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Kris Rudeegraap (CEO of Sendoso) didn’t hire an internal recruiter until they hit 150 employees. It was all him + referral hiring.
That’s insane. In a good way. I can count on one hand how many companies I know grew to that point before needing a dedicated team.
How?
👉Your CEO should be your best recruiter.
Most people gravitate towards what they’re passionate about. What they know.
Startup CEOs are people, too.
So product development and sales are often the focus. Making and selling their vision is why they got into this game.
But people are what drive an org forward. Eventually everyone finds out if you can’t hire, you’re toast.
So why not adopt that mentality that recruiting is your core function from the onset? Kris did. It made him develop talent pipeline and candidate experience strategies from day 1.
👉Set a referral framework early
A “go do it” approach without showing people how is why most companies can’t pull this off.
Referral bonuses are table stakes. Everyone does it. But these alone without going a step further won’t maximize anything.
Set the expectation that recruiting is everyone’s job. Equally important: celebrate successes. Recognize and reward those who have knocked it out of the park.
The big one: Give *everyone* the tools. And the process for how to use them.
Everyone should have ATS and sourcing tool access. And productivity tools like Text Expander (easy templating), Video tools (e.g. Loom), calendar schedulers, etc.
Then provide best practices to make adoption easy. No one shoud have to figure it out on their own.
👉Recognize that Hiring Managers get higher response rates.
No disrespect to recruiters. But a lot of candidates aren’t interested in talking to you. But they’d LOVE to hear from a hiring manager.
Having hiring managers engaged in the recruitment pipeline will drive higher response rates. Full stop.
Even when you get dedicated recruiters, your leaders taking on some of the effort will open a larger audience.
Is all this easy? Hell no. That’s why so few can do it.
But all it takes is the right mindset at the top.
Full conversation of “How CEOs Can Drive Recruiting” here.
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