Hiring Recruiters for an Early-Stage Startup Company with Amanda Daering, CEO of Newance

The Gradience

Most founders of early-stage startups look to recruit generalists. These individuals are agile, and experienced, and do not mind if things are frequently altered.

To employ a recruiter, you must be upfront about what you seek. Ask yourself the following questions: what are you searching for? And who is responsible for assessing the candidate’s suitability?

The majority of recruiters make the error of asking exactly the same set of questions to each prospect.

In this episode of The Gradience Podcast, Nigel is joined by Amanda Daering, CEO of Newance.

They cover:

👉 [ 00:06:58 ] Most early-stage startup founders prefer to hire generalists. These people can move fast and wouldn't mind if things are changed continuously

👉 [ 00:09:00 ] "There's nothing that kills enthusiasm in recruitment like time"

👉 [ 00:09:58 ] To hire the best talent, be clear on what you are looking for from the beginning. To help you with this, here are three questions:

• What are you looking for?
• How are you going to understand that element of it?
• Who is in charge of deciding whether this person is what you are looking for or not?

👉 [ 00:10:10 ] One common mistake most recruiters make is to ask four candidates in an interview the same set of questions

👉 [ 00:10:37 ] Interviews should be conversational as much as possible. The experience of the interview sessions should be as close as possible to the job

👉 [ 00:13:40 ] “Show and don't just tell.” Don't tell them the role is exciting; show them a list of your awards. Tell them about the last person in that role that got promoted

👉 [ 00:16:14 ] One signal to an over-bloated interview process is repetition. For example, you are on the fifth step, and you ask your candidate about things already on their resume

👉 [ 00:21:04 ] For companies with many "voices", it is important to do an "interview retro". That means no bother should discuss their decision/scores with anyone else. They anonymously write their opinions and only share them when the results are collated

👉 [ 00:22:36 ] In terms of scaling as a company, it's important to grow as fast as possible while keeping the quality in check.

👉 [ 00:23:44 ] Having a reason for your growth as a startup is as important as the growth itself

👉 [ 00:38:01 ] When hiring a recruiter, consider the percentage of your hires that are from applicants and those from people you went out to source

If you’re in getting team-building tips from a successful founder, and want to build a cross-functional team and a team with the right atmosphere, tune in to this episode of The Gradience Podcast, a Podcast by Build Talent.

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And connect with Amanda here:

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👉 Substack: https://txtnews.substack.com

About the Show

“The Gradience” is a podcast by Build Talent & hosted by Nigel Robinson, wherein each episode, we’ll be speaking with a founder or expert as we discuss the art & science of hiring leaders, why it matters, and how you can keep up.

The Gradience is hand crafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Previous guests include: Riley Ennis of Freenome, Matt Birnbaum of Pear VC, Derek Lo of Medallion, Chandan Lodha of CoinTracker, Jennifer Smith of Scribe
Check out our 3 most downloaded episodes:

• Prioritizing Culture with Riley Ennis, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Freenome
• Acquiring Your Dream Team with Evan Walden, Co-Founder & CEO of Getro
• The Role of Data Science in Early Stage Companies, with Kevin Novak, Managing Partner & Founder at Rackhouse Venture Capital