Introducing Hire Smarter: Your Startup’s Recruiting Coach
Early on in a company’s life cycle, one of two types of people are usually in charge of hiring: one of the founders, or an early employee who shows glimmers of that recruiting je ne sais quoi.
I know this because, when Zirtual first started, my co-founders and I did all the hiring ourselves. Soon, since we were a people-heavy business, our involvement became unsustainable given all the other hats we wore — so some of our early employees who showed the most prowess were given the hiring and training jobs.
The only issue with this, especially when you’re hiring for the first time, is the knowledge gap. Anyone can learn to hire well. But it takes time to learn, and most importantly, you have to know what you don’t know.
After five years, Zirtual had built a well-oiled hiring machine, but we built it the hard way. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, and often we found out later that we had rebuilt the wheel, and a much easier tool or automation was out there than the duct-tape we had put together. Also, there weren’t many guides on how to build out recruiting from the ground up—outside of a few slightly outdated books (most written by, in my opinion, a “non-diverse” crowd).
But… how do you hire “A” 😕
Although investors and successful entrepreneurs tout the importance of “hiring only A players”, when you are newish to the hiring game you’ll walk away thinking “That’s great… but HOW”.
After over a decade of hiring, for my own companies and others, I finally feel like a relatively seasoned “Recruiter” (though I kind of loathe that name). One of the biggest realizations has been that hiring is both an art and a science…
Most hiring managers rely way too much on the “Art” part, e.g., their intuition (so often flawed) and recommendations from others (just because a candidate kicked ass in their last role, doesn’t mean they’re a fit for your particular needs or culture). They rely on the Art aspect early on, because they don’t know the Science.
My current company, Recruit, has heavily invested in developing the Science part of the hiring equation — as well as better understanding how the Art can be properly applied. We have processes, systems and knowledge libraries that expands with each hire we make — we add to “company brain”. We are also consistently reading materials on hiring, speaking with experts, and then testing those suppositions in the real world.
This methodology allows our hiring processes to be more efficient, more effective and diverse (because we focus on systems that minimize cognitive bias).
So what?
Yeah, I get you. You’re thinking “good for forking you…but I‘m still coding at night and hiring by day”, or, “I’m one of a 5 person team responsible for all of our growth PLUS hiring our next six people”.
That’s why Recruit has decided to create something that I wish I’d had access to seven years ago.
Introducing: Hire Smarter
Hire Smarter takes the pain out of hiring for early-stage startups by providing a step-by-step playbook on how to hire effectively, dozens of customizable templates and access to a community of Recruiting Specialists to answer any questions in real time.
This is made for early stage companies, lean and mean teams or solo founders who are struggling to do it all plus hire great people. It’s part live-chat community where you can ask questions and get honest answers from Recruiting Specialists, part easy-to-use playbook to stop reinventing the wheel so you can start using tried and true hiring best practices, and part community to support you through the people part of your startup journey.
It’s super affordable, and created with love by startup founders and veterans — for startups :) We’re only going to release a limited number of spots per quarter, so we can be sure to give the right amount of attention to each member.
Interested? Check out the details here: https://thisisrecruit.com/membership
