Tag: Leadership

How recruitment agencies can help startups build teams

Early-stage companies face a hiring problem that is structurally different from the one large employers face. A corporate hiring manager filling a role is adding capacity to a system that already works. A founder making their eighth hire is defining what the company becomes. The cost of a poor decision is not a wasted salary; it is a year of cultural drift and, frequently, the departure of good people who joined before the mistake.

Yet startups are also the least equipped to hire well. There is rarely a dedicated talent function, the employer brand is unknown outside a narrow circle, compensation cannot compete on cash, and the founders doing the hiring are the same people who must also build the product and raise the next round.

Where a specialist partner genuinely adds value

Turning an ambition into a specification. The most common failure in early-stage hiring is an unwritten role. Founders describe the person they imagine rather than the outcomes they need, and the search drifts. A good recruitment partner starts by converting the ambition into a specification: the three outcomes this hire owns in their first year, the capabilities that are genuinely non-negotiable, and the ones that are preferences in disguise. That conversation alone often changes the shape of the role.

Reaching people who are not looking. The candidates who can build a function from nothing are almost never on job boards; they are employed, well-regarded and not actively searching. Reaching them requires a warm route, a credible articulation of the opportunity and the patience to have a conversation that does not convert for six months. This is the part founders cannot easily do at volume alongside running a company.

Selling the opportunity honestly. Startups win senior talent on scope, equity and proximity to real decisions, not on salary. Presenting that trade-off credibly — including the risks — attracts people who are genuinely suited to the environment and filters out those who will be unhappy within a quarter. Overselling is the single most expensive thing an early-stage employer can do.

Compensation intelligence. Founders routinely over- or under-offer because they lack reliable benchmarks for their stage, sector and geography, particularly when hiring across borders. Getting the equity-to-cash balance right at offer stage prevents the corrosive internal inequities that surface eighteen months later.

Speed with structure. Early-stage companies must move quickly, but speed without structure produces inconsistent decisions. A defined process — consistent interview stages, agreed scoring criteria, a single decision-maker — lets a startup move faster than a corporate while making better decisions than one.

Choosing a partner that fits the stage

Not every agency suits early-stage work. Ask directly whether the firm has built comparable teams at comparable stage, whether you will work with the person who pitched to you, how they handle a placement that does not work out, and whether their fee model matches your funding rhythm. Contingency search suits volume; retained or fixed-fee search suits appointments where the specification is difficult and the cost of error is high.

Erdobar supports founders with cost-effective, fixed-fee hiring designed for teams that need to scale quickly without committing to a permanent internal talent function. We are transparent about pricing, we work to an agreed specification, and we will tell you when we think a role is wrong before we take it on.

Talk to us about your hiring plan and we will tell you honestly what it will take.

20 November 2024
Your perfect guide to navigate salary negotiations

Salary negotiation is the highest-return twenty minutes in most professional careers, and it is also where capable people most reliably underperform. The reason is rarely a lack of technique. It is that negotiation feels like a threat to a relationship that has just started going well, so candidates accept the first number to avoid the discomfort.

It is worth being precise about the cost of that discomfort. A senior professional who accepts an offer five per cent below what was available, and whose subsequent rises are calculated as percentages of that base, will typically forgo a six-figure sum over a career. Employers know this. Almost none of them withdraw an offer because a candidate negotiated professionally.

Establish the range before you need it

Negotiating without data is guessing. Before any conversation about money, establish the realistic range for the role in that sector, at that company size, in that location, for someone with your specific evidence. Use published salary surveys, sector-specific benchmarks and, most usefully, a specialist recruiter who places these roles and knows what is actually being paid rather than advertised. Arrive with a range you can justify and a walk-away number you have decided in advance and in writing.

Let the employer anchor, then respond with evidence

Where you can do so gracefully, allow the employer to state a range first. If pressed for expectations before you have information, a composed deferral works: that you are focused on establishing mutual fit and would welcome the range budgeted for the role. When you do state a number, state the top of your justified range rather than the middle, and immediately attach it to evidence — the scope you are taking on, comparable market data, and the outcomes you have delivered previously.

Negotiate the whole package

Base salary is the most visible term and often the least flexible, particularly where an employer maintains internal pay bands. Bonus structure, equity, pension contribution, notice period, holiday entitlement, professional development budget, title, reporting line and location flexibility are frequently more movable and can be worth more in combination. If base salary is genuinely capped, a documented six-month review against agreed objectives is a reasonable and commonly accepted alternative.

Language that keeps the relationship intact

Frame the conversation as joint problem-solving rather than positional bargaining. “I am genuinely enthusiastic about this role and want to make it work. Based on the scope we have discussed and what I am seeing in the market, I was expecting something closer to X — how much flexibility is there?” This is collaborative, specific and easy for a hiring manager to take to their finance partner.

Two disciplines matter more than any phrasing. Never negotiate in the moment on a phone call — thank them warmly, ask for the offer in writing and request a defined period to consider it. And never invent a competing offer; it is easily detected, it destroys trust and it occasionally ends the process.

Close it cleanly

Once you reach agreement, confirm every term in writing before resigning anything, including start date, reporting line, bonus mechanics and any review commitment. Then close warmly. The person on the other side of that negotiation is about to become your manager, and a negotiation conducted with evidence and good humour tends to start that relationship well rather than badly.

Erdobar advises candidates on offer strategy as a standard part of every search we run, including realistic benchmarking for the specific role and market. Learn more about our career counselling support.

20 November 2024
Attracting the top talent: Strategies for hiring executives

Executive hiring differs from all other recruitment in one decisive respect: the people you most want are not available. They are performing well in roles they are not unhappy in, they are not reading job advertisements, and they will not respond to a generic approach. Any executive hiring strategy that depends on candidates coming to you is a strategy for appointing the people who happen to be looking, which is a materially different population from the people who are best.

The cost of getting this wrong is disproportionate. A failed senior appointment carries not only recruitment and severance costs but twelve to eighteen months of strategic drift, the disengagement of a leadership team that watched it happen, and often the loss of good people who reported to the wrong hire.

Define the mandate before you define the person

Most executive searches begin with a specification describing an idealised biography — sector background, company size, years of experience — and never articulate what the appointment must actually achieve. Invert this. Agree, in writing and among all decision-makers, the three outcomes this executive owns in their first eighteen months and the conditions they will face while delivering them. A turnaround mandate and a scale-up mandate require genuinely different people, and boards that skip this step frequently discover the disagreement at final stage, after months of work.

Approach passive candidates with a proposition, not a vacancy

Senior people respond to a compelling problem, not an opening. The approach that works describes the strategic challenge, the scope of authority, the quality of the team and board, and the reason this appointment matters now. It respects their time and expects nothing on first contact. This is slow, relationship-led work, and it is the substance of retained search.

Protect confidentiality deliberately

Where an incumbent is still in post, or where the appointment signals a strategic shift to competitors, discretion is a commercial requirement rather than a courtesy. This means controlled information release, named client identity disclosed only at advanced stages, and secure candidate data handling under GDPR. Leaks at executive level damage share price, customer confidence and internal stability.

Assess judgement rather than knowledge

By the time a candidate reaches an executive shortlist, technical competence is largely established. What remains genuinely uncertain is judgement under pressure, ability to build followership and integrity when nobody is watching. Assessing these requires structured behavioural interviewing against agreed criteria, realistic scenario work drawn from the actual challenges of the role, psychometric input used as one signal among several, and referencing that goes beyond nominated referees to people who have worked below and alongside the candidate. Panels that rely on chemistry consistently appoint people who interview well.

Move at the speed of the market

Executive processes fail as often through delay as through poor assessment. Strong candidates who are courted over five months by an indecisive board withdraw, and they tell their networks why. Agree the process, the panel, the dates and the decision rights before the search opens, and hold to them.

Treat onboarding as part of the appointment

The appointment is not complete at signature. Executives who fail usually fail in the first six months, through unclear mandate, unresolved inherited conflict or an absent stakeholder map. A structured first hundred days, an explicit statement of authority and a named internal sponsor materially improve retention. Erdobar builds onboarding support into every retained search for exactly this reason.

Widen the pool deliberately

Roughly a fifth of leadership roles are held by candidates from under-represented groups, and the primary mechanism is not overt bias but narrow sourcing from familiar networks. Structured criteria applied consistently, blind initial screening and deliberate outreach beyond existing networks expand the pool without lowering the bar — and they demonstrably improve the quality of shortlists.

Erdobar runs confidential retained executive search for C-suite and senior leadership appointments, combining AI-assisted mapping of passive candidates with rigorous human assessment. Clients typically see hiring cycles shorten by around thirty per cent against their previous experience. Explore our executive search practice or arrange a confidential conversation.

19 November 2024