This boutique recruiting agency expanded their business on Paraform
SouceMultiplier is a San Francisco based recruiting agency that “marries the science and the art of sourcing”. The agency recently started making placements on Paraform - the platform isn’t just for independents/freelancers!
SourceMultiplier’s founders, Sean Hallihan and Joseph Markey, are seasoned talent professionals who have assembled a world-class team of individuals who are passionate about recruiting. In this post, we’ll dig into their review of Paraform and what advice they have for new recruiters joining.
Helping Decagon hire their founding AE
The founders were great to work with. They were extremely prompt with their feedback and very clear about who they were looking for.
Helping startups is our bread and butter, especially sales and GTM talent. Hiring your first salesperson is a very important milestone for any company so we're glad we helped such a promising high-growth startup with a key hire.
We have quite a few great candidates progressing on the platform so many more to come!
What have you learned about the platform so far?
We’ve been learning as we go along e.g. my understanding of how active I should be in chats with hiring managers. It can be hard to tell where a client is at when a candidate I shared is waiting for a review.
Also, making sure we prepare candidates in a way that we set them up for success, not prep them in a way that’s irresponsible, is really helpful. In order to do that, you need to understand the meeting they’re about to go into. Sometimes that isn’t obvious.
Recruiting in general, the feedback loop is critical to the success of both sides!
But so far, you know, a couple of months of work with Paraform and I’d say you’re a step ahead – at least five, maybe 10 – of these other types of recruiting platforms.
Any ideas for improving feedback loops on Paraform?
Just from years of doing this, you know you’ll naturally run into hiring managers and know how engaged they’re going to be through a process. The problem is, they have a full-time job that’s not hiring. So they get consumed by that.
If you can continue to think about it from the perspective of lowering the barriers to entry for the hiring manager, that could be helpful. Just based off my experience, if a client is on the fence about a candidate, they tend to delay giving feedback at all. It’s like a soft no.
So the scorecard system that you guys have is one way to lower the barrier. Make it quick for hiring managers to give feedback.
We now give hiring managers the option to use scorecards or comments. Our goal is to make feedback easier and faster, while avoiding having it become generic and therefore unhelpful.
An additional thing to consider: having a consistent method of feedback helps recruiters make sure every candidate is getting assessed with the same bar through the process.
Being able to see hiring manager feedback on previously rejected candidates and the calibration they provide to sourced candidates is also very helpful.
What are some best practices for engaging with hiring managers?
Being involved in the intake call is critical for our success. We’ve been part of a few reqs where we weren’t. Joining from the start gives us a good, really strong understanding of what a client is looking for.
Getting clear criteria from the start removes a lot of guesswork. Makes it easier to screen candidates and makes the feedback loop slightly less critical.
Also, if you have enough experience, you sort of know what the ideal profile looks like for some roles. For example, having really strong communication, being professional, not just being able to do something – but create a replicable process.
Once you can find a good candidate like that, you can feel confident putting them forward in similar roles. These are kind of ambiguous criteria, but you can get a sense for them. Other search parameters like where people went to school are more clear, but also more generic.
Any other ideas?
Maybe adding recommendations for some of your partner integrations, like an ATS or CRM, would be handy. Making that part of your onboarding process for clients and recruiters could be useful. Getting a startup equipped with a complete stack can speed up that feedback loop quite a bit.
What advice would you give recruiters joining this platform?
I think engagement is a huge part of success. This is what we’re kind of recognizing now. Initially we were just trying to play nice in the sandbox, not step on toes, not ruffle feathers, or whatever analogy you want to use.
We were using the platform but now we’re trying to lean in more. When I say “active” I mean not just with submits, but post-submit, like reaching out and asking for feedback directly. If there’s no movement, try to understand what’s going on and not necessarily be bashful about that.
You want to have a high level of engagement without becoming annoying. It’s a fine line. But one of the nice things about the platform is the built-in chat feature with the hiring manager and the fact that it directly integrated with their Slack. That direct access to hiring managers is helpful.
So, overall, getting more active and proactive. Excited for fellow recruiters to try this recruiting world!
Ready to start recruiting and earning?
Apply to join Paraform today!