Prioritize an internal, full-time recruiter sooner!
There’s a lot of learnings you come away with by being a founder & operator respectively. I’ve played a role in building companies, participating in their building passively, and have now had the pleasure of investing in over 35 companies via 186 Ventures with my partner, Julian. One of the biggest learnings, by far, is that I wish I had hired a recruiter earlier on in the company building cycle.
I often times muse on this topic with other experienced founders & early executive team members and they eventually come to a similar conclusion. There has never been a more competitive market for talent, ever, in the history of any sector IMO. The standards and bar for talent acquisition, talent development, and workplace experience have entered unprecedented territories.
Some of my earliest mentors & investors use to tell me — “a recruiter is the most important first hire I would make if I started a company again”. It was virtually impossible for me to imagine / believe this concept at first — “ I have to build product, I need more engineers, I only have so much cash, there’s no way I’m spending it on a recruiter!” Through trial & error, though, I first hand learned how true this is and I’ve now found myself recycling the same advice over and over — so here’s my consolidated take on why you should take my advice!
You want full-time attention on culture and a constant feedback loop of what profiles of talent “work” for your org
An internal, full-time recruiting role does much more than just hire people. They are your front lines on sniff testing prospective culture fit, technical acumen relative to role / org needs, and much more. They work with internal stakeholders to deeply understand pain points, both short-term & long-term; they understand what quirks individual managers or team members have; they absorb what intangible characteristics leadership expects, and they incorporate all of this into your company’s hiring practices.
Being able to screen for all of the aforementioned and more doesn’t just stand itself up over night. The frameworks & scaffolding to do all of this effectively and precisely take a lot of time to get right — it’s like building muscle. The sooner you have someone on board full-time thinking and acting on all of this, the better off your team & organization’s health will be.
Hiring is really hard and you need to move at a lightning pace
There has never been a more competitive time in the world of tech company recruiting — it’s actually quite remarkable. Wages are ballooning, employee benefits & perks have transformed, and candidates have multiple options when considering their respective career trajectory. As a capitalist, I enjoy seeing this and think that this is the way it should be for every industry. As an entrepreneur, it can be daunting when thinking through how to best approach this general problem set.
The bottom line is that unless you’re the unicorn that triples in value year on year, you probably will not hit your hiring goals both in quantity & quality, and even if you are that unicorn you will probably be inefficient and get sloppy during certain aspects of your hiring without a full-time recruiter on board.
Kick off the compounding value in building up these learnings early on
Lastly, as with anything within the organization, never discount the compounding value that comes with getting started on anything that will be a long-term part of your company.
You’ll make mistakes, trip up, and iterate on everything you setup — that’s OK, this stuff takes time. But one thing is for sure — you will never regret getting started on this early.
