what? Over half of them were building around AI. Competition is fierce. Not just in AI either.

Everyone thinks they can nail recruiting until they’re knee-deep in the trenches themselves. Trust me, I’ve been there. The low barrier to entry in the industry was an appealing factor of why I got into the talent game initially, but it’s not as easy as it seems.

Save yourself the headache and learn from my mistakes. Sure, there’s no degree in “Headhunting 101” (yet), but if you’re dead set on doing this yourself, here’s a few tips for your journey:

Tap into your network. Milk those connections for all they’re worth. Past colleagues, bosses, classmates, that one exec that owes you a favor — they’re all potential sources of leads, not to mention your own team members. Exceptional employees know exceptional people. Treat them right & the job gets easier — they can serve as your biggest hiring advocates.

Leverage LinkedIn. Even if posting on the professional platform isn’t your cup of tea, you should work to build up some sort of presence. Candidates worth their weight will snoop around and conduct their own research. What kind of first impression would you like to leave for newcomers? At a very minimum, create a landing page that makes candidates open to connecting with you.

Utilize Ashby. Having used leading recruiting platforms like Greenhouse, JazzHR, Gem & Lever with countless others, Ashby is the most intuitive platform for early-stage startups. It’s integration with LinkedIn Recruiter delivers smooth, efficient workflows to target passive-talent. Pricing is competitive, and it has all the standard functionality of modern Applicant Tracking Systems. For the record, I’m not getting affiliate commission to say this.

Consider Leverage: In software sales, the motion to sell to SMEs & mid-market clients is a lot different than big-ticket enterprise customers. The high-value deals take relationship-building skills, understanding of client’s needs, & negotiations to collect the ink on a deal that can vault your startup to the next level. Recruiting mirrors that in a sense. The way you manage interviews & close candidates that applied should be reasonably adapted to sway passive talent with options. Roll out the red carpet for the whales that can drive exponential growth. And remember, while you may believe your startup is the best place to work, that’s not the perception of a candidate meeting your team for the first time.

Scrap the take-home assessments (in most cases). In today’s ever-connected modern world, when will a team member ever have to take on a project without any input from their colleagues? They may choose to lone-wolf aspects of their work, but to build a truly great product, it takes a collaborative effort. Turn that take-home assessment into a coworking session, if possible. A 60–90 minute project where a candidate can bounce ideas off their prospective teammate. Not only can you assess their hard skills, but it’s a good idea to see if they’re someone you’d want to be in the trenches with day in and day out.

Also understand that highly-desirable candidates have options. If you’re asking them to invest their time in a 3-hour take-home, you better do a good job selling the opportunity first. If you’re sending them a take-home after an intro chat with HR, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Note: Take-homes are more reasonable for junior-to-mid-level talent looking to prove themselves in their careers (leverage plays a factor again here). They’re also fair game for potential execs once a solid relationship is established.

Be Decisive: There’s a balance between startups wanting to understand what’s out there in the market & getting stuck waiting for the perfect unicorn to enter the pipeline. The almighty unicorn candidate is a fallacy — while they might’ve done it in other organizations, that doesn’t mean it’ll be all smooth sailing at your startup. There is an inherent element of risk in hiring.

Don’t wait for perfection, especially if it’s a niche search. Long searches can be demoralizing for all team members involved and serve as blockers for growth.

If you bring someone on & it doesn’t work out, c’est la vie. Learn from it. Onto the next.

Prioritize Feedback: In the same way you’d gather feedback from users to improve future iterations of a product, you should be gathering feedback from potential team members.

If your InMails are being met with radio silence, time to switch up the pitch. Stuck in a rut at the negotiation table? Maybe it’s time to revisit comp bands.

The tricky part is that the feedback is not typically communicated outright. It takes a good degree of emotional intelligence to read between the lines & understand what people are actually saying with their actions.

Like I said earlier, if you think you’ve got it, go for it.

If not, let’s chat. Pretty sure I can help.

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Keep going & keep growing.

PS I’ve spent seven years recruiting talent for early-stage startups across just about every function imaginable. We can work together on embedded or direct-hire engagements. You can check out more here @ Gro.