Hiring is hard. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, except the needle is a unicorn who has a perfect combination of skills, experience, and personality to fit your startup both now and in the unknown future. That's why many startups turn to recruiting firms to help them find the right people for the job. But not all recruiting firms are created equal. So, before you sign on the dotted line, here are ten questions you should ask to make sure you're choosing the right one:

1. What's your approach to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB)? If this is important to your organization - it needs to be important to your recruiting partner. The tech industry didn’t get to where it is accidentaly. It takes intentional work and partnership between hiring teams, managers, and culture-focused executives to build diverse teams and build trust with candidate populations that might be a first or one of a small few on a growing team. So, it's essential to choose a recruiting firm that shares your values and prioritizes DEIB in their hiring process, and help you enhance your knowledge and initiatives there.

2. How do you measure success? A good recruiting firm should be able to tell you how they measure success beyond just filling positions. Look for firms that track retention rates, employee satisfaction, and diversity metrics.

3. Can you give me some examples of similar searches you've successfully completed? It's always helpful to know that the recruiting firm has experience in your industry and has successfully placed candidates in similar roles.

4. How do you handle communication with candidates and represent our company brand? Transparency is key. Make sure the firm commits time up front to learning about your organization’s unique ethos and communicates honestly and regularly with candidates, providing feedback and updates throughout the process.

5. What's your fee structure? It's important to understand the fee structure upfront to avoid any surprises later. Ask about any additional fees, such as signing bonuses or relocation expenses, that may be included.

6. Do you have experience working with startups? Startups have unique needs and challenges, so it's important to choose a firm that understands them and has experience working with them.

7. How do you assess culture fit? Culture Add? Values alignment? These matches are essential, especially in a startup environment. Look for recruiting firms that prioritize culture fit and have a process for assessing it concretely so it’s not just a popularity contest.

8. Can you give me some examples of the types of questions you ask candidates? You want to make sure the recruiting firm is asking the right questions to identify the best candidates. Look for firms that ask questions that go beyond just skills and experience.

9. How do you handle references? When done right, checking references is an important part of the hiring process. Make sure the firm has a thorough process for checking references and is transparent about their approach.

10. Do you have a sense of humor? Okay, this one may not be as important as the others, but let's face it, hiring can be stressful. A recruiting firm with a good sense of humor can make the process a little more enjoyable.

Choosing the right recruiting firm can make all the difference in finding the right candidates for your startup. By asking these ten questions, you'll be well on your way to finding the right partner to help you build your dream team.

To put our money where our mouth is… here are Hustle Hunters answers to questions 1-10:

1. What's your approach to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB)?

   • This runs through our company from our interviews with internal candidates, bi-weekly DEIB learning sessions, and learning + trust building work we do within the historically excluded candidate communities we are part of. We believe that this “work” is ongoing and is the foundation of every interaction both internally and externally.

   • We invest in best in class DEIB resources on behalf of the startups that we partner with. This includes bias-reduction training and software, take-home technical interview availability, consultant access, and coaching during meetings together.

2. How do you measure success?

   • Many ways, often depending on the unique needs of the search itself. But across the board we track time to fill, diversity of each stage of the pipeline, hours the hiring team had to spend in interviews overall, pass through rate of folks we screened, advancement rate by stage, longterm alignment compatability, and retention over time (90% of our placements that started over a year ago are still in their roles)

3. Can you give me some examples of similar searches you've successfully completed?

   • Depends on the role - but our wheelhouse is the early few roles a startup team needs. We’ve had multiple placements that we can share statistics on. Here are some examples of placements we’ve made in the past: Marketing (founding, product, growth, Head of), Sales (founding, AE), Engineering (Sr., mid, full stack, front end, manager), Operations (CoS, head of, manager), Customer Support/Success (CSM, CS Ops)

4. How do you handle communication with candidates and represent our company brand?

   • We take being the first point of contact with candidates on your behalf VERY seriously. It’s important to us that each candidate interaction be personalized, come across as truly human, and accurately represent both the tone and truth about the company we’re representing. During our scoping discussions and weekly touch points, we’ll continue learning large initiatives as well as personal anecdotes to help pitch your organization better to candidates.

5. What's your fee structure?

   • After scoping out the role and specific needs, we’re able to recommend the model of our service structure that seems to fit, and do a variety of contingent, exclusive, non-exclusive, and retained searches. These successful placement fees range from 24-33% of the first year’s total compensation, and vary in when they are due.

   • Note: For seed stage startups, nonprofits, and select new partners: we work at an hourly rate of $185/hour so we have the flexibility to do what needs to be done in service of making the hire (+$5-10k placement bonus depending on seniority).

6. Do you have experience working with startups?

   • That’s all that we do and why we exist! Startups need hiring solutions as unique as they are

   • We specialize in early stage (seed through Series A) organizations, and have also leveraged this “builders” skillset on work in the nonprofit and other “scale-up” sectors

7. How do you assess culture fit? Culture Add? Values alignment?

   • We spend a lot of time scoping out roles and company vales/culture with our hiring partners through a variety of methods (intake form, Q+A, research) to ensure we know what impact this role should have on the business, and what soft skills the ideal candidate will possess. Building this shared language to speak around what often we resort to calling “the intangibles” is a critical part of our process. Then we’re able to uncover the values and ideal working style of candidates and only submit folks that align.

8. Can you give me some examples of the types of questions you ask candidates?

   • We build out customized questions based on the 5-6 core competency areas that we identify and align on for a role with the hiring team. The goal is to ask questions that get us enough signaling to rate the ability on a 3 point scale. Here are some examples of our favorites for identifying builders, owners and gritty folks:

     • What type of culture and working environment helps you thrive and do your best work?

     • What’s a product or feature that you’ve suggested to the team from your work with customers?

     • Can you tell us about a recent project that you’re proud of?

9. How do you handle references?

   • We use references as a core component for uncovering the soft skills of a candidate, and for gathering additional data points from past colleagues using the tool Searchlight. We match reference answers up with a scoping profile we create upon role kick-off to help guide final stage conversations towards stronger signaling where there might still be outstanding questions.

10. Do you have a sense of humor?

    • Well we definitely think we do! I’ve yet to see a client conversation go by without laughter from all parties, and we love a good gif