My guidance to founders: Hire a strong recruiter earlier than you think you need one

While many people advise that founders hold off as long as possible before hiring an internal recruiter, or wait until the company is around 40–50 people, my guidance is to hire a strong recruiter earlier than you think you need one. In fact, it’s less about the size or stage of a company, and more about the hiring you need to do. When a company has 10–12 roles it needs to hire in the next few months, that’s a good time to bring on a recruiter. The right recruiter will partner with the team to build, drive, and scale the company’s recruiting process while being hands-on in building your team right from the foundational stage.

But that recruiter can be hard to find. The demand for recruiters continues to rise — but it’s also getting harder to find and hire one. Over the last five years partnering with startups within Redpoint’s portfolio and leading talent teams in-house at companies before that, I’ve either hired, or seen many teams hire recruiters. Ask any founder, leadership team, or other talent leaders and I’m sure most will agree that hiring an internal recruiter has been an increasingly challenging process for companies. And I’d argue that delaying only exacerbates those challenges.

To help companies think about how to interview and hire a recruiter, I’ve outlined some best practices on how I’ve hired recruiters and what I’ve seen other teams successfully do over the years.

The main areas to evaluate recruiters are:

• Sourcing Candidates;
• Pitching the Story;
• Hiring Manager Relationship and their Recruiting Process;
• Measuring Success;
• Values Fit;
• Bonus: Hiring for Leadership; and
• Selling and Closing.

Sourcing Candidates:

A full-cycle recruiter coming in to an early stage startup will most likely be the only recruiter, or part of a very lean team, so they need to be hands-on and source candidates as part of pipeline building. Have them tell you how they manage their time to ensure they’re always thinking about pipeline building and keeping momentum going. Spend time digging into their recent sourcing experience and listen for strategies outside of only using LinkedIn or job boards like Indeed — especially if they come from a larger company that has a strong brand, which can generate enough inbounds that sourcing skills can atrophy. Recruiting for an early-stage company is much harder because you don’t have the brand recognition that large, more well-known companies do, so it takes more creativity to get people in your pipeline. When assessing their sourcing abilities, focus on these things:

• How much time they spend on sourcing each week
• What they did to find candidates for a new role they never recruited before, or in a space not familiar to them
• What sourcing strategies have they found yielded the most results (bonus if it was for a startup at a similar stage to yours)
• What systems and tools they use to get them in front of interesting candidates

Pitching the Story:

Recruiters need to be able to tell the story and share the vision of the company to get candidates to engage. It’s important to assess their messaging and pitching capabilities, but it’s not reasonable to have them pitch you on your company. They won’t have enough context about the company, team, and product, so anything they say will likely not meet your expectations. Instead, try these things:

• Ask them to pitch you on a role at their current, or most recent, company. They should nail this, given it’s what they’ve been doing
• Going further, ask them what objections candidates have given them about the company/role they’re pitching and how they’ve responded. If you know the company and space, you can ask them how they compete or compare with others in their space. This will show how deeply they can get into the company, product and market
• Ask them for an example of when they knew certain messages weren’t working and what they did about it

Hiring Manager Relationship and their Recruiting Process:

The relationship hiring managers have with their recruiters is one that is built on trust and should be a true partnership. Have a hiring manager on the interview panel to test chemistry and to assess how the candidate has built credibility and relationships with hiring managers and teams in the past.

Tell the candidate about a role for which you’re hiring and have them walk you through what their process would be so you can assess how they’d be as a recruiting partner. You’ll want to hear things like:

• How they set and manage expectations with you as the hiring manager
• How they will calibrate on the right candidate profile with you and the hiring team
• What an effective hiring and interview process is like, and how they make sure all team members are set up to be effective interviewers
• What the most effective way to reference check candidates is
• Who closes the candidate, how, and when does that process start

Measuring their Success:

You should expect recruiters to be data-driven, to track metrics and to know how to switch gears or improve things when the data is telling a story of something not working. Whatever they do to track their progress, you want to know they are thinking about their performance in a quantitative way and figuring out ways to iterate or improve on things if needed. Ideas on how to dig in here:

• How many hires they made in the past year
• Have them walk you through their personal metrics. Examples might be: response rates, pipeline pass-through rates, time to fill, sources of hire, cost of hire, quality of hire
• How they have measured candidate experience throughout the recruiting process

Values Fit:

Company values set the tone for a company’s culture and vision and are the guiding principles that dictate behavior and action; they’ll answer the question, “What is important at our company and what is unique about working here?” Core values should be involved in every stage of the business and employee lifecycle — hiring, rewarding, recognizing, and developing employees (and even letting employees go). Whatever your values are, it’s important to have values be part of your interview rubric to discover how closely the candidates’ values align with your team.

Some examples on how you might assess certain values could be:

• For a value around being inclusive, you might want to find out about a time the candidate had to leverage ideas or consider ideas from people who hadn’t been involved in the particular project previously, how they went about doing that and then what happened
• For collaboration, you might ask them to describe a specific situation where they had to resolve a challenging issue that their team had with another team, what they did and what the result was

Bonus: Hiring a recruiting leader:

Your first hire may be an individual contributor, not a people leader. But if the hire you need to make will lead or may eventually lead a team, you should assess their leadership capabilities along with their full-cycle recruiting skills listed above. To learn about their ability to hire and lead a recruiting team, find out:

• What their whole process is to hire recruiters — from sourcing to onboarding
• How they develop, set up career paths for, and measure a team, as well as manage a low-performing team member
• How they manage the amount of open requisitions across their team, when they know it’s time for more resources, and how have they gotten buy-in from the business
• How they can effectively scale their recruiting team as the company scales, and what they can do to augment the internal team
• What recruiting-related programs do they think are important and how they would implement them. Examples might be: employee referral program, new interviewing practices, diversity pipelining, or university recruiting

Selling and Closing:

Selling the candidate on the vision of the company, quality of team, the impact they’re going to make takes a ton of finesse and time. It isn’t something that should start near the end of the process, and a good recruiter will have a number of selling and (pre)closing conversations with candidates throughout the whole process. To find out how they approach closing and selling, listen for things like:

• When they start thinking about closing and how they manage this in partnership with the hiring manager (and even the broader team)
• How they understand what motivates candidates, what their levers are and what concerns are still on the table
• How they understand how their candidates will make their decision, who is involved in their decision (e.g., spouse, mentor, partner, family, etc.) and how they’ll make it personal
• Find out how they were able to close a strong candidate with numerous offers

For any role, recruiting is not an easy task. It takes a lot of time, energy and intentionality. Recruiting recruiters is a whole business in itself because companies have found it really difficult to hire their recruiter on their own. It is an investment worth making as it can be transformative for the company. I’d love to hear your thoughts — what has worked for you when hiring recruiters?

Recruiting Recruiters was originally published in Redpoint Ventures on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Each November in honor of National Adoption Awareness Month, I’ve reposted my original adoption blog post telling folks to reach out with any questions about our adoption experience in case people are thinking about it and wanted more information about adopting through foster care.

This November, I wanted to do something a bit different because I’ve experienced a truly remarkable thing this past year. No fewer than one person each month has reached out to talk to me about my experience with adoption and/or foster care. I’ve been asked a lot of thoughtful questions about my experience as a foster/adoptive mother. People are interested in adoption. People are feeling a calling to do something with foster children. They’re interested in hearing someone’s perspective and insight. I love talking about my experience and journey. I really do. The biggest and most blessed thing in my life has been to become a mom and the way our family formed was nothing short of a miracle. If I’m able to answer questions and give information to people who otherwise may not hear some candid details, I’m all for it. In fact, this is how we got the push to become foster parents in the first place. Talking with people who had been there.

I know November is all about celebrating adoption, but our adoptions wouldn’t be possible without our foster care journeys, so I talk about them together. Here are some of the questions people ask me. That way, if there are other folks out there who are thinking about foster care and adoption, perhaps they can get some of their questions answered as well. Remember, this is just my perspective; just my journey of being a foster mom to 3 children and adopting two of them. Other people have different experiences. Do not hesitate to reach out with any other questions you might have and if I can answer them, I will.

Why did you decide to foster?

My husband and I tried having kids for over 2 years and went through fertility doctors and treatments and it just wasn’t working. We never actually received any medical reason why we weren’t able to get pregnant, but it was a very frustrating, disappointing, and upsetting time for us as a couple. This seemed to be incredibly counter-productive to me — we were hoping to be blessed with a pregnancy and were doing so many things to help that along, but were so stressed out that it didn’t feel like a healthy situation (or body) to bring a pregnancy into. We ultimately decided to not continue fertility treatments and became open minded to other ways we could become parents. It didn’t take us too long to move on to what could be next for us, as we were both in agreement that the more important goal — for us — was to be parents, versus being pregnant.

We thought about adoption and reached out to people we knew adopted their kids to learn about their experiences. I spoke with two of my friends who each adopted a child — one through private adoption and the other through foster care. Both of their experiences were amazing and hit me so deep, bringing me to the realization that adoption was hopefully our future. Foster care stuck with my husband and I because we felt the pull to be of service to people in our community, knowing that all parents whose children are placed into foster care are not bad parents. Families go through situations where they need help and we wanted to be there for children while their families went through those situations, so that’s the route we explored.

What was the licensing process like?

There are many agencies through which people can become foster parents but we decided to go through the County of Santa Clara in California and their Social Services department. The process for us took a little over 9 months before we received our foster care license — we met with social workers, took parenting classes where we learned about the legal process, emotional cases, and how to parent children who are potentially dealing with large scale trauma. After classes and completing an incredibly long application, there were home studies, interviews, and reference checks. We knew we were also hoping to adopt so went through their separate foster-adoption process in parallel, which ended up being more interviews and home studies. We began our process in March 2010 and received our license on December 13, 2010.

Did you know you wanted to adopt as well as foster?

Yes. The classes we went through and every social worker we spoke to were very clear that this was not an adoption agency. That there is a large number of children who do not reunite with their biological parents and another permanent option is needed for them, but if we go into this journey of being foster parents with the expectation of adoption, there is a big chance we will be disappointed. We heard that. We still wanted to move forward, hoping and trusting that we would be able to adopt, but also knowing that if we were able to be there for a child who needed a home, even for a short time, that we would do that as well.

Were you able to choose how many children and the age range/gender for the foster children?

We were able to request age ranges and gender but there are no guarantees. Because we lived in a 2 bedroom condo, we were licensed to have 2 foster children in our home. We stated we were open to any ages up to 18 and either gender. We got calls for teenagers and younger but ultimately we ended up taking in two 3 week old babies and one 4.5 year old.

Were you able to say no to any requests?

Yes. In fact, we said no a few times. Social workers encouraged us to know our limitations and capabilities and if we did not think we would be able to take a child in to care for him or her, we could and should say no. It can end up being a harder situation if we say yes, it doesn’t work out, and then the child has to move homes.

Were you able to travel with your foster kids?

Yes. We traveled to the east coast a couple times, and to a family wedding in Portland, OR. We had to get approval from the social worker and a judge and travel with that written approval, but we could still plan on our family vacations and have them join us.

Did you know how long the child will be with you when placed?

No. All of our placements started off as Emergency Placements, meaning that the County needed a short term home while they figured out what happened and determined if the child could go back to the parents or another family member. In our cases, it was determined after that first Emergency Placement Period, that the children weren’t able to go home at that time and no other family members were set up to take them in, so they stayed with us in our home.

The biological parents had a program to work on in order to get their children back and while they were working on their program, the County provided services to help them with reunification. We were kept up to date on how things were going, but we were very much in limbo. We didn’t know for sure how long we’d have the child until we heard how the County and courts were feeling about the progress the birth parents were making.

What information were you given about the case or birth family when a child was placed with you?

We were given basic information and medical needs about the child, and limited information about why the child was in care. The longer the child was with us, the more information we received, but it wasn’t until we were almost at the adoption stage for our kids that we received a large package with a lot of family and medical history.

How many foster placements did you have and what were they like?

We had 3 foster placements in our first year. When we received our license on Dec 13, I have no idea why I thought this, but I remember saying that we’d most likely get a call to foster a child “sometime in the next year,” so we had time to plan and get ready. Ha. Two weeks later we received a call that a 3 week old baby boy needed an Emergency Placement and could we take him in; I said we would call them back asap. My parents were visiting from Massachusetts and were dropped off at the airport a couple hours before; I called my mom and asked her to come back but they had just boarded and were about to take off. So we were on our own. My husband and I called back the County and said yes and found out where we had to go to pick this baby up. We immediately went into action and drove to Target to get a car seat (because that’s all I figured we needed) and called friends to let them know and, thankfully, they also went into action to get clothes, diapers and formula (everything we truly needed).

This baby, Z, stayed with us from that day, until he was 10 months old and was returned to his biological parents. During that time, we had twice a week visits with his parents until it was determined he would be returning to them soon, at which time those visits became longer overnight visits of 3–4 days to help make the transition back to his parents be as seamless as possible.

A few months before Z was reunited with his parents, we welcomed Lucia into our family. She was 4.5 years old with a larger than life personality. During her time as a foster child, we had regular visits with her biological mother (her biological father was not in the picture), and there were a few times where she was close to being reunited so those visits also extended into overnights. Ultimately, reunification didn’t happen and the parental rights were terminated for her biological mother; we were then open to adopting her, which we did in May 2014.

When we returned Z, I asked Christian to put all the baby stuff in storage; my heart was too broken to look at it. Our family took a hit when he left our home; there was a large hole and a greater pain from which I never thought we could recover. We decided to put all our energy into Lucia and being there for however long her journey with us would be. We were at peace with this decision.

Then, 2 weeks later — no kidding — we got a call from the County asking if we would take a 3 week old baby boy who needed to be in care. I immediately said yes. Christian was amazed that I jumped so quickly at this given that he literally just put all the baby stuff away, but we couldn’t say no to this call. That’s when we met our Leland.

Leland’s was the only situation where we realized he may not be reunited with his family, given the cadence of his visits and how the courts were responding to his biological parents efforts with their programs. However, we just moved forward and did everything we could to be there for him, meeting his biological parents for visits, showing up for court dates, and taking the best care of him while we had him. His journey led us to adoption in July 2014.

From the time we were licensed in 2010 to the time we adopted our kids in 2014, we only had 3 foster placements; there are other parents who went through the licensing classes and process with us at the same time who had over 30 placements during the same period. You never know what the outcome will be because each case is different.

Did you have open adoptions? If so, did you have to?

Yes we have open adoptions and no, we didn’t have to. We chose to.

In our case, being open meant a couple of in person visits each year (typically at a park or other public place) for a couple hours and then a few phone calls. And even being there for when Leland’s biological sister was born!

Since we moved from California to Massachusetts, there haven’t been in person visits, but there have been calls and texts and photo sharing. This is what works for our family right now.

Have you told your kids they were foster kids before they were adopted?

Both of our kids know they’re adopted and our daughter knows she was also a foster child. She was older when placed with us, went through the journey with us, and continues to have a (albeit limited) relationship with her biological mother. She doesn’t freely talk about being a foster child, but she also doesn’t hide it. She gives us her blessing to still talk about it but we leave it up to her to tell her friends what she wants to (although she knows that people may already know her story).

Although Leland also knows he is adopted, given that he came to us so young and was adopted before he was 3, we don’t really think he truly gets what that means yet. We don’t hide anything about adoption in our home, we celebrate their Gotcha Days each year, and he asks me questions about where he came from since he does know he didn’t grow in my belly. We don’t talk about him being a foster child, but when he’s older we’ll cover his whole journey and answer all the questions he might have.

Some people may not agree with us being so open about it, in fact some people have actually told us they don’t agree. It’s our decision and so far the transparency has worked out for our family; it’s a personal decision for each family to make.

What advice do you give to people who are looking to adopt through foster care?

The same things that were said to us during our fostering journey:

1) throw any expectations you might have out the window, and 2) remember this is not an adoption agency and the first goal is reunification with the birth parents.

We never tried our hand at private adoption and I’ve heard that journey isn’t perfect and can potentially bring heartaches and disappointment as well, but we were told that if we expected adoption through foster care, we could very well get heartbroken. You can walk into it with your brain telling you not to get attached, and that you have no idea what will happen and you’ll just be there however long you’re needed. And then you get this child in your arms and home and all bets are off. I remember my heart feeling that Z was mine — I was his mama and would be forever. But really, that was never going to happen. His parents were always on track to take him back home and they did everything in their program to reunite with their son and it worked out — and while we’re truly happy that their family is together and happy, it killed us at the time.

Of course, what we know now, it was always the plan — we needed to be his parents for a while, but not forever. We were only licensed for 2 foster children and if he was still with us, even for a couple more weeks, we would never have received that phone call for Leland. I shudder at thinking that never happening and I know everything worked out the way it was meant to and am full of gratitude.

I honestly don’t know how you stop any of the emotions from overtaking you — the falling in love, the pain and anger when they leave, the feelings of not wanting to continue fostering because of previous situations. Time going by helps, but at the time, it was so hard to get through a day without crying. Our support system of friends and family, and the County were great; they helped the best way they could. And that’s the thing I realize — it might be hard for me as a foster parent to go through that, but I can get help. I had people who met with me, talked with me, cried with me, and helped me through. That’s hard — but not as hard as being a child with no home, being a scared little kid who doesn’t know what’s going on, being a child who doesn’t have the resources to find someone to help deal with what he or she is going through.

While all foster placements won’t end in adoption, being of service to children and families who need it, even for a short time, can give you a sense of purpose that is so rewarding. People have said to me that they don’t think their heart could take the potential emotional rollercoaster. I didn’t think so either. You’d be surprised at how big your heart can get. Fostering tests your understanding of yourself, it challenges your heart and I think it definitely expands it.

If you are considering adoption but are open to exploring foster care as well, please reach out if you’d like to talk.

This was especially awesome and special as this baby is the biological sister of my son.

We adopted our son in 2014 after being his foster parents for almost 3 years and chose to have an open adoption. For us, this means that we share pictures and updates with his biological mother on how our son is doing and plan an in person visit 2–3 times a year. It was during one of these visits where we learned she was expecting another baby.

The way our family has formed and grown has not been traditional. Our two children were adopted through foster care, but our family isn’t just the four of us. We also cared for and then reunited another foster son back with his biological parents but are still able to have a deep relationship with him and his brother — considering them our kiddos as well. And, by an extension of all our kids, their biological families are also part of our family, just with more boundaries.

To be candid, when I was asked to be present for this new baby’s birth, I was freaked out. Having never given birth myself, I had no idea what to expect or how I’d be able to add any value. I thought I would be uncomfortable, scared, nervous, and everything in between. Side note — I have since shut up about all that since I’ve seen what the actual person giving birth goes through. I have mad respect for anyone who has gone through childbirth. Ouch.

Adding another element to this freaking out came from talking with the mom’s various caregivers and social workers and learning that there might be a question on how and where this baby will be raised, and by whom. We have even been asked if we would take this baby in and care for her if that situation presented itself. We have been put on notice for something that may or may not happen. That’s the thing about being a foster parent: you have to be comfortable — or at least accepting of — being in limbo and not knowing for sure what may or may not happen. So time will tell what will happen with this baby.

It truly doesn’t matter who takes this baby home from the hospital, or who ends up raising her in the coming years, the reality is that this baby girl is part of our family. So, I’m putting it out there for as many people as possible to send a lot of love, prayers, angels, and any other good mojo you have her way, that she is safe, nurtured, healthy and loved.

And that maybe she takes after her awesome big brother!

*******

“We are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.” — William Blake

It took a long time for my husband and I to become parents. Then it took longer to become adoptive parents. We became parents on December 27, 2010, the day that we took a little 3 week old baby boy into our home and became his foster parents for the better part of his first year. Those close to us know how difficult and painful it was to return him to his biological family, even though reunification was always the end goal.

We were told by social workers that if we wanted to adopt a child through the foster care system, we would get our chance — someday. We were told that roughly 50% of foster children are not returned to their biological parents so another permanent plan must be worked out. As foster parents, we have been told to not expect adoption, because we really need to be supportive of the reunification process. But on that particular day a social worker looked me straight in my eyes and said, “someday, you WILL get your chance to adopt.” I still tear up when I think about that statement and how he said it because it was so strong and gave me a little hope that someday it could happen. However, when we brought two other children into our home, we were careful to always remind ourselves of what we went through with our first foster baby; heeding a warning to not fall too deep in love with these two — which was impossible because in reality, no matter the outcome, we were their parents.

This was declared and made official a few months ago when we finalized the adoptions of those two children. Our daughter came into our lives as a very spirited and loud 4 1/2 year old and our son was brought into our home as a very quiet and stoic 3 week old baby (what was it with us and 3 week old baby boys)! After 1,031 and 991 days, respectively, in foster care, we adopted each of them earlier this year.

November is National Adoption Month and as I look back at our journey I am in awe over how it went. For three years there were countless visits with social workers, lawyers, and child advocates. There were extremely draining days in court and visits with biological parents. We were in limbo not knowing how long they’d be with us, but were there every day to raise these kids as our own and show them a lot of love and (hopefully) a somewhat stable and normal day each day. I have nothing but the utmost respect and gratitude for the social workers in Santa Clara County, who helped us through every step. Without them, the long and draining days would have been confusing and more frustrating.

There were so many moments where it was crystal clear that ours was an awesome journey: when our daughter said after thinking about it for a while that since she was going to be in our family forever, she would like our last name too; or when, after almost two years, I was being called “mom” instead of Amy by both of these kids. And then there were moments that were gut wrenching like when I heard the sobs from my son’s biological mother in a courtroom after learning she wasn’t getting him back, right as my tears came realizing that this meant we were a step closer to being his parents forever. Two moms crying for different reasons over the same little boy.

I am so happy that our path brought us to where we are today: parents of two thriving and amazingly strong kids who found their way to us and loved us enough to want to be here forever. Every day I feel like the luckiest rock star in the world that I get to be their mom.

We have decided to close our foster license — for now — as we quietly (ha!) enjoy our little family unit. While we do that, we also celebrate National Adoption Month with so much gratitude and very full hearts. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this story. Without a support system like ours, we never would have made it through. So many clothing donations, baby sitters, advice givers and friends were exactly what we needed and it truly made a difference. Being a foster parent has been the most fulfilling, overwhelming, and rewarding thing I have ever done. It has taught me not only to be a parent, but also to know the deepest love I’ve ever experienced.

“Children born to another woman call me ‘mom.’ The magnitude of that tragedy and depth of that privilege are not lost on me.” — Jody Landers