Originally published on Founders Network .
Every startup founder complains about finding the right talent for their company. It’s such a common gripe it’s almost boring, particularly in the Bay Area, where every startup and its dog is looking for talent.
But there’s sweet irony in seeing founders of a recruitment startup face similar challenges.
I’ve been wrestling with this process myself, spending most of the past 2 months making our first key hires for RecruitLoop in San Francisco. It was as much a learning process as it was a company-building step.
Why Not Just Use Our Own Solution?
An obvious question, that I’ve been asked more than a few times. The short answer is, we kinda did. In this case, I played the ‘recruiter’. My cofounders were the ‘client’. We collaborated using our own tools and platform. We did this for two reasons.
First, I needed to experience the startup hiring process in this market first hand. I wouldn’t feel credible talking to clients unless I’d very recently felt their pain.
Second, and probably more important, our first hires felt SO critical. I thought I needed involvement at every step. In my mind, it was just as important understanding who wasn’t a fit, as it was selecting the best candidates. It’s formative for the culture we’re building as a company, and we needed to drive it ourselves.
In a team of 6 people, one new member will shift the culture 15%. That’s big. I needed to know who we were saying no to, and why.
What We Were Looking For
We needed two people:
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A growth marketer — someone who could own demand generation, drive leads, experiment with channels, and build systems that scale.
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A customer success lead — someone who could onboard new customers, ensure they got value from the product, and turn them into advocates.
For each role, we had a fairly clear picture of the skills and experience we needed. But the harder part was defining the intangibles.
The Intangibles That Mattered Most
After going through dozens of candidates, patterns emerged. The people who stood out shared certain qualities:
Intellectual curiosity. They asked great questions. They’d done research before the call. They wanted to understand the problem we were solving, not just the job description.
Ownership mentality. They talked about things they’d built, not just participated in. They took credit for results, and also for failures they’d learned from.
Adaptability. They’d worked in ambiguous environments before. They didn’t need a playbook handed to them.
Culture add, not just culture fit. We weren’t looking for people just like us. We wanted people who’d make us better—who’d challenge our thinking and bring skills we lacked.
What I Learned
Referrals are everything. Our best candidates came from personal networks. Cold applications were hit and miss, even from strong resumes.
Speed matters. Great candidates have options. We lost at least one person because we moved too slowly.
The interview process is a product experience. How you treat candidates during the process signals how you’ll treat them as employees. We tried to make every interaction respectful and valuable, even for people we didn’t hire.
Gut matters, but so does structure. We used scorecards to evaluate candidates consistently. But in the end, the final decision often came down to: “Can I imagine working closely with this person every day for the next few years?”
The Outcome
We made both hires. They’ve been with us for a few months now, and they’re exactly what we hoped for—smart, driven, and making us better.
The process was exhausting. But it was worth it.
If you’re a founder going through this for the first time, my advice is simple: invest the time. These early hires will define your culture more than any values statement you write on a wall.
Years later, I wrote a more structured framework: 17 qualities of the perfect early startup hire . And on why hiring people different from you matters: monoculture sucks .
This post originally appeared on the Founders Network blog.