EP 195: How to Succeed as the First Recruiter at a Startup

Shannan Farmer, Lead Talent Partner at Freshpaint, details a sharp first thirty days blueprint, from fast ATS upgrades to structured debriefs and centralized feedback, proving that disciplined process can increase quality without sacrificing pace. Shannon breaks down anti sell as a filter for true builders and explains why behaviors like resourcefulness and ownership matter more than pedigree. She also makes the case for giving recruiters the authority to uphold standards with executives while cutting time to fill and reducing agency reliance.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Hey everyone, welcome to the show. Today I have Shannon Farmer here with us. Shannon is currently a lead talent partner over at Fresh Paint. Shannon, thanks for joining me on the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Awesome. So happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Yeah, we're happy for you to be here as well. So hey, where are you from?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I am born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. I've been here my whole life.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

And you're uh are you still you're still based in Atlanta, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, never left.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Okay, got it. So you must really love it there.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah, yeah. I like our summer weather, not our winter.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. So what were you like as a kid?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Oh boy. Um, probably very uh it's funny that my career ended up being what it is. Uh very shy, very hard to get to open up and talk to. I didn't naturally start conversations. Took me a very, very long time to come out of my shell, but um had a lot of friends, but it took me a long time to come out of my shell and make those friends. But very, I would say like painfully shy is probably the best way to describe me as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Wow. Wow. And then you got into uh talent acquisition, which is constantly talking to people, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yes, strangers too. Uh so definitely a lot of changes from my childhood, but yeah, painfully shy.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

What were you into as a kid? Were you into sports or what was your I was a bit of a tomboy?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I really enjoyed swimming a lot as a kid. Um, it was called like a little fish, did a lot of swimming, definitely played the organ trail that might age me a little bit. Um, played the organ trail a lot as a kid. I just had like a whole gaggle of friends in my neighborhood. And then we would, you know, this was like in the area where you'd like just run out all day, ride bikes, your parents wouldn't see you, and you'd come back when like the streetlights went off. So hung out with my neighborhood friends a lot. And we had a pool in our backyard, the swimming. Um, so often had friends over to swim in the pool.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

And uh so you'd mentioned to me that initially uh you didn't start your career in recruiting, right? Um what were you doing before recruiting?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

I was in the ad industry for a long time, ad industry and PR, um, doing a hodgepodge of jobs, either like supporting business development, content marketing, HR, um, before I finally settled into the recruiting space.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

And I think um you mentioned the big driver for you was having your first son. That was the okay. So how did that, yeah, that you said that was a pretty, as for most of us, right? Having kids is a pretty pretty big formative experience, right? So it changes our worldview a fair amount and and sometimes is uh it's beginning of a new chapter. So that was that, but that aligned with when you got into recruiting, right?

Calendly’s Hyper-Growth Ride

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Uh yeah. Uh I have I have two boys, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old. So after having my first was kind of in that hodgepodge of jobs in the ad industry, um, and like just ultimately wasn't fulfilled. Um, was just kind of coming in, doing a good job, enjoying the company and the coworkers and teams. But like just ultimately, when you have kids, you ask yourself, why am I leaving them for eight to 10 hours a day? Is this worth it? And I started asking myself that question a lot. Um, and ultimately I couldn't answer it. And so, in a very complete knee-jerk decision, it was like October of 2018, shortly after I come back from my parental leave, just told my boss I was leaving. Like I had there were some conversations we had kind of leading up to fulfillment and all of that. So it wasn't a complete shock, but um didn't have a job lined up, didn't have a plan, but just knew that if I didn't do that, I was never going to. And so um finished my time there at that at agency, knew at the very least I wanted to kind of go specifically into the HR space, but didn't know exactly what. Ultimately, after like a four or five month search, uh landed at the time nobody knew about it, um, very small tech startup called Callendly. Um, and they took a chance on me. I definitely took a chance on them. It all worked out in the end, but um that was my first real gig in recruiting. And I joined them around somewhere between like 30 and 40 people.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

How much did the team scale at Calendly during your time there?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

At their peak, um I think I probably like finally officially left at around like 700 um at their peak. Yeah, that was definitely in their heyday for sure. Um things really took off in 20 in the COVID era for Calendly. But yeah, about 700, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Yeah, it must have been pretty wild to go through that.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

It was the ride of a lifetime. Like if you want to talk about a startup experience, the kind that you hear about and that you want, like that was it for sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

So how big was the recruiting team when you started there?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Um, just my boss um and one other recruiter. It was just, and then my boss at the time, she was overseeing both HR and talent. So she wasn't really super involved in talent, even because like most startups, there wasn't even HR. So she was dealing with onboarding and all the benefits, all that sort of stuff. Um, so she wasn't doing a lot of surface cover on the the TA side. So it's just me and one other recruiter. And then we hired another one eventually and then built out a team. Um, but it was just the three of us for a while, and then one left. So it was just the me and one other one holding it down for a while. Um, but yeah, my boss eventually we hired an HR function and she kind of shifted back into focus on leading recruiting. So yeah, it was a lot.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

How many recs were you managing it? Like, how does that even work?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Um gosh, I can't even remember how like I don't even remember the ARR that we were at when I was growing, when I was there. It was, it was a lot and it was growing so fast month over month. Um I would say kind of on average, like, I don't know, it's pretty common to hold like 10 down at a time, um, give or take. Yeah. Oh wow. Okay. Yeah, but it was it was a lot of growth really quickly. ARR, headcount, all of it.

Building A Lean TA Team

SPEAKER_00 6:24

It just seems like that's a a lot of growth to be absorbed by a couple of recruiters. Were you guys like leveraging agencies as well? Or was it just that you're able to scale AR faster than headcount growth?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

For a bit, when we first were kind of building out the team, the initial TA team, we did have some agency support, not a ton and only on edge and product. Um, but the like we were using their support, but also kind of phasing them out. Um because like that's kind of the goal, right? All startups are having agencies on deck initially, and then you you kind of phase them out. Um, but yeah, initially there was some agency support, and that phased out pretty quickly after I joined um because we just didn't need them.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, yeah. How big uh did the recruiting team end up getting by the time you left?

SPEAKER_01 7:10

A lot. We had a ton of recruiters, a whole recruiting operations coordinator team. I don't think we ever officially had like full-time sourcers. Yeah, I don't think we ever went in that direction. And at one point in my time there, I led the recruiting coordinator team. The business needed me to shift and hire and build out an RC and ops team. And I did that. I'd say, like when I officially left Calendly, probably like roughly 20, including op like full full desk recruiters and ops, um, probably about 20, maybe 25. It was pretty big. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Okay. Yeah. That's uh so what were the would you say top takeaways from your time at Calendly professionally at that point? Like what did you learn?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Be adaptable.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

I I definitely have a reputation of just like doing what the business needs. If you need me to do this, the RC thing, managing that team, I will. Um, I think you just have to be adaptable, uh, really at any company, but like especially at a startup. It is whiplash constantly. Policies are changing, processes are changing, leadership is changing. Like it's you just have to be adaptable and roll with it. I'm not a very rigid person in general, and so this kind of helps. I'm also pretty type B, so this kind of helps, but yeah, you just have to be adaptable. Um, I've learned a lot and the also like your boss is gonna, whether your boss is a CEO or head of TA, whatever it may be, they're gonna, especially at a startup, they're gonna constantly be telling you about changes. Um, we're doing this, we're doing that, we're doing this. You'll have a lot of opinions about it. But the best thing you can do more often than not is be the calm in the storm for your boss. Don't be the person who's often like share your opinions, but do it in such a way that doesn't create another problem for them. Share your opinion, but perhaps with a solution because your boss is putting out as many fires as you are on a daily basis, just different ones.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah. Well, that's that's a good point. Uh definitely. And so you were the second recruiter. I think you said second recruiter over there, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Yes, there was one, there was one before me.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

And then so at your current enroll, uh Fresh Paint, you're the you were you were the first uh recruiter, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yeah, and there was a a period where I did about a year of consulting for YCOM Ader startups and was always the first and only um for them. Yeah. Um so yeah, I really that year was um super formative because I just worked with numerous founders and like talk about whiplash, that was a lot, but yeah. Um did a couple first-time recruiter gigs in that little year of my life and then zero recruiter zero at Fresh Paint.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Okay. And now you're leading a team, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Cool. How many recruiters do you have working with you right now?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

I have two very, very good recruiters. Shout out to both of them for holding it down for me all the time.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yeah.

Lessons In Adaptability And Leadership

SPEAKER_00 9:50

So I want to I'd love to learn from you what it takes to be successful as the first recruiter at a startup.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

So that's a big, big question, right? Because we can go into the the skill sets you have to develop, but I think more fundamentally it probably comes down to behaviors and how you approach the job and things like what you mentioned, like being adaptable. Um, but I like what would you say is like most important if you're gonna make it in an incredibly uh competitive environment, like working for a hyper-growth startup, and you're coming in from the ground floor. Like, how do you approach that?

Being The First Recruiter Playbook

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, I think the two things I would focus on if I were gonna do, let's say it's fresh paint day one all over again. The two things I would focus on in my first 30 days are understanding you're gonna be on calls pretty much immediately with candidates and you're not gonna know any of the answers. You're gonna you're gonna have to just wing it and you need to be comfortable with that. But like you need to understand what's happened in the past 30 days with hiring so that you can influence the next 30 days. And then I would focus on that kind of getting on calls, understanding what's happened in the past 30 days before me and what's going on now, so I can fill roles quickly. Um, but while you're filling those roles quickly, you also need to stand up a function. Recruiting, especially at a startup, in a small one, if you're joining as the first one, it is the most cross-functional role. You are working with every department, every leader, whatever that may be at the startup at that time. And it is all eyes are on recruiting. Everyone has a role they want filled, and they all want it filled quickly. And so the best thing you can do in that first 30 days, too, is set a process. It doesn't have to be big, it can be very lightweight, it can be very flexible, but you need to set a process and hold all the leaders to it. Because fast forward to 12 months, if you haven't done that, it is chaos. And you have to go back and do a lot of like fixing what hasn't been done. And so focus on what happened 30 days before you was hiring, why it happened, maybe why it didn't happen, and then obviously start getting on calls with candidates. But then also you need a lightweight process. You can't you often can't take what you've done at the company before the company and drop it into this company. It's not gonna work, but you can take pieces of it. Um so yeah, and then like implement that and enforce it across the org. And I don't mean enforce them like an author, authoritative way, but like every hiring manager when you join a startup is gonna have a different Google form. They're gonna have a different whatever, and they're all gonna start sharing these with you. And you kind of have to take that and say thank you, but this is how we're going to do it going forward. Um, because if you don't do that 12 months later, you're going to deeply, deeply regret it.

unknown 12:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

So so what did you like? So when you went into uh Fresh Paint, now Fresh Paint is growing quickly, right? So you go in, you're evaluating what's been happening past 30 days, looking at the immediate hiring plan in front of you. Of course, you have to do the blocking tackling and building pipeline. But what did it really look like in terms of okay, you're filling roles, and then what were some of the first in terms of building a system, standardizing the hiring process, what were the first things that you did to bring some organization?

Standing Up Lightweight Process

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah, when I joined, I shared a Google slide deck of a recruiting process that a founder made before I joined. It wasn't much of a process, but um, one of the first things I did was this is not a product plug. Uh, we just we use Ashby, um, but it's great. So love Ashby. But um interviews were not being scheduled in Ashby for a lot of reasons, but they were not being scheduled in Ashby, which just created a whole extra set of work for me to do. They were they were being scheduled manually in Google Calendar. And as a team of one, you have to know my time is not best spent scheduling interviews. I'm gonna have to do it. It's a part of my job, but my time is not best spent doing that. So I moved all that to Ashby um because it's just a little bit more automated, easier. And there's a lot of other functionality features of why you should do it, whatever your ATS is, it should be scheduled in your ATS, not the way we were doing it, which is just manually on Google Calendar and then like putting add Zoom link in the thing. And it's it was just so I did that for sure. That was one thing, and that was kind of like life-changing in and of itself for people. They were like, wow. So it's one of those things where like you can do the most lowest hanging fruit thing and be a superhero. Um, other things I did, we were not doing debriefs. Um, that they were like asynchronously doing them over Slack or and maybe they were like ad hoc, but like every interview had a debrief once I joined, whether it was the same day or within 24 hours, that was another thing that we started doing. And then really starting pushing people to putting their feedback in Ashby. A lot of people were like dropping it in Slack or Google Docs. Ultimately, the goal is to start making that ATS, whatever, maybe that single source of truth. And it's gonna take little nudges over time. You can't come in and do it all at one time. And then also like kind of tweaking the offer process a little bit. But yeah, it's you got to start moving whatever has been in place into your ATS and try to get everything in there. And like, I haven't done that all at one time. It's been slowly. Like we just in August of this year, we moved um our offers to come through our ATS versus manually doing them in DocuSign. Um, and then just now this week, we're moving another thing through the ATS. So it's been a slow trickle, but it is essential that you do that because again, when you join 12 months later, you're gonna regret it if you don't start making those slow process things come through your ATS, which then ultimately should integrate with your HRIS because again, 12 months later, you're going to want that to be in place too. You have to think like, I guess the best way to summarize it is you join and those first 30 days are so much chaos and you're drinking from a fire hose, but you also have the foresight to think of what I'm what is what is me 12 months from now gonna need and wish that me today started doing. You have to kind of have that foresight. Now, to startup, you can't think further beyond 12 months because things are gonna change so much, but you have to think, what am I gonna wish 12 months from now I had started doing today and really understand that and decide which you need to prioritize because you can't do it all.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

So first it was like low-hanging fruit, really bringing in terms of like, of course, scheduling everything within Ashby. Can you maybe give us like the next like three to five most impactful changes you made to process or tech just in that first year?

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Um Yeah, we didn't, I mean, uh it was impactful for me personally, which also impacted the business. Like I wasn't given any sort of tool for sourcing or finding candidates, so had to find a lightweight, inexpensive one that a startup will happily invest in, right? There's not a lot of money to go into tools, but that also impacted the business because I was able to source and build pipeline much quicker. Um, got time to fill down pretty quick to 30 to 45 days for pretty much I see roles. Um, leadership takes a bit longer, but we still we still hold that of 45 days as our standard time to fill, but got that down to a much quicker time to fill. A lot of time is just being wasted on because hiring is only 10% of a hiring manager's job. Um, it's 100% of mine. So like candidates would just sit in a stage for a week or two while the hiring manager was busy. So got time to fill down. Um, and then also kind of slowly started to move the CEO out of the off-prep process and take ownership of that, which can be a little bit of a struggle, um, depending on the CEO.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Okay, got it. Yeah. When you started to build out your team, when did you know it was the right time? And when the company knows it was the right time to onboard another recruiter and move you into that lead position.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

When the time to fill started increasing. Uh, when the time to fill started creeping up past 45 days and got closer to 60, 75. Um and for me personally, that was a kind of hard decision. I kind of like to be the owner of everything. And I, at the time, I thought by hiring another recruiter, it made me look like I couldn't handle the workload. And it took one of our leaders at the company really saying, You're resourcing yourself, you're making yourself more effective by doing this. It doesn't mean that you can't do it. It means that you can do much more, much more efficiently if you do this. So yeah, once the time to fill started creeping up, um, meaning like I can't do all of these roles and get it all done as quickly, that's when I knew it was time.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Okay, got it. And uh when you so you decided it was time to hire. Talk to me about how you set up the interview process to hire a recruiter and make sure you get like the right behavioral fit. Just like, you know, again. So we kind of you approached it from the perspective perspective of like, okay, this is what you have to do to be successful. And now translating that into like actually hiring a recruiter.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Like, what do you what are you looking for behaviorally? How do you set up the process?

Low-Hanging Wins In The ATS

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Um, I'll talk about behaviorally first and then process. So I I like to think about my management style and I like to think about my strengths and weaknesses um and what kind of person I'm going to need to be able to work with those. Um, I'm a very hands-off manager. I am not at all a micromanager. So I need people who can operate and this also works for a startup too, but like for me, high levels of ambiguity. I need people who are very resourceful. They can come in and I can say, you have this role, this is the hiring manager. They know what they need to do to get intake done. Um, we have an intake form, we have all of that as a resource, but like they know what questions to double-click and dig in on. I don't have to enable them on basic intake, right? So I'm very hands-off. I look for people who can operate in high levels of ambiguity, very resourceful. Um one of the questions I ask in an interview for a recruiter on my team is let's say you join today, I give you a role for an account executive and I tell you the hiring manager is John Doe. And that's all I that's all I have. Let's present, let's pretend there's no process, there's nothing. That's not the case. But like, let's pretend, what do you go do? And I listen to the things that they include, that they don't include, double-click in some of their answer. But I'm trying to see, do they know the framework of how to get what they need from a hiring manager to go build a role and do they tier out things? Or, you know, so that's what I'm looking for, primarily in my role. I also look for general things that we look for at Fresh Paint for company wide fit, which would be do they run toward fires and um do they operate as the CEO, meaning, you know, are they super hungry for this and do they like this work? And can they work autonomously, which also kind of speaks to me as a manager? Process-wise, I'm very pro-lightweight process. I don't, I believe if your interview process needs eight, eight people, two assignments, a case study, that says more about you and how you don't know how to hire than anything else. Um, I what I do, I make sure they spend at least an hour with me and I give them time to vet me as their manager as well. Then they meet the leaders of the functions they are going to primarily support. Um, so head of this, head of that. The expectation is that any recruiter on the team can flex different areas of the business, but I don't waste their time making them meet areas that they won't primarily support. Then they meet the CEO and then they get 30 more minutes with me to ask me any questions. Um, more just like a gut check-in. How are you feeling? How did your conversations go? It's it's ultimately like maybe there's no assignment for my role for my team, maybe a three, four-hour process when it's all said and done. We can wrap it up in a week if we move quickly. I try to keep it as painless as possible.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

What do you think that's the hardest thing to find when searching for a recruiter?

SPEAKER_01 20:35

Um, I think probably the resourcefulness, at least in my experience, someone who can operate without needing a lot of hand holding. I am so tight B, like I mentioned, that a lot of people just like process. And I'm like, I don't have a ton. There isn't a ton here. You're more than welcome to come and put it in place and like help us make that process, you know, but I don't have, I can't offer that for you right now. Um, so yeah, I just think someone who understands the ambiguity, at least for me, the ambiguity, the resourcefulness. I've had pretty good luck hiring. We do post the recruiter roles publicly, and I do go through the at least first hundred to 200 inbound, but both my whole team's been hired through referrals or I've sourced them myself on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Is there a specific background professionally that you're looking for?

SPEAKER_01 21:20

I try to find startup, zero-to-one recruiters who've done the same thing that I've done. They've walked the same walk to some extent, you know, a little bit so they get it. Um, I look for anyone that has been at a startup uh for sure. That's kind of a requirement. I like long tenures through the years or so at a company with some promotions that kind of shows that you do have some staying power. Um, but yeah, ultimately, like I think LinkedIns and resumes only tell like 25% of the story. You have to get on a call with people to get the other 75.

Speed, Time To Fill, And Tools

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Yeah, I think ideally, right, having somebody that has startup growth stage experience is super important. Um, what are your thoughts though on like hiring recruiters that don't have that background? Is that something you of course like anybody could do, like you can find people from different backgrounds that are successful, can be, but is it when you're sourcing, are you really trying to dial into that startup profile, or do you ever kind of take chances on people that come from like maybe enterprise or different industries that maybe aren't as competitive or growing as quickly, that type of thing?

SPEAKER_01 22:20

I have, and it it went back to them needing a lot of guardrails and process laid out for them. And I don't know if that was more so because they had only been at bigger companies or maybe they were just more earlier in their career. Maybe it was a blend of both. There's lots of jokes about being at a startup, but like the main one is like one year at a startup, or what is it? One year at a regular company, like a like a massive company, right? One year at a regular company is like four years at a startup. Um, and it's just it's chaos. I'm like, Anything you've ever experienced. Like we talked about this before we start. There's so much whiplash happening the past week here. And I'm about as adaptable as they come. And so ultimately, I want someone to be happy and successful here. And if I get the sense that they need a little bit more process and order, you know, this probably isn't the best fit for them. I can't, I can't give them that. And I'm not going to, you know, make it sound like we have that. Like we, yeah. So the startup experience is pretty much a requirement. That's like also top down. Like any leader at this company is going to be looking for someone who has a startup experience because the tolerance for chaos has to be somewhat high. Fresh Paint is the fastest moving startup I've ever been at, for sure. Um and yeah, I don't want someone to come here and be struggling because they just need a little bit more order. They need a more mature company. Um, the highest I'd probably go at this point is someone who's been at a Series C company. That would probably be the most I'd ex you know, I'd consider.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah, it's just a totally different beast, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah. And like on the other side of that, a big company would not have me. Like a really big mature company would not hire me. They would, I would be a nightmare for like a really big company. So it goes both ways. Like I they certainly some massive company would never hire me. It would not work out.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

You might be able to figure it out. Come on.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

I'm too much of a rule breaker. I'm way too much of a rule breaker for a big company. Process and policy kind of make me itch. So I don't know that it would work.

When To Hire Your Next Recruiter

SPEAKER_00 24:09

I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh it's interesting. I mean, it's um, you know, for my company, Secure Vision does embedd recruiting and RPO for the tech industry. And so like we literally are always hiring recruiters. It's like basically one of the we have to be really, really good at it. And um yeah, I mean the startup growth stage tech experience is something that we're like pretty adamant about because it's it's it's people there's a lot. I'm sure you've met with a lot of people too, where it's like they're oh yeah, like I would love to work for a startup, uh-huh, right? And everybody thinks they do. Yeah, a lot of people think they do.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

They say that. They say that.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yeah. And then no, right? Like they're they get it.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

You're you know, people are like, get me the hell out of here. Like, I can't, and like that's totally fair. Um, yeah, I get it. This is not for everyone. And when I'm in interviews with people, I I am very transparent on the the tolerance, the level of the tolerance for chaos I need to have to be here. Um it's not often that I interview someone that hasn't been at a startup, but sometimes we do take, like you said, take a chance and we'll we'll talk to people who maybe have only been at like 300 to 500 and above companies, still small in the grand scheme of things, but still not as small as a startup. And I'm like, no, you truly don't understand. Like we don't even have HR, we don't even have an expense report policy. Like I'm trying to make it abundantly clear to you right how much chaos there is.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

I I feel like I spend half of my time trying to sell people out of the job.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Yes, that's you have to do the anti-cell. We can do anti-cell calls.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Anti-cell. Yeah. I don't know why I haven't called it that before. That's a anti-cell.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

You gotta throw some anti-selling things at them. Really, we haven't implemented this at Fresh Paint. It's on the list of things to do, but I've seen other startups do sections of like on their JDs, on their careers page of like why this job should excite you and why this job should scare you. And like they do the anti-cell on the JD, but yeah, we'll do anti-selling too, especially at the leadership level. You for sure at the leadership level, because you know, that if you miss hire there, it's it's a lot. But like you got to anti-sell it too. Um, that's inappropriate for the level that they're joining the company at. But yeah, good old anti-cell will usually help you have a good filter.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Well, you know what's cool about the anti-cell. I'm gonna start calling it that by the way. Thank you. Um, the anti-cell is like when it's the right person, you're actually selling them. Like exactly.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

That's the whole theory. That's the whole theory. That should be anti-sell to excite them.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Right. It's like it's like, hey, we want people that are attracted to this craziness that exactly.

Hiring Recruiters: Behaviors Over Pedigree

SPEAKER_01 26:28

They want to come in and fix it. They want to come and there's a high-level leadership role we're hiring for right now. We were kind of chatting through the the final conversations this person has to have. And we mean the um the C leader that I was talking to about like how is this gonna go? And he's like, well, if it scares them, then that he's not right for us. So if it scares them, then we know. But yeah, the anti-cell should do one of two things. It should scare them, ideally, but then that scare, that fear should be make them super excited to come in and fix it because you want builders. That's uh, that's what we say. Like, startup is a or freshman is a company full of builders. So you want people who see the challenges. We call them challenges, uh, not problems, because that's what they are. Do you want to come fix them and build with us? If you don't, totally fine.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yeah. Yeah, it's really important to slow down. I think that that's a missed opportunity. A lot of talent teams out there is like how much time are you really spending focusing on the challenges of the organization? Right. I also think that like we have to be really careful in how we think about conversion rates at different points in the funnel.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

And you know, sometimes we need our conversion rates to be lower, right? For sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Oh, yeah. If it's too high, that's a red flag.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yeah, it's like it's that doesn't just mean that you're crushing it on source. Like, even if you're crushing it, getting the most relevant people set up, you should still have pretty low conversion rates, in my opinion. When you do the anti-cell properly, uh, and you do things like the anti-cell, and you also do things like mention the fact that references are gonna be checked from previous direct managers or whatever your process is of like getting ahead of things uh to get people out early versus getting all the way through the process and then it not working out. Like you're gonna have fall off where you don't know what happened exactly. Like there might be times where somebody doesn't get back to you because you did the anti-cell and they didn't like that, or you told them, Hey, we do a comprehensive background check and we need references from previous direct managers, you go through that process, and you know, maybe they say, Yeah, of course, and then you don't hear back from them. I mean, yeah, when we do things right, and this is hard because it's like we we can't we don't always have the exact like attribution or reasons for our our numbers, our data, which is frustrating. But it's like when we do it the right way, the reality is like we're not always gonna know what happened to that one candidate and why did they fall off. It doesn't mean that we didn't that necessarily something didn't go right. It could have been we did the right thing and therefore we don't know what you know what I mean. Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Like some of it, you yeah, you data, data, data, data, data all day long, but some of it just can't be attributed to that. Like some of it is like especially like the the last couple weeks of December, um, when you and I first spoke, we were in a massive hiring push to kind of before we don't do like a holiday shutdown, but before everything got quiet. And across the board, people were dropping out left and right. Uh like it didn't matter the role, the level, it was just across the board. And we still have plenty of people in our pipelines, but like, I was like, what is going on? And like there is no, even though as much data analytics as Ashby shows, there is anything to show that people will apply. And a lot of these were inbound people, they'll apply and then they're just they'll just say, I've given it some thought, the timing's not right. But I'm like, you just wait. They're gonna resurface in a month from now once the new year has settled. And that's just a weird time to recruit, anyways. But yeah, you can't always attribute it to something. Um, sometimes people just don't want to keep the conversation going for whatever reason. It could be something you said or didn't said, and that's just again, okay, it's just not a good fit.

Startup Fit And The Anti-Sell

SPEAKER_00 29:47

I think it's it's it's it's hard to sometimes like because I don't know if all recruiters necessarily have the perspective of like what we're sharing with each other. It's hard, I think, for some people to understand. It's like when you had people drop you on a process and you don't know why this assumption of like what are we doing wrong? And of course, I think it's important to be introspective and to, but again, it's like as I've gotten better at my job and I know more about recruiting, yeah, it happens more because to the extent that I am interviewing, or when I'm advising my team on how to interview these types of things, it's like like anti-selling, very clear about references, very clear about this, very clear about that, setting expectations up front so they will self-select out because we don't want to go through all of this work of getting up through the interview process if it's not gonna be a fit. Let's figure it out as much as we can in that first one to two conversations, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:33

For sure. And I think like there's a few candidates coming to mind where that some of these things have happened where they didn't work out, and perhaps maybe it was worth scheduling up with another 30-minute conversation of hey, on our first call, it went well, but I kind of got the impression that you might not be fully leaned in yet. So before we even go forward, give it some thought before we do XYZ. But we were in such that hiring push in December that we were go, go, go, go that perhaps we can save some time, a lot of like candidate crush, heartbreak. Sometimes it's worth having that additional conversation. But yeah, I think like it that just also comes with confidence because, like you're saying, like if someone drops out, the general response for me is okay, onward and upward, like another, let's let's keep going, let's not lose momentum on this. Like that's why you always have more than one in your pipeline. That's why I always have more than two, more than three. You've got to have a handful at least so that way, you know, it all works out as it should. And I I do truly believe when people self-select or opt out or whatever it may be, uh, you still end up with the best person for the company. It might throw you back a week or two, whatever, but like you're still gonna wind up with the best fit for the company.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Yeah. I always get a little worried so when I'm like, well, how come nobody self-selected out? Like, yeah. Are we really like positioning this the right way?

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Like, yeah, there was a role a while ago, over a year ago, where like everyone was dropping out at the same stage. And I had never seen this many people at this, like the most consistent stage. And so that's where you have to like really pump the brakes and say, what is or is not happening in this stage of the interview process? Like, what is going on? Let's dial this down and really figure it out before we bring more people in. And you know, you have to do that. Sometimes you have to slow down just a little bit to accelerate yourself further.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Oh, yeah, for sure. No, you you said something else about like possibly setting up another conversation with people on a one-on-one, like just a one-off basis. And yeah, that is challenging, right? Because it's like when you're scaling and you have aggressive plans, and it's like just that having, even if it's not a super long process, having a consistent process can feel necessary to managing a funnel. I think ideally, I don't know, I would have to think more back and forth about this, but uh there are situations in which like uh it can be helpful to break process and and have an extra conversation. Like there's situations where for certain customers or certain openings where it's like a 30-minute screen isn't gonna cut it. Right. Like we need 45 minutes or we need an hour with that candidate. So we need to set up two skulls or we need to extend the screening time, or we have to right.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

That's why all at startups, all processes need to be lightweight. Uh, there will be plenty of times where I'm like, I know that the next step is them talking to this person, but because we need to do some selling on this candidate, I'm gonna keep them, but I'm gonna bring someone else forward because they're gonna enjoy that conversation with whoever that stakeholder is a lot more, and that's gonna help lean them in more. Like, and then we'll get them with so-and-so. It's we're not, we're not removing someone, we're just moving someone forward or like for really high-level roles. I'll be like, I can't do this, but they got to go straight to the CEO and do a quick 30-minute chemistry call with the CEO because they're they need to be leaned in early. So you just have to have that foresight, especially if you're the one and only or the leader. Like, and like, yeah, I apologize to my team a lot. I'm like, I'm sorry, no, this is out of process, but we have to do it this way for this candidate or for this role, so on and so forth. Because if you get too, I mean, again, like process makes me itch and it does, but like if you get too bogged down in it and it's just so regimented, you're gonna slow yourself down, slow your team down, lose candidates. You have to be able to be flexible and adaptable.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yeah, I I I agree. It's good to have these things. We need to have them to some extent, but it's it's there's yeah, but there's like you need to be flexible too.

Managing Drop-Offs And Funnel Reality

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Yeah, for sure. It's a north star, but there's a lot of stars in the sky, and we'll always go back to the north one, but we there's others.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Right, yeah, you gotta switch it up every once in a while.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

So at this point, so your team, you have two awesome recruiters uh reporting up into you. How many employees does your team roughly have?

SPEAKER_01 34:26

I think we're close to 130 now. Um, and about this time last year, I don't know. Maybe we were at like 70, 78.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

What do you think you'll be at net this time next year? Or maybe you don't know, but I'm just curious what um You guys are it's probably gonna be growing pretty fast, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Continuously, or are you we usually double in size? Um, you know, you have to count for churn and people exit stuff. That 130 should be close for like 150. Um but yeah, I I would say we'll definitely be at 200 by the end of this calendar year for sure. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

So the reason the reason I ask is like, so like when you look at the next year or six months, whatever, like just you know, near to uh midterm planning, yeah. What do you need to build in your department? Uh whether it's like building up the people, giving them professional development, technology process, training, hiring teams. I mean, like, how do you think about being ready to get to 200 people? And then also, I mean, you know, as you grow, as you mentioned, like there's gonna be more attrition. Like employees might you might have some to have start to have some more backfill, hopefully not, but maybe starting to a little bit as the company grows. I mean, it's going so quickly, hopefully not too much too soon. But um, yeah, how do you like yeah?

Breaking Process Thoughtfully

SPEAKER_01 35:41

The next six months of TA at Fresh Paint, in addition to just filling roles and head count, right? Because that that is the job, is going to be really, and it's a lot of my focus for this month. Um, and it'll it'll probably bleed into March a little bit, but um, really building out, you know, when I mentioned coming in, you have to build out that lightweight process um that you're gonna need. Now we're kind of on like 2.0 of that. And now how do we take the process and make it a little bit more appropriate for this current stage? Um, how do we, you know, take it from what Shannon did in 2024 to make it appropriate for 2026? And how do we take it? Now we have a C-suite, we didn't have a C suite when I joined. Now we have middle management, we didn't have middle management when I joined. And so now we've got a lot more cooks in the kitchen who operate very differently than when I first joined. And so I need to focus this month and next month on building out fresh paint recruiting 2.0 process of this has worked, it doesn't work anymore, this is going forward, and enforce that. I'm a pretty big enforcer. I um will actually like kick people out of debriefs if they haven't put their feedback in Ashby. I'll excuse them and say that you can't be in this debrief. Um, you can connect with everyone. You can connect with your manager one-on-one separately about your feedback. Um but yeah, I mean, you know, you you have to. Um, so yeah, that's gonna that's a lot of the focus for the next six months. Like implementing that. Um, you're gonna have to iterate in a lot, get feedback, make a few changes and tweaks, enforce it. That will help us accelerate hiring a bit faster, keep the talent bar very high. That's kind of the focus for me. And that will cascade down to my team and make them a little bit more enabled on their jobs.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Well, it's like if you had to boil it down to one thing, like one thing over the next quarter that you're gonna be focused on, what is it?

SPEAKER_01 37:15

What we're at least me um personally, which goes out to the team, is we really want to focus on that's the best way to phrase this, but like really a laser focus on nailing down the candidate profile and the scorecard of exactly who we're hiring, the type of curve, what are they going, what is the mission of this role, what are the competencies, what are the qualifications, and really keeping that lightweight. We don't want a long, arduous thing. It's just a one-sheeter. But working with the leaders on that and the hiring managers, whoever, getting really married to that and then letting that influence the rest of the process, the scorecards, the process, the loops, all of that. We've had iterations of that in the past, but we're really locking in on that and like enforcing it. And I will enforce it the same way I do debriefs. Your role cannot even be touched by recruiting until you do this, um, sort of thing. So that's gonna be a big focus for me this quarter because it's one thing to spend all of this time implementing and putting it all together, Notion or Google Draw. Then you have to roll it out, then you have to enforce it. I think enforcing is where a lot of teams lose on things like this. And you have to enforce it to C-suite because that's usually the people that are going to try to break the process, is the people that they're gonna just like not do it. And so you have to also enforce it to them and kind of call them on hey, you told me to do this, you told me to implement this, and you're not doing it yourself. So um, yeah, you have to be comfortable doing that too. But that'll be the big focus for this quarter.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

That's awesome. That's awesome. What do you think is like gonna be the biggest obstacle for your team this year?

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Um, you know, we are at, we've been at this phase for a while where I'm not in every interview, I'm not in every debrief. I cannot be in all of them. So, really empowering my team to also be enforcers of no, like hold the line. Tell SVP this or C-suite this, tell them no. I don't tell them to come see me. I'm like, no, you handle it. If you need me, I'm there. I want you to be that talent partner to them, not me. Because, you know, that I don't want to undermine anything. So I think that'll be the biggest struggle. Um, because like I said, we have a C-suite now, we have middle management, we have all sorts of layers of management. And so everyone has different flavors and flares of how they operate. And we're really getting everyone locked into what we want and then enforcing it. Enforcing it, I do think is the biggest problem when you're in implementing anything, um, whatever it may be.

Headcount Plans And TA 2.0

SPEAKER_00 39:27

I I think it's incredibly valuable when a recruiter is able to have those types of conversations with uh VPs and hold the line, understand. Of course, it's like you you need to understand what the town acquisition department, what you say, okay, hey, here's our process. These are our non-negotiables. And then you're told from a VP of a function head, right? Somebody who's running what it could be an ENG product, GTM, whatever, saying not doing it or doing something else, but to be able to communicate back to that individual that this needs to be done the XYZ way, these are the reasons for it. This has been something that's been discussed with our TA leadership and our founders, and we've decided that this needs to be the consistent way because even for recruiters that might have a pretty good skill set overall, I do see a fair amount of recruiters get tripped up when it comes to being able to kind of manage those relationships and have those types of conversations. Um, so I think trying to think about how to boil that into like an interview process of being able to like make sure we're hiring recruiters that can do that.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

What would you I think the I think the tripping up comes when like so I know when I when I kick people out of the debrief, right? The only reason I'm able to do that is because I know I've got my C-suite support on that. I know that I've got the CEOs for supporting that. I know that I have been told explicitly do that. I want you to do that. I will back you up in that. So I feel confident in saying, and I'm obviously not rude about this. I'm just saying, it's like, hey James, I if you join the Zoom call for the debrief, I saw that you didn't get your feedback in Ashby. I'm just gonna ask that you hop off this call and you can connect with your manager one-on-one about your feedback once you've had a chance to distill it into Ashby. Like, no big deal. It's not this big dramatic thing, but like I'm able to do that because I know I have the support and backup. My recruiters are able to do that because they know they have my support, which then has C-suite support. So I think people get tripped up when they either they might not have that at all or they don't feel like they have it. That's an internal thing that needs to be worked out. Like if you're trying to hold the line with hiring managers and you you hesitate, it's either because you just um don't love conflict and it doesn't have to be a conflict, it's a conversation. Conversation does not equal conflict, but um, you either just don't like those conversations or you don't feel like you have the backup of what you're trying to enforce. So you need that. Um, I'm only able to do that. I definitely get kind of um salty in debriefs. So people start saying they were fine, they were fine. I'll cut someone off and say, we don't hire for fine. So if we're talking about fine, we can cut the debrief right now. Like I we can all get time back. I'm not gonna keep doing this if we're talking, if we're using the word fine.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

I feel like I I I hear a type A coming out. I don't know about there's all this type B stuff you're talking about.

Scorecards, Rigor, And Enforcement

SPEAKER_01 41:58

Maybe a little, maybe a little, but like that's how you hold the talent bar. And I again I do these things because I know if my C my CEO is sitting in this call, he's going to appreciate that I'm doing that. I'm holding the talent bar, I'm holding leadership accountable. So I know I have that backup. And I know that if whoever I say those things to goes to him, he's gonna say, good for her. I would have said the same thing. So you just have to know that you have that support and backup. Whoever is your person that's giving that to you, you have to know that you have that. And if you don't feel like you have it, you have to have that conversation with your boss. And your question, like, how do you implement the interview process? Well, one, you announce that to the company, like going forward, the process is this, debriefs is this. If you don't have this, you're asked to leave. If you don't have your intake form or whatever, the role is not gonna get recruiting hours. My the logic of all of this is if you're not invested in it, how can I be invested in it? If the hiring manager isn't gonna do the intake form, do the scorecard. There are hiring managers that I have to say, hey, I need more than three bullet points in your feedback form. Um, I'm gonna reject this. And can you go back and actually put actual feedback, like examples, things they said, so on and so forth. Um, and you just have to kind of like just keep pushing and keep pushing. And ultimately, it all kind of leads to everyone having what's best for the business at mind, which is making great hires, but you do have to be comfortable pushing back and holding the line. And um, yeah, I've never gotten my hand slapped for it. So I'll keep doing it until I do.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Oh, yeah. I mean, even if you do, you know, sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

Yeah, even if I can I can handle a hand slap or two, and that's fine, but it's all in the name of what is best for the business, and that is hiring great talent for whatever role. Hiring is not a one-man sport, it's it's a lot of people. And so if someone's not carrying the weight, like uh contributing to the team, they have to kind of be called on that and they have to be told to be a team member in the hiring.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Yeah, all right, I agree. Well, hey, look, this is uh Shannon, this has been a really fun episode. I really do appreciate you coming on today, sharing your insight and helping us learn more about how to be successful as the first recruiter going into a startup. Very challenging job, probably the most challenging uh job you can have as a recruiter. So um, it's been really fun to be able to pick your brain since you've done it. Uh, essentially a couple times. First at Calendly is, I guess, recruiter number two, pretty early on. Yeah, fresh paint.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

So yeah, awesome. So much fun. It was great to chat.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Thanks.