Stop Chasing Pedigree, Start Building Foundations

Speaker A: Last 13 years, I have been trusted by some truly amazing organizations to help scale up their functions.

Speaker B: And a lot of the work that

Speaker A: I've been doing has been focusing on that 0 to 1 or 1 to 10 phase. Sometimes when there's no recruiter at all

Speaker B: and we have to build processes and

Speaker A: really get the founders on the same page taking that knowledge, I wanted to bring this forward into tea time, not because it's uniquely specific to talent acquisition. There's transferable learns that I've had along the way of supporting these, these early stage companies that we can bring forward to scale ups to companies. And also if any of our listeners are interested in getting into that really early stage and become a founding recruiter, or hell, hey, we might even have some founders listening then.

Speaker B: This is the podcast for you.

Speaker A: Here is what you can expect from today's episode.

Speaker B: If the founders themselves aren't clear on the hire that we're trying to make. And I'm talking if you've got multiple founders all, uh, right, you've got a CTO and a CEO, uh, let's just say that, right, if you're not clear together, that's where you're going to have your biggest bottleneck in hiring. So from my experience, genuinely, it is unclear expectations creates the problem because one, uh, founder thinks that this person is amazing because of X, Y and Z and the other founder says no, and it's polar opposite, but neither can put into practical words why they don't agree with each other and then you just lose an amazing talent. So don't mess around for stupid amounts of money when you've truly believed that person is worth it. If you don't think that person is worth it, then fair enough. Going lower, not a problem. And that comes down to again, on the levels of why aren't they worth it? Where on that criteria did they not hit to get that experience or to get that salary? Uh, because you can say that to them when you make the offer. Aiden, we're going to offer you 115. I know the budget was up to 120. We can only go to 115 because of this. We're evaluating against this and unfortunately we couldn't evaluate you correctly there. But what we can do is we can set a parameter in place that if you was to hit this, this and this by month six, we can increase it to 120. Nice and simple, right? It goes around the process of this is why, you know, great, it's 115, great offer and they're sitting, going well, well, I thought I was getting one. I thought it was up to 120 and I feel like I'm worth that. So it's justifying your decision then putting in place parameters to help get them that and that keeps that excitement going.

Speaker A: This is something I'm so, so passionate about.

Speaker B: I truly love working with zero to one companies.

Speaker A: The speed, the velocity, the opportunity, the hope, the dreams and that learns that we take away from every single interaction.

Speaker B: Enjoy. Sit back and grab a coffee, or

Speaker A: rather a tea for tea time with tan acquisition.

Speaker B: Thank you. Welcome to Teatime with Talent Acquisition, the podcast aimed at fostering knowledge and sharing stories within the vibrant talent acquisition community. And you can see I ventured back into the studio as a solo episode, but this time tackling something that's both appropriate for us in the talent acquisition space and but also potentially founders, both budding and already established that might find their way to the podcast. The idea is around early stage hiring and it's one that's always fascinated me. For the best part of 12 years, the vast majority of organizations that I've begun working with were at pre seed or seed stage, with some of these relationships maturing all the way through to ipo with a continued working partnership and some unfortunately never making it out the first few years. But hiring at the 0 to 1 phase, it's, in my opinion, it's so different. It's different from any other point in the company's cycle. You need to balance speed and quality with limited budgets, with minimal branding. It's a recipe that shouldn't work, but it does time and time and time again. But I don't hear many people talking about it. So when you're ready, grab your favorite tea or coffee if you prefer, and join me in welcoming. Today's guest is myself as we ruffle a few feathers of early stage hiring. So the first thing I really wanted to stress with this, right, I was trying to work out the best way to structure this type of podcast and I thought, well, I'm going to just talk directly to founders at this stage and anyone who's in town acquisition who is in this field or hiring for this. There's a lot of things that you can take away because this is about changing mindsets, in my opinion, taking all what I've learned and just packaging it up into something that hopefully you can rinse and repeat. So the first thing is zero to one hiring. It's foundational, obviously it's foundational, but it's not pedigree, right? It doesn't need to be about recreating another person's team. It's about building the foundations for your company that you want to grow. So a lot of the time when I work with these founders at this stage, I do hear, you know, we want to hire people from FAANG companies or top 10 universities. Don't get me wrong, pedigree can be explored. Pedigree, uh, links with raw intelligence. If you're in a top 10 university, you're clearly obviously an intelligent individual or unlike myself, probably studied a lot smarter, a lot harder at school, um, or if you're employed by a fame company, typically, you know, again, levels of intelligence. But it shouldn't become a constraint, right? It shouldn't be. We have to take from this environment because that is the recipe that we've been taught or that we believe in is the right thing. Because early hires, they're not building just your product, they're building your culture, they're setting your pace, they're setting the standards. And yes, hiring from Fang or hiring from Pedigree or looking at uh, ex founders, it helps to set all of that from the beginning, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the best foundation forever. Who's to say that person in that corporate company who's really passionate about something on the side isn't the right person for you? So we have to think in um, how I try to teach founders, think of it like house, uh, your first few hires at the foundation of your house, you have shitty foundations, you have a shitty house, we can decorate it later, right? But if you don't get the foundations right, you're going to spend years fixing the cracks, so to speak. So what we need to look at first of all then is not okay. Have they worked at uh, insert whatever company here? Have they gone to this university instead? We have to look at ah, the skills behind the person, not just the core technical skills. So pragmatism, right? For example, with time and scope of work, are they truly pragmatic and can they emphasize this in a conversation? Can they move forward in a process or a solution with limited information? You know, a lot of the time you don't have the perfect understanding of who your customer base is going to be. So you should be testing that ability to move forward with ambiguity. Are they happy being a bit scrappy, you know, no processes, no documentation, maybe not even a laptop until the day they start. Little things like that, right? Are they, are they able to dance in chaos? Is the phrasing that I typically would refer to can they get shit done right? Do they need to have their handheld or can you just say, look, Aidan, we need to get this done. Cool, I'll go do it? No, no worries. I've got it handled. You know, they're the types of people you want in that foundational team. The people that simply just get it. They understand it so hard to test for in an interview, but when you know you will find it, they just have that natural ability just to look at problems and go, no one's thinking of it, no one's looking at it. I'm just gonna go do it. Don't need to get told they like being under pressure, they like having that certain sense of it's all gonna come crumbling down if we don't do this thing or if we don't get that customer. And they relish in that. And that leads into energy and perseverance and commitment. You just know when you're speaking to someone who really enjoys this environment because they don't care if they're working 50, 60 hour weeks, they don't care if they're coming on site five days a week or four days a week, as long as you treat them with flexibility, right, and you give them the opportunity that should they need some flexibility for a week, uh, a month or whatever, it's there. The rest of the time they're going to run through a wall for you. That's the type of people we need to be looking at. And you don't get that by looking at just university or just faang experience, or just a combination of past founder experience. Yes, it's a good starting point. It's a good opportunity to say, okay, we're going to begin here, but we should very quickly, as I say, not get it constrained to it. So what can we do for 10 acquisition in this field? So if you're somebody who's in an early stage company yourself, if you're somebody who's interested in hiring for early stage companies, what can you do to help the founder? So we need to translate what the founders are thinking to what they actually need, right? We need to challenge them in the best way possible. We need to confront CV bias. Really? That's, that's really what we're looking at, uh, CV bias in its purest of forms. We need to sit back with them and go, why are you thinking that? Why do you believe that? Show me the evidence yourself, because I can show you more evidence that suggests otherwise, but you know, we have to speak to their level. Let's get them talking about what they believe. And sometimes when you get them talking and you get them realizing that there's CV bias in what they're saying, that's when we can start making more positive impact by explaining to them, hey, category one, let's run that search, let's see what we get. Category two, this is what I'm thinking, let's see. And have a look into both of them. And you'll be surprised when you remove that CV bias, how quickly you can find fantastic talent that hasn't, like I said, gone to that university or insert whatever experience you need there.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: It's the trade offs. You need to be the driver, especially in talent acquisition. We need to be the drivers to sit back with that hire manager, that founder in this case, and really challenge. But it is super difficult because this is their baby, right? They're working all hours under the sun. So you really need, you really need to make sure that you're speaking to a level of, that they're going to understand, not just coming in going, no, it's impossible, don't do it. But why is it not possible at this point? Or how long is it going to take to get the possible right? And they need to be aware of all of this. So takeaway number one, build the right foundations, don't just look for pedigree. Make sure you have a solid house, not a shitty house. That's all the thing you take away from that one. Number two is if the founder founders themselves aren't clear on the hire that we're trying to make. And I'm talking if you've got multiple founders, all right, you've got a CTO and a CEO, let's just say that, right? If you're not clear together, that's where you're going to have your biggest bottleneck in hiring, right? So from my experience, genuinely, it is unclear expectations creates the problem. Because, uh, one founder thinks that this person is amazing because of X, Y and Z, and the other founder says, no, it is polar opposite, but neither can put into practical words why they don't agree with each other. And then you just lose an amazing talent because the CEO thought one thing, the CTO thought something else, but then you know, you're going to constantly keep running into that. So what we need to do is we need to teach founders that you can hire early with limited information, not a problem. We don't need to have the most beautiful career site, the most detailed job description. We can create a scrappy hiring process. If we want to move super quick, that Stuff's fine. But what you cannot hire without is what success looks like in that role. What good looks like in that role. What no looks like in that role. Right. We need the absolute clarity on the minimum expectations and standards needed to do that job. Before you speak to anybody, before you message anybody, before you do anything, we should have it crystal clear to anyone who's in that process, be it the founder, yourself, as a talent acquisition or whoever, an external provider, maybe even into like, uh, helping with any interviews. This is the key criteria we're interviewing against. And then that is all we interview against. And everything else is nice to have.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: If they match the minimums, the core minimums, then we should be looking to hire. It shouldn't be, ah, ah, you know, I've just, maybe they just haven't got that or this or, you know, maybe they didn't convince me enough or if they didn't convince you enough, that's, that's an issue for, for the interview itself. That's training. We need to have a discussion. No, why didn't they convince you? Let's see. It shouldn't just be a gut feeling that the person's not right. The gut is not scientific. The scientific part is you want to measure against this, you've measured against this. The person can do all of this. Where's the problem? That's analyze that together. So what we look for, um, we try to create a checklist with our founders, right. That we work with. So before we go to speak to anyone, we like to introduce a checklist. Quite natural, shall we say. So like I said, we look at the problem. So what's this person going to solve in the first six months? Let's analyze that. Let's note that down. Okay. We definitively need to have this person.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Uh, we've got an issue. You can't get to it yourself. We need, we have work and scope of work that this person is going to do. Great. What does success look like in your own words? Every single person in that room individually. And then we put it back together. Right. And what you can do is the in person in the middle is a talent acquisition. You can have them send it all to you separately. Now, this doesn't happen as often with founders, but sometimes you do get an experienced founder and you get, maybe this is someone else who's their first company, who's never hired. And sometimes they can be led, you know, because obviously they first time out in. So they just latch onto whatever the other person says. Or sometimes they're super Headstrong. They might have read an article about how YC teach people. Or, um, you know, how the success at this company started, uh, because everyone slept in beanbags or whatever it was, right? So they kind of get fixated on those things and then it kind of morphs what success looks like. So you need to really analyze it as a group. Cto, what does success look like for you? CEO, what does success look like for you? Separately and bring them together. What would you make? What would make you say this isn't working? Uh, definitively words. Again, you know, why. Why could something not work in the process? Give me real reasons as to why something might fall down. What does the CV need to show you for you to say yes and no? And again, that's not for us to then coerce resumes, but that's for us to look at CVs more pragmatically and go, I'm not sure. Okay, actually, let me go back to my yes or no. Okay, no. Because of X, Y and Z in this role, what can we teach someone on soft skills and hard skills versus what we need them to already bring? You know, the core requirements. What are we actually prepared to pay? The salary and equity and anything else. Like, what are we really prepared to pay? Not the budgets. 120. No point the budget being 120 if you're not actually going to pay 120. Uh, especially now with more organizations having to declare their salaries based on states in the us, Europe, obviously bringing this in as well. What are you definitively prepared to pay? Make sure we do that. If you really do want someone for 80k, put 80k, don't put 120, because you're just wasting your own time. And then the last thing is what makes a final decision. When do you know in your mind that that person is the right person for the job? And the answer isn't when they finish the hiring process, because sometimes you can still finish the hiring process and still not know. So definitively, what are the key criteria that you, as a founding team, need to understand in order to make that person a potential offer? And the reason we go through all that, like I said, is that we want to remove misalignment where possible. You know, it's please. For any founder or founders getting together, please go back and listen to that part again, because it's not a stupid exercise just to get you talking to each other about hiring. It's really something I firmly believe. Once you know definitively what hiring looks like in your team for that Particular role, it's worth its weight in gold. Spend a few hours really understanding that, and then you ready to go to market. Because you've now got a defined criteria of success. You know exactly what failure looks like. You know exactly what success looks like inside this job. Right. Otherwise, what happens is you go through the process. You know, the CTO says, we want to hire a founding engineer. CEO says, sweet, we need some. We need to obviously generate new features for the customers I've got coming on. I trust you. You go do it. Candice then get mixed signals in the first two interviews, speaking to each of you. Then performance issues come later down the line. If, for example, the CTO said yes, but the CEO was not sure, and then the performance issues come in once they start, and it creates this awkward tension. Uh, you can really see working with founders, the ones that have it nailed down, the ones that sat down at the beginning when, what are we doing? Why are we doing it? You know, what are we really hiring for? And they understand that together. And that also then bleeds into the office stage part. Right? I've already mentioned what are we prepared to offer? But you both need to be prepared, especially the equities on the table.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: You want to make sure that you're prepared to divvy out part of the business. You know, this isn't a control aspect. You know, we want to have more, but this is more of a trust aspect. How much are we prepared to let go as a team for what positions, for what levels, for what experience?

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: How much we prepare to bring somebody in, you know, to. To really believe in that person. So if you can nail down all of that, you're ready to start hiring. If you can't do that, please unhir. You're just wasting your own time, and not even for me as a recruiter in the middle, you're wasting your own time. It will take you two, three, maybe four hours, depending on how detailed you're going into it, to get all of that information ready, then you're so ready to go to market that your pitch, your process, the way you make people feel, the way you get excited yourself about hiring, it's going to be a million times better than if you just go, cool, we're just hiring. Right? And, uh, again, I say this quite polar opposite, because there's a lot of founders who are going to be listening, who probably sit there and go, well, obviously we do that. You might. But I'm really saying do this for every single position, every single hire that you bring on Especially in the first few years, even if it's a carbon copy of the last position. We're hiring five founding engineers. Okay. Might only five. Let's just say you're hiring two or three founding engineers. Do it for every role. What's this person going to be doing for six months? What's this person going to be doing for six months? Because there's going to be. So there's going to be subtleties. And especially in the first hire, it might be very different to what the third hire looks like. Because once you've got two people there, you can then start looking and go, okay, where the gaps. And this third person must fill those gaps. But the first person, you didn't have the gaps there, right? So you need to really then start changing how you view that third founding engineering hire. There is a science to recruitment, I promise you. And the more you do it, the, uh, easier it becomes. It's just more challenging at the beginning, especially with, I think, with early stage companies in the nicest way possible. People don't care about you, right? I care about you. Don't worry, we're all friends here. But a lot of people don't care about you because you're just another business to them that's maybe got money or not got money. Um, hiring for the same type of criteria, building maybe a similar or slightly similar position as somebody else. It's your business, you care. Same way as Paris is partly my business, I care, right? If we don't succeed, it hurts me when we succeed. I'm on cloud nine, right? So I, I know, I know the feeling. When you feel like your business is like the shittest, hottest thing in the world, it's just the best, but to someone else, it is just shit. And they don't care, which makes it harder, right? So then speed matters, but the truth matters more. And this is where you can turn so many people around to make them care about your company by creating a truthful business. So I would love every one of the businesses that I work with to be able to run a two, three day process. I would love it.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Is that going to make me successful? In the short term, yes. In the long term, no. Because a lot of people would drop out. And why? Because you can't build momentum, you can't create trust. So people just accept jobs because they need a job instead. What we're hiring for in early stage companies, we want people going to build with us. I spoke to a company today, um, their founder engineer, the second hire, has unfortunately just left Them, right? Six and a half years he's been with them in Berlin. That's like, unheard of. You don't say a company for six and a half years, right? That's what you want if you can find those people. But like I said, trust and truthful approach is the most important thing. So I'm not saying create process for process sake. I'm saying kill what's not necessary in your process, but create a process that genuinely builds excitement and genuinely creates the opportunity for both of you to say no early. All too often, founders go into that first call, they give 30 minutes, which isn't enough. You need one hour. In my opinion, 30 minutes is scratch the surface, just moving through the motion conversation, right? One hour to sit back with each other. 30 minutes is on you as a company. 30 minutes is on them as a candidate. And then obviously, you can put some questions in at the end. And what you want to do is you want to identify early as possible in the candidates search criteria, what they really want, which is very different to what I see a lot of companies do right now. So a lot of companies will start the process and they'll go in and go, hey, we're Paretos. This is a little bit about what we do. You know, we're, you know, they do it with a lot more energy. Don't get me wrong. We're, uh, building AI agents here, and we're creating a generational company there, and we've just received five and a half million here.

Speaker A: Great.

Speaker B: Right Again, who cares? They don't care. So what do they care about? You can give a brief introduction, but how? I switch it up. And I do this for Paretos when we're hiring, and I do this for all the companies that I hire for. And I sit back and go, explain to me what you actually want, not what your CV says, not what you think I want based on the message I sent you. But, Aidan, what do you really want from a company? From a culture? From your career, from your compensation? Tell me everything, I want to know it all. And you just give them the floor to talk, and they talk them their way into a yes or a no. Because if they're telling me all the things, I'm sitting there going, great, that sounds amazing. I love that. But we can't offer any of it then. They've saved themselves so much time. We're not the company for them. But if it's things that we can offer, then, uh. I know now, going back to them, I just need to say everything They've just told me they want, but I need to explain how we can get them there. It is basic spin. That is all we're doing. It's basic spin in sales, right. Situation, problem, implication and need. You're just doing it in regards to what they want. So you set very clearly, what do you, what are you looking for? And the person comes back with argument's sake. I don't know. I'm looking for a flexible, hybrid, early stage company. I really want to drive impact, drive ownership. Keep going, keep going. Right, you really want to come back. What does flexibility mean? Well, it means, you know, I want to work, um, you know, sometimes I want to do nine to five in the office, come home, see my children, and then I work in the evenings. I find I work better in the evenings. Okay, fair enough. And how many days a week are you happy to come to an office? Well, I want to come in at least three to four days. Sweet. So we use that example when we're pitching Paradise. Look, as a company, we come in four days a week. Full transparency. We come in four days a week.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, there are the rare occasions, right, my car broke down last week, I need to come in a little bit less. Right, Happens. But typically we're in four days a week. Now, you mentioned, obviously you want the flexibility. It's absolutely something that we would love to do, but you might find that there's not going to be anyone else in the evening working, Right. So, and the reason for that is that I will come in at, uh, seven o' clock in the morning. I'm an all at morning person, but the same flexibility exists. I come in in the morning and I finish at 5. Whereas you might come in at 11 and want to work up till 5 and then go in the evening and work until from 10 till midnight, whatever the case is. We have the flexibility. It's just a different way. So now what you're doing is you're building a picture up to them to say what you want we can do. It's just in a slight different variant than what you thought it might be. So you set these clear expectations from the beginning and you treat hiring not like a administrative task or even an operational task. You treat hiring as a conversation. Right? You have radical transparency with what you can and what you cannot offer. The good, the bad, the ugly, right? You don't have staged excitement where you just come in and go, uh, ah, it's the best company ever. Uh, but you're not, not yet. We hope you will be. And they Hope you will be, but you're not yet, right? And you can only sell to what you know you're selling to. What are the real buying signals? So that first conversation, which is why half hour, half hour interviews suck for early stage companies, it needs to be an hour because you really need to understand what am I selling to, can I sell to that? And then the rest of the interview process is designed around understanding the skills match. So first interview is can we even work together based on what we want, based on what they want. Second interview is around skills and the third interview is the culture, it's the vibe, it's the last minute questions and that's it. That's all you need to do. Three steps, nice and simple, don't over complicate it. And when it doesn't work, immediately reject immediately. Not on an email, after, on the call, you immediately reject and you explain exactly why. Now some people take this tremendously bad, right? And they will start to fight you on it and you still know they're not the right person. So you can do this over and over if you really want. But I'm a firm believer of again, not wasting people's time. People don't get genuinely upset about honesty, they get upset about wasted time. So if you have the conversation with them and then you leave it a week to reject them or even a day wasted time, right? Their thoughts are with you, whereas that thought could be of another company. And that's not fair on someone. So how I do it is I just immediately reject them. Just say, look Aiden, I really appreciate your time, I love the attitude, I love what you're focusing on. But we are not the right company for you reason for that. We are not this high flying social environment, right? We might be one day but right now we are head down focused. We are build mode, we are doing 50 hour weeks, we are working in the office five days a week, right? You will find everyone in that team are uh, there early doors, how you want to do it, right, Whatever. And then they're going to come back and say, well no, no, no, I'm interested in that but I know you're not. That's the difference because I know what you want. You want flexibility and you want to be at home three days a week and you do want to have that social side. So I understand that's what you want and I love that that's what you want, but we cannot give that to you. And now I know that that's what you want and I know we can't do it. Then we have this crossroad where you're not going to be really happy and I know you're not really going to be happy. And that's how you can reject them without it becoming this big weird thing of fighting about, yes, I am right, yet I'm not right. So again, I'm a firm believer. Immediately reject, save time for yourself, save time for the other person. Respect that time, and I guarantee they'll come back to you in the future. Because when you are, and in this case, let's say, uh, a more social company, you can come back to that, right? As long as you have an ATS or at least a way to analyze the information, you can come back to it and say, look, we spoke three years ago, we weren't the right company for you then, but now I'd love to have a conversation because this is how we've grown, this is what we're doing. These are the things that at the time you're interested in and this is what we've started to implement. So this protects, ultimately the candidate, protects the trust you build with them. M. By being transparent. It protects you as a founder, right. If you're the person doing this, your brand, your reputation as someone who is just says it how it is. Because again, that's all our founders want to be, right? We don't want to be these people that can't make decisions, want to say, look, this is the decision, let's move on. And it protects you as a recruiter if you're talent, professional. If you're an interim recruiter, it protects you again for the same reason, your brand. And the amount of times I hear thank you, which is mental because I'm just giving you feedback and they're like, I really appreciate that. I thank you, like, thank you for that way. Because they don't want their time wasted, that's all. And you're in a one hour call and you know after the first 20 minutes it's never going to go somewhere, or at least not yet. Then why waste their time? The other side of things is slowing down deliberately in hiring, right? And this kind of comes back into the process. Three stages is enough. But you don't have to do it in three days, which again is probably counterproductive to sometimes people put online or even as a recruiter saying, just go as quick as you can. If you're 110% sure that person is it. Maybe you've worked with them before, great referral or recommendation, sorry. Or your investor recommended them, however. Yeah, Maybe, maybe you want to move quicker, but even then I would still want to have like thought process. I want to have a blocker for me to really think about them. You know, am I excited because I need to hire or am I excited for the reasons that I've put in my hiring process? I'm actually analyzing against, you know, am I getting caught up in the excitement or am I really, am I really analyzing it properly? So what you don't want to do is just rush through for the sake of it. Some of the things what we want to deliberately avoid in early stage hiring. So salary negotiation, theatrics, it's my pet peeve, to be honest. So what I mean by that is, again, linking back. What are you prepared to pay? If you're prepared to pay 120 plus, I don't know, 2.5% equity, and you believe that that person is genuinely worth 120 plus, plus 2.5% equity, then offer them 120 plus 2.5% equity. Do not mess around with theatrics of coming in at 115 or 110 just to save a couple of grand where that's genuinely going to turn people away. And yes, we want people driven by the mission, the product, the vision. Absolutely. But people have bills to pay, right? And they have lives to live that they want to pay for. So don't mess around for stupid amounts of money when you truly believe that that person is worth it. If you don't think that person is worth it, then fair enough. Going lower, not a problem.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: And that comes down to, again, on the levels of why aren't they worth it? Where on that criteria did they not hit to get that experience or to get that salary? Because you can say that to them when you make the offer. Aidan, we're gonna offer you 115. I know the budget was up to 120, but we can only go to 115 because of this. We're evaluating against this and unfortunately we couldn't evaluate you correctly there. But what we can do is we can set a parameter in place that if you was to hit this, this and this, by month six, we can increase it to 120. Nice and simple, right? It goes round the process of this is why, you know, great, it's 115, great offer. Like, let's go, let's go, let's go. And they're sitting.

Speaker A: What?

Speaker B: I thought I was getting one. I thought it was up to 120 and I feel like I'm worth That, so it's justifying your decision, then putting in place parameters to help get them that and that keeps that excitement going. Um, pitching before understanding the person. So this links into that first conversation, which is very much going down the route of people don't care about you. So don't pitch a business until you really understand why what you're pitching for, you know. Yes, give an idea of what the company is doing, get some levels of excitement going, then understand what they want and then you can go full pitch mode. Love, uh, bombing candidates into decisions. Um, this happened literally about a week ago for me. Uh, but it happened the other way around. Um, so the candidate was quote, unquote, love bomb throughout the process. Best cat we've spoken to. Um, most energetic, most authentic. I mean, I even got a message halfway through the technical round saying he's passed it and he was only in there for 30 minutes. So I had another half hour to go and then come down to the final decision. No offer for a reason that was contradicting to everything around authenticity and energy. Um, so don't love bomb the candidates to get them into a position where they're excited for you, only for you to pull the rug underneath them or love bomb them into a point where they have to feel like they have to take your company. They should want to take your company. Not because you're just giving loads of stuff or just saying nice things, but you should, they should believe into your company. Um, again, don't start the process without a basic structure in place. Um, an understand of what good bad looks like. And then the tools that you're using. Right, the tools should support recruitment, not replace them. There's some relatively strong ger AI tools out there, but they're not going to replace the role of the recruiter and they shouldn't replace the role of your founder. Uh, doing recruitment as well. Your founders should recruit you as founders rather should recruit. You should use a recruiter when you cannot find the people. Not as a first port of call. Again, me as a recruiter. Uh, my job is to sell to you. And I'm telling you, don't let me sell to you until you've gone to market yourself. You've experienced it yourself. You have seen the trials and tribulations of trying to get some exceptional people bought into you. When you can't do that, then you use the recruiter. Uh, and the reason for that is that your product might be unbelievable. Loads of people might want to work with you, but until you've gone to market to Test it and to see how you approach people, how you interview without coaching yourself from a recruiter, you're just. But you know, you're outsourcing the whole thing and that's not right at this stage. You haven't got enough money to do that. So I'm absolutely happy to work for anybody, but I would never work with somebody if they've never done the process themselves to begin with, to know where their blockers are. To bear that one in mind, if you, especially if you've got a little bit of surplus cash from like a pre seed or um, seed extension before going to use a recruiter, just really analyze have we exhausted it ourselves? And if not, put it on ice for a second. And that's it from my side. Right. I know it's a bit of a long winded talking one, this one, but what I really wanted to do is just get across, in my own opinion, really what I feel about early stage hiring. It's exceptionally difficult, but it's exceptionally great fun. I love it. Um, but if you go to market without truly, and I mean truly understanding the nuances of what early stage hiring means. So with that, like I said, you don't understand that we're building foundations. We're not looking just for pedigree. You don't understand what success, what good, what no looks like and your founders aren't aligned. And then, and then lastly into that, you're not really understanding about how to build momentum in a truthful manner. You're going to make it way harder for yourself. Way, way harder for yourself. And that's really where the biggest problems come into play. So if anyone is struggling and wants to have an open chat, my inbox is always open. You know, I've spent the last 12 years hiring into this field. For better or worse, I'm still here. So always happy to offer some more specific advice about your business, your situation. Um, you know, pro bono until you need me as a recruiter. But thanks so much for joining and thanks for being part of this season again. So that's the last episode. Damn, time's flying. So we're going season. Season 11. Season 11. Stick around and I will see you

Speaker A: on the other side.