From 30 to 130 Employees Without VC Money: Here’s How It Was Done with Tristan Mackrory

Joel Algee: Foreign. What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Recruiting Is no Joke. I'm your host, Joel Algee, and this is the ultimate recruitment podcast that brings you a blend of entertainment, no nonsense insights, and of course, the latest trends. Join me as I expose bad takes in the recruitment industry and get real with talent leaders to give you an inside view of the industry here on Recruiting Is no Joke. Welcome to Recruiting Is no Joke. I am, um, your host, Joel Alji. I'm excited to be with you guys today. We've got another fantastic guest. I have Tristan McCrory. Did I say it right? Yeah, look, there we go. I got Tristan in the house with us. Tristan, uh, for anyone that doesn't know you out there, I, uh, always like to ask, who are you, uh, what do you do and who do you do it for? Cool.

Tristan McCrory: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much, Joel. Of course. I'm Tristan, uh, VP of people and talent. Aomi. I've spent the last 10 years scaling high growth tech companies across San Francisco, Tel Aviv and now Europe. Usually stepping into chaos and building the structure, culture and systems that let teams grow fast without falling apart. I joined our media about two years ago when we're around 30 people. We've now scaled past 130 with revenue growing from, I'm being very public and transparent here. Revenue, uh, growing from 90 million to 167 billion last year up to now. We're going to go past 350 million this year, all completely bootstrapped, no investors, and well over 2.5 million, uh, revenue per employee. Or for the American listeners out there, that's $3 million per employee. Uh, currently my role has always been pretty simple. Build a company where the best people can do the best work of their careers. That means a really high talent density, clear performance expectations, and a culture of ownership and speed. I'm here today because I think there's a different model for people and talent in Europe. Something a little closer to Silicon Valley ambition, but in a bootstrapped context. And that combination is what makes our media where I am right now, uh, such a fun and intense place to build.

Joel Algee: I love it. And just for anyone who doesn't know, what does Al Media do?

Tristan McCrory: So of course we're a bootstrapped ad tech startup, essentially a, uh, place for app discovery.

Joel Algee: Very cool. I love it. So walk me through. Uh, hopefully, I mean, maybe you did, but most, uh, people I have on the show didn't wake up one day and go, hey, I want a career in kind of talented people. So I'D love to know kind of how you got started in this space. And just, uh, a little bit of the backstory there as well.

Tristan McCrory: Interesting. I did the classic kind of recruiting kind of background of not always wanting to be a recruiter. It wasn't my lifelong ambition. I actually started in education. So I was teaching and I taught for 18 months at a secondary school. I was speaking with the teachers that had been doing it their entire careers. Huge respect to them. Right. And I enjoyed the role. And there were people, you know, uh,

Joel Algee: uh, what was your, what was your stage?

Tristan McCrory: And they were looking at me going, don't do it unless you really want this your entire life. Don't fall into this. And I looked around for something that I could have high impact with and be able to be able to also have a kind of a monumental change on people's careers and lives. And this recruiting position came up nearly about 10 years ago now.

Joel Algee: So when, just, uh, to go back to the teaching, like, did you have like a generalized subject or what? What were you kind of, what was your focus there?

Tristan McCrory: So it was primary education, which is like elementary.

Joel Algee: Yeah, elementary school.

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, elementary education, but for secondary school kids. So it was kids, uh, that had gone. Being held back a couple of years.

Joel Algee: Okay, wow. So obviously, I mean, a thread between the two. Just have it being in a role that makes an impact. Obviously, obviously mattered. So this first recruiting gig that you landed, like, how did that come about? Like, did you just apply to it? Was it someone you knew? Or like, how did you kind of get into that first role?

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, um, it's a great question. I just applied to it. I saw a company, a large multinational agency, and I kind of sent a message to one of their, uh, internal talent partners. And I think it was probably quite a weird inbound message as well, coming from someone who's a teacher to go, I want to come and get this entry level position recruitment.

Joel Algee: Yeah, that's cool. All right, so you're starting in recruitment. Did you know, I guess at what point did you kind of realize, okay, this is definitely something that I could do, you know, kind of further, this is something I could build into. What, what point did you get to where you realize that?

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, it was, it was really quick coming into this large agency which has, honestly, I think, best in class onboarding and a way of learning the ways, uh, of the trade in one of these large agencies. It was pretty simple to quickly pick up, taking the skills from teaching and understanding how to communicate with people and also be able to understand where people are coming from.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: And um, kind of align and match up. It was a really quick career progression for me there as well. So I, HM. Came in as obviously like an associate junior and I think within two years I was leading a team.

Joel Algee: Wow. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So you started off in that role, like how did you start to get into kind of the startup space? Like how did you kind of know right away too? Like hey, that's a goal of mine. I want to, I want to work with founders. I want to work at this like earliest stage type company or how did that come about?

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, so I was quite fortunate with a lot of work as well. But I was quite fortunate to uh, be able to have the opportunity to work on some large internal projects in this multinational agency. So they were just moving their kind of their center of excellence, their entire back office to ah, a new location. I jumped in on that project, relocated a lot of internal folks, you know, 600, 700 miles away and then also rehired many of the team as well who weren't making that relocation journey. And by having that opportunity to do this large, kind of spinning so many plates, working on so many different elements of this. After fulfilling that project and getting it completed within about a year, they then asked me to work on an internally incubated startup, which was an AI led startup this large multinational agency uh, had funded and invested in. And so I was the third hire there. I grew out a team and worked on that for the next nine months. And this is, we're talking, you know, seven, eight years ago, AI was still in its infancy.

Joel Algee: Yeah. So is it pre chatgpt?

Tristan McCrory: Oh, it's, it's way pro. Yeah, way, way chatgpt. Way before that.

Joel Algee: So this was this to like help them with like their own search then internally for the, for the agency, like a matching type of uh, type of product.

Tristan McCrory: Exactly. So they were trying to build a competitor for their own agency but for a different market. Right. It was a great learning point. I really enjoyed it. I feel like it isn't what you would call AI today. Right. It's more kind of word matching, looking for certain words and CVs and going, okay, this person has said uh net in their CV three times. They must be really good for this position. So this is way before ChatGPT.

Joel Algee: Yeah, it makes sense. So you did that and then how long was it before you got more into like the internal kind of recruiting position at a company?

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, great question. So after working through these two kind of really exciting kind of I guess startup projects internally. I wanted to do something a little bit myself. So I started consulting and I was working with uh, startups both in Scotland, London, and then I branched out to Paris and Berlin. I did that for quite some time. It was an amazing experience. I was working with so many kind of mostly pre seed. So like, you know, there were five, ten people working, working and trying to build something up, usually with very, very limited fund, especially as these are mostly European startups too. And then I was uh, reached out a couple of years later by somebody I thought was a potential partner for my business or wanting consulting done. And they were uh, speaking about this Silicon Valley based company which was about to scale up. And I was like, cool, okay, yeah, I can help these guys. Like, let's see, let's have a chat. And it was within about two conversations I realized, okay, actually no, they want me to join. Yeah, they want me to join them and scale out their European operation.

Joel Algee: Cool.

Tristan McCrory: And I was like, these opportunities don't come knocking many, you know, twice something where you've got something which has just hit series C. Andreessen Horiz is behind them and they need somebody to come in and scale out the European operations and head up their talent. Me and the founder, I think he was 24 at the time, we really hit it off. I could really see what he wanted to build. I was really energized. But what, what his vision was and the entire leadership team there as well. And it was within three months of that conversation, I closed down my consulting firm and I'd relocated to Berlin and set up the entity, found an office space and uh, just working in kind of beast mode.

Joel Algee: Yeah, I love that. I love it. Walk us through that too. So you're starting off obviously super small, hyper growth. What year was it?

Tristan McCrory: I'd have to check. I think it's about 2021. That sounds right.

Joel Algee: Okay, so, so we're like post covet then as well. So we're kind of living in that like remote hybrid. Great resignation time as well, where there's obviously a lot of things going on. It's, it's. I feel like that was a really challenging time to find people and just nail them down. Especially you know, those top candidates. Everybody had a ton of offers, so completely different landscape than today. So like what me, walk me through that. Like you get this new opportunity, uh, you work with, with the founder. What's that mindset like? You know, because I think there's a lot of people that would love an opportunity like that, but they don't always think about, like, what it entails. Like, you're on beast mode. Like, what does that look like? Like, how, how are you? You know, what, what are your working hours like? Like, how are you, how are you kind of functioning? I just love to know because I think, I think sometimes people don't really always realize like what it takes to get done. Especially you know, in recruitment where. Yeah, you know, we're talking to people a lot at random hours and you know, just walk us through that.

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, touch on one point. Now, straight away, working hours, I was working both Berlin, uh, and San Francisco hours simultaneously, back to back every day. I'm quite lucky. Naturally, I don't sleep that much. I think I've got an average of five hours, 20 a night. But during this time it was a little bit less than that. It was intense. But I think, and this is what I'm trying to replicate here as well. Right. I think when you bring these really high performing people all in one room together, it's infectious. If I was coming into a business where people were clocking off at 5 and that was it and they were expecting me to do so much more, I would struggle with that. But if you're bringing everyone and you've got all these incredible people from all over the world with incredible backgrounds, it's inspiring and energizing. Uh, I always say those couple of years were fantastic. For my air miles, I was traveling between Tel Aviv and San Francisco, but it was awful for my sleep.

Joel Algee: Definitely wasn't a work life balance gig in that kind of way. But I love, I love what you're saying though, in terms of getting together great people, you're building something. You have, you have this like vision. It sounds like, you know, you met with the founder, you're building this relationship and it's like you have this shared vision when you're recruiting people for something like that. Like, it's obviously not just technical fit that you're looking for. Yeah. You're not just looking for like a resume that just reads like, how, how do you, how do you start to vet that out with the conversations you're having? And then as you kind of building out your own team, like, how do you train recruiters to really look for that? And how do you find recruiters that even can vet that out?

Tristan McCrory: It's a good question. I've interviewed so many recruiters over the years trying to build these, well, I believe very high performing teams. I think it comes down to obviously the experience comes into it and being able to Index on past successes, uh, which should be an indicator of future, future potential. Yeah, but it's also just pure potential as well. And you get that through an interview. You can understand where their passion, where their motivation, where their career projection can lie. I'm not one for going, you've worked here for six years so you're going to be amazing. There's an element of indexing for it, but I really don't just look at somebody spending a long time doing one position and going, then you're going to be fantastic. Yeah, I really like to see that kind of career progression quite rapidly.

Joel Algee: Yeah, what I'm seeing a lot more now is um, a lot more complete profiles. I'm seeing a lot almost like better resumes coming through. Uh, obviously a lot of candidates are using AI to do that. So like I guess when you're, when you're in an interview, what are some of the questions that you're asking? Like how do you, how do you kind of figure out what, what even with like potential, Like I'm just curious to get your take on like how you would vet out that potential and how you, you know, how you do that in the context of like a 30 minute, 45 minute conversation.

Tristan McCrory: There's many different types of it. One that I particularly like to understand what they're like in a difficult or challenging environment and to understand their resilience is to understand when people have told them no, even though they think it's the best uh, decision for something that they've been trying to drive within their career and how they managed to convince somebody to get to yes. It's really interesting answers from that and they vary from I did it anyway and this is how I then convinced them, which is a really interesting kind of route depending on how they've gone about that or being told no and then deciding okay, I'm just going to leave it at the door. It's curious to see how people think

Joel Algee: about that when you know, let's say someone, uh. Because what's that? It's like um, it's like asking permission after the fact. Right. Or it's. I forget that's some type of phrase. Are you then looking at what was the outcome of that as well? Or is that ah, um, ma'. Am. Because I'm curious with that one. Cause that's a good, uh. Does it depend on like the type of role you're, you're working on as well?

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, it really depends on type of role. But I think the thing is in these kind of hyper growth Startups and scale ups.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: You're looking for people that are able, uh, to push and also challenge sometimes first time managers and leaders who sometimes might be like, okay, this is how I think it's done and I need a team that is able to go, okay, cool, but have you thought about it this way and this is how we need to do it and get that answer to yes.

Joel Algee: Yeah, I love that. So, you know, so you obviously scaled up. When did you exit that first company then that you were with?

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, I think the writing was definitely on the wall when we sponsored an F1 racing team and we flew them out to Morocco along with the car. Uh, we hit the unicorn valuation, we scaled up to 250. But this is definitely pre interest world. Right. Back when it was easy.

Joel Algee: Yeah, I mean that was that 2021, 2022 time period where, where it's just.

Tristan McCrory: I'm sorry, I missed that.

Joel Algee: No, no, I was saying it's like that 2021, 2022 world. And then it all, it all came.

Tristan McCrory: It was, it was good for these companies anyway and Silicon Valley, I think they needed that, that bit of reckoning, uh, for being a bit more smart with their investing.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: So we went from 250 to like 35 overnight. We had a bit of a similar to kind of we work scenario where the founder CEO went in for a monthly board meeting and was removed. I wasn't, wasn't expecting that. Along with almost all the C level following on from that. I had six months to really think and decide where I wanted to go next and where I wanted to build. And I got the worst reach out I've ever seen in my life. Ah. And I work here now, so. So it almost worked. Um, let me, let me run over how that reach out looked. It said, do you want to make free cash? Okay. Free cash is one of our products.

Joel Algee: I love that.

Tristan McCrory: Obviously, like any sane recruiter, I thought, this is a scam. This doesn't sound legit at all.

Joel Algee: Did it come via LinkedIn or what was that email?

Tristan McCrory: It came via LinkedIn, via, uh, an external recruiter.

Joel Algee: Oh my gosh.

Tristan McCrory: All right. I love that I didn't reply to that message. Fortunately, I got another message from one of our internal TAs based on their parent company, Form Media. I was curious but dubious. Uh, the website was pretty outdated. It didn't, I didn't quite understand what they were like, how they were generating revenue.

Joel Algee: Just free cash, that's all they did.

Tristan McCrory: Yeah.

Joel Algee: Printing out money, you're like, I've been in that scenario before. Uh, let me, let me think about that.

Tristan McCrory: And then I was like, okay, let's have this conversation. I've been speaking with a lot of AI companies. This is two years ago, and all the AI companies were hiring.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: A lot of them that I was talking to were not positive revenue. And I couldn't see. And you know, that was a key part of when I was having conversations with the CEOs and whatnot. What's your path to profitability? How would you know? How does this look? I'm, um, not wanting to go through the same scenario again of building something for two years and for it to kind of be cut suddenly.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: Uh, not that you can ever fully shield from that, of course, especially in this line of work. So I had this conversation with uh, CEO and I was like, cool, okay, you're a legit company. He shared how we're generating revenue and that kind of path to profitability. I was certainly curious after that. Then I had a follow up chat with the uh, CEO founder, which at, ah, no point beforehand had been mentioned about his story. He was quite even more so private. But so I came on site to meet him. He was 21 and he's built a company of, at that point around 30 employees, generating 90 million.

Joel Algee: Wow.

Tristan McCrory: Not VC backed. So nobody knew. It was within like seconds of meeting him. I was like, okay, I can see the passion, I can see the kind of like the drive. I want to come and build this, I want to come and do this. Let's go. But we're going to stop operating under free cash when we're hiring people because it's not going to. Like, if we're wanting to hire, you know, the best folks in the industry, we need to build out a real brand that people can believe in and drive. And so one of the first things I did was upon joining, Will spend a quite a significant amount of, realistically, this is his money. There's no VCs, there's no banks. Spend a significant amount of his money to go for a complete rebranding. And so we worked with a large design studio, same design studio that did Airbnb, WhatsApp, back before they were acquired by Meta. And they built our branding, our, uh, mission, our, uh, values, everything that's like core identity, to really make us feel like the future unicorn that we believe we will be.

Joel Algee: I love that. I love it. And it's so interesting because, I mean you experience that, right, as a leader, getting recruited in the way that you did. I think coming in there, right away. Was it easy to get that, like, buy in for that or like, walk me through that process? I think a lot of. A lot of leaders who get into a role new, you know, maybe they. They suggest something like that, but I feel like that's even outside of even just purely talent. I mean, you're talking about like an overall rebrand of the company. So.

Tristan McCrory: Yeah.

Joel Algee: Like, was that something that, like, right away they bought into and they trusted, or like, how did you get to that point?

Tristan McCrory: It was relatively quick, uh, because I used my own example. I told them, like, I deleted their initial message. It's like, I really didn't think this was legit. You've got an incredible thing. Yeah. You want to hire fantastic people? Let's go and run with this.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: Okay. And now we've gone from, what, 30 to 1, 30 in under two years with a really high talent bar, which I believe is obviously not solely, but a large part of that is that initial kind of feeling by company branding, whatnot.

Joel Algee: Yeah, I love it. No, it's. It's huge. So I'm curious, kind of, you know, modern times, I think we. We were talking about this offline as well. Definitely a challenging market. Uh, there's a lot of uncertainty out there. And so it's not like, I mean, even in the conversations I'm having with people, it's not like every single company right now is rapidly growing. Uh, obviously we're hearing about layoffs. We're seeing a lot of people on. On the market. And I know that that's not just in the US That's. It's like a global thing. So, you know, I'm. I'm curious. A lot of teams right now that are dealing with massive inbound, you know, applications, they got smaller teams. Like, even if your company's doing well, it's like you're still. You're expected to get more done with less people. So what we threw, like, how you balance, like, inbound applications, how you start to look at, you know, outbound and going and get people like, I'd love to. Love to kind of just know your strategy with that. Um, and like, the way that you think about that, obviously you're trying to keep the bar super high. Right. So, yeah, like, how do you balance that? Because there's a lot of good people in the market, a lot of good people working still. So how do you balance that scenario?

Tristan McCrory: It's really tough. We're bucking the trend a little bit as a business in 2025 as well, where we are office first five days a week. And so that is to say when we're looking at our talent market, we're looking at Berlin in Europe. And Berlin in Europe is a bit more in its early years in terms of technical maturity.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: And so we're having to really headhunt for the talent that we're trying to build. So we, yes, we do have a lot of inbound and I think we're around 50% of what has been headhunted and outbound and 50% inbound. And how do we manage, how do we manage all those applications? I think we had like 22,000 over the last 3 months.

Joel Algee: Wow.

Tristan McCrory: We do have a large TA team here. We have, I think it's around 8 people in the TA team which is. And we're hiring another 3 for a headcount company of 130 is large, really large. But it's based on our kind of scope and how we're growing. And we have kind of an oppositional KPI for the team really to make sure that we have that quality of hire, uh, stays really high. And so the oppositional KPI is they shouldn't be hiring more than one per month.

Joel Algee: So each TA partner then you saying they really have one hire per month that they go and I guess what do you mean by this oppositional KPI? I don't know whether I've heard this

Tristan McCrory: before in the sense, uh, that I'm not looking for them to hire or we're not looking for them to hire three people or you know, their stats are down. Of course you can always hire more than one person per month. But what I'm looking for is try to really focus on making sure the person that you're going to hire is the right fit and uh, and aligned for the business. Because we don't have any safety net. Right. We've got no, we've got no investment.

Joel Algee: So each hire obviously is, is super critical at this point. I'm curious, like how do you, when uh, it comes to like let's outbound strategy or like even just like outside help, how do you train people to balance like the sourcing and the inbound applications? It like time management, is it uh, continual training and like how do you kind of balance that with the team?

Tristan McCrory: That's a good question. So we have a couple of different methods. So firstly we've got sources, we have currently two right now and we're hiring for a third. And so they're fully like, you know, one's focused on tech, one's focused on Growth, with the other focused on early years as well. But then as a team as well, we come together, I think, once a week for. For a couple of hours.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: And we all work on the most critical roles.

Joel Algee: I love it. So, also curious to, to hear your take on. Um, I know we were kind of discussing this before the show. It sounds like you have a role on your talent team, which I don't hear about a lot. But, uh, I'd love to kind of hear your thinking behind this and why every TA team should have a data analyst on the team. Like, walk me through this, like, what is their role? What does IT design do? And like, how have you seen this successful, I guess, in the past? And why do you think this is becoming more and more critical as well, kind of as time goes on?

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, I think it's something that's been done before. I'm hoping that we're kind of taking it a little bit to the next level. And I'm sure there's lots of other companies that are too. Previously. I think this would be called recruiting ops.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: Right. And, um, so we've actively tried to. And um, have successfully saw somebody that isn't just doing the coordination, isn't just doing operations where they're connecting things together, but actually has a deep passion for everything data. And so when we were looking for this position, we were looking for someone with some experience within the people space that had maybe where we've gone with this, found somebody who then went off for two years to train to be a data analyst. And this person, when they've joined us, and they joined about two months ago, has been an absolute force multiplier, not just for our team, but for the entire business. We went from kind of standard ATS dashboards, which are very, very helpful, don't get me wrong, but to kind of full automation across the board where every hiring manager is getting an automatic report sent on their roles once a week. We've gone from being super reactive to being really strategic, which means we built out like three lovable tools of which we host ourselves, which are used internally across the company. And that's from salary bandings, which are public internally. For our business, we have our, um, missions, outcomes and competencies for each position, which is AI assisted throughout a sort of tool that we've created and then also kind of an onboarding workflow which we've also built, uh, using lovable. And then there's a lot of mini apps that we're creating within people apps which previously required manual work and then finally this role which completely unlocked this for us is creating this really deep salary banding kind of tool which has ah, over. I think it's got more than a thousand rows of different kinds of roles, different kinds of levels and what those bands look like to us. We wouldn't be able to do that without somebody who deeply understands data and is able to create those data pipelines between different programs.

Joel Algee: Everything you say makes a ton of sense and obviously uh, I love just this idea of the team going from reactive to being in that position where they're really able to, I'm sure even with hiring managers, just them being able to get that report alone to kind of see where things are at automatically is, is um, you know, it just is such a game changer. So I'm curious then like for your team, how do they use that, uh, I guess to partner up or like what are some of the changes you've seen with just your team going from purely reactive? You know, here's your role. Okay, now we're, now we're just trying to fill it to actually having those, the strategy, like how is that going to change and what do those conversations look like? And I'm curious even just from your team's perspective, obviously that's a big change I'm sure for them as well. So where do you have them spend time? I'm just more curious around with like hiring managers, like how do you get them to that point where they're actually partners and they're kind of seen in that way 100%.

Tristan McCrory: So when we actually. That leads to a really good point. But I'm just gonna uh, I'm gonna answer your question. When we're building out these kind of lovable workflow, we realized we could build this out where it's completely self service and no talent partner needed to be part of this. And we had this kind of, we did an internal workshop day where we were like, oh, what shall we do? How far should we go? And then we realized the negatives of allowing this being completely self service where you uh, remove the talent partnership from ta. And so we made sure that actually you have to keep connecting back to a talent partner to make sure they're on the right path. Because what I don't want is for a hiring manager to go, I'm going to kick off a role, I'm going to type in this job title, I'm going to type in three things I want them to do and then it's going to create a mission, outcome, competency, figure out the Salary for this, which is tools that we built. So it does that all. And then they go, okay, talent team, can you go and post this position? We realized what. We created a monster. So we were like, okay, a hiring manager will go, I want to hire for this position. And then a talent acquisition partner will go with them, run through this tool. So they're having to really think about it. And it's coming over examples of what somebody in this position would usually do. At a company of our size that's in hyper growth in our vertical, it's got all these prompts already built into it. Yeah, it understands us deeply and our kind of values. And then they can work through it together over kind of 20 minutes, half an hour. And, um, that really builds trust as well, because it also goes. So if they're doing these things, this is the salary banding for this position. So. So the hiring managers are also understanding that we're not just coming out with this whimsically. It's all very purposeful.

Joel Algee: I love that. The first agency I worked with, they're more of like an RPO, but not necessarily at the scale that some RPOs are. So it was. It was. We would just do it one role at a time. One of the things that we would always do is we'd have the kickoff call, and then three days later, we'd have like a calibration call just to make sure we're on track. And I remember at first thinking, okay, like, a lot of this stuff could just be done. But I think sometimes we. We actually, um. It's like we under underestimate that power of just having that time working through with another person and how much trust that builds. Because I think sometimes, like, it can. You know, I've seen it done where you have the hiring manager fill out information and they're. They're doing it themselves. You know, maybe it takes them an hour to fill it out. I think if TA is not involved in that and they're not thinking through things together, it's almost like the hiring manager then owns everything. And I think it's hard then to come with candidates because no matter what, you've got to calibrate. Like, especially if you haven't worked with the hiring manager before and until you've worked with them a number of times and you've kind of seen what they like, how they think about things, how they read a profile. Right. Because we all read profiles completely different. Like, there's so many different elements that it's not just the company they've worked out the length of time. There's a lot of different ways you can look at a profile, but I think there's that, that working together to build that trust, ultimately that's what sets people up for success, especially with these types of roles. Because then you haven't even got into personality and working style and all of those other type of soft skills which you're just not going to know until you start interviewing people.

Tristan McCrory: 100 uh, percent. It's all about setting those expectations now.

Joel Algee: We're kind of running up on time here. I'm curious for just your thoughts around 2026. Not just like the job market and that type of stuff, but more so with, with rec. Like what do you think that recruiter role is going to evolve into? Because I do think obviously we've, we've got a lot of tech here that makes even what you described like. I think hiring managers are going to be able to do more and there's a lot of talk around TA being more of a strategic partner. So I'm just curious, what are your thoughts with that? Like how do you see the role evolving and what do you think the skills of that 2026 and beyond recruiter looks like? And what would you, what would you think people need to focus on right now to kind of get to that point?

Tristan McCrory: Yeah, I think what you say is correct. Talent acquisition is transitioning to be more strategic. And if like my, my concern is for folks who aren't thinking about that already, this is going to be a really difficult challenge to uh, evolve. Right. I really believe that, uh, talent acquisition isn't just recruiting anymore. It's also thinking about, well, okay, what about planning for the future? Right. If we hire this position, what happens next? Should we start searching for that now? Should we start building out those pipelines again? It's just going from that kind of reactive stage to strategic. It's not only thinking of. I also believe. And um, maybe this is me coming from an internal perspective. Talent acquisition doesn't just finish when you filled for position. It also goes on to, oh, you're in the business. How are you doing? How are you enjoying it? I was maintaining that kind of relationship throughout a candidate's kind of employment, uh, journey too.

Joel Algee: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Well, look, I know we're, we're at time here and it's uh, what, what time is it for you locally? It's like nine.

Tristan McCrory: It's, it's just past 9:30 over here

Joel Algee: p.m. i love it. So we're working, uh, Overtime here on the podcast. But Tristan, I've loved hearing about your journey. I, I feel like there's a lot of value, you know, that people are going to get from this episode. But I'd love to know, like, are there any, anywhere else people can find you, connect with you, find your content? Where, where's the best place for people to look for you?

Tristan McCrory: Mostly LinkedIn, I would say. I'm doing a couple of podcasts, But I think LinkedIn, I'm doing a, uh, post once a week usually.

Joel Algee: Amazing. Well, guys, look, I, I always say go connect with Tristan. Say, hey, I heard you on the Recruiting is no joke podcast. I always say be patient as well. He's probably not spending as much time on LinkedIn as I am these days. But Trist, it's been a pleasure to hear from you. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do here in this, uh, you know, in this next, uh, kind of hyper growth stage of the business and looking uh, forward to uh, connecting with you in the future. Again, last question, last. For anyone who is in, in Europe or, you know, they're in um, you know, Germany, let's say, where, where's the best place for them to apply for jobs as well?

Tristan McCrory: Honestly, I'm a huge fan of directly reaching out to businesses. I've had so many people reach out to me in my inbox. I'm worried now what I'm saying. I just realized.

Joel Algee: All right, well, that's actually a good one. What's it, what's the best tip for? Because I get a ton of messages to. What's your number one tip for? Just good. A good LinkedIn message. Like, what's, what's the key to it?

Tristan McCrory: The number one tip for doing a direct reach out is get someone else to do it for you. Get a referral. No, no, no, for real. We've just made a hire, really strong hire for our team.

Joel Algee: Yeah.

Tristan McCrory: Asked their old manager to refer them in M. And it was such a fantastic beaming referral. I was like, I need to speak to this person.

Joel Algee: Love, uh, that smart. I think that, you know, with, with how many applicants we've got, I mean, looking for referrals is, is huge. Right. And, and really leaning into that network. And I, I, I know we talk about that all the time, but I don't always think that people, uh, really do that. I don't think that's a go to. So, so Tristan, awesome connecting with you. We'll talk soon. And guys, if, um, you know, like I said, if you're gonna reach out to Tristan. Just be patient, say you heard him on the podcast, and we'll be back next week, uh, with another guest. So thank you for making it all the way through the show. And Tristan, thank you again.

Tristan McCrory: Cool. Thank you so much, Joel. Cheers.

Joel Algee: Yeah, we'll talk later.

Tristan McCrory: Bye. Bye.

Joel Algee: Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Recruiting is no joke. If these conversations resonated with you, don't forget to hit the follow button to stay updated on our latest episodes. To stay connected with me, head over to therealistrecruiter.com it's your go to place for more content, connect connections, and a deeper dive into the world of recruitment. See you next week.