Getting started with Paraform
A step-by-step guide on how to make your first submission on Paraform.
By Jeffrey Li
Overview
Paraform is a recruiting marketplace where recruiters connect with companies that are hiring. The companies on our platform now are early stage startups between Seed - Series B.
Early stage startups have a talent acquisition problem and we believe this is where recruiters come in.
There are many ‘automated’ recruiting solutions like AI screening etc but at Paraform, we believe that recruiting is fundamentally human. That’s why we chose a model (like a marketplace) that can facilitate a large volume of very personal human interactions at scale.
In this article, we’ll be going over how to get started as a recruiter on Paraform.
1. Choose a role to recruit for
Once you create a recruiter account, you can browse all open roles with rewards on the home page. You can filter the roles by different functions such as engineering, design, product, operations, and sales & marketing.
You can then click on a role to find out more about what they are looking for.
2. Apply to recruit for the role
Once you select a role you want to work on, you have to apply & get approved before you can start sourcing and submitting candidates.
We do this to ensure the best user experience on both sides and also limit the number of recruiters who can work on a role.
Paraform lets you apply up to 3 roles at a time and have a total of 10 approved roles to make sure recruiters are distributed well across all roles. Learn more about the approval process here.
It is a simple application process with a few questions. Your application is carefully reviewed by the hiring managers so we strongly recommend that you include information that is helpful to the hiring manager not a generic summary of why you like recruiting.
3. Get approved to recruit
Once you’ve been approved by the hiring manager, you will get access to a recruiter dashboard that looks something like this:
It contains all the information about the role and what the hiring manager is looking for so you can start sourcing. It also has a way to communicate with the hiring manager directly and a mini ATS so you can manage your candidate pipeline.
Hiring managers spend hours writing a detailed guide for you that resembles a typical recruiter intake call based on Paraform’s guidelines
We encourage you to read through all the sections: recruiting notes from hiring manager, ideal companies, candidates, role details, sourcing & outreach tips etc.
There are also features unique to Paraform such as most common rejection reasons and anonymized candidate pipeline you can refer to so that you are instantly calibrated on ideal candidate profiles.
4. Source candidates
Whether it’s someone who is already in your network or a new candidate you found using LinkedIn recruiter, you can start submitting them once you get approved for a role.
To conveniently save LinkedIn profiles, take notes and have a CRM to manage candidates, we recommend using Paraform’s Chrome Extension
The Paraform Chrome Extension automatically saves a potential candidate’s LinkedIn profile to a role you are recruiting for on Paraform.
If the candidate gets back to you saying they are interested, you can easily submit their profile from where you saved them.
You can see your saved candidates either in your sourcing CRM or recruiter dashboard for the role
Please remember: saving a candidate and submitting them are two different things.
- Saving a candidate is when you think the candidate’s profile is relevant to the role you are looking for and you reached out etc. It’s mainly for recording purposes.
- Submitting a candidate is when the candidate indicates interest and gave you consent to submit their resume to the hiring manager/company.
- All Paraform submissions have to be double opt-in (candidate also has to be interested). Submitting a candidate is a breach of our ground rules and can result in account suspension.
You can use the help of sourcing tools such as LinkedIn Recruiter, Gem, HireEZ etc to supplement your recruiting efforts on Paraform.
5. Submit candidates
Once the candidate you contacted indicates interest, you can submit them to the role.
There are a few fields to fill out when submitting a candidate. Please make sure all the information you submit is accurate.
We also recommend being as helpful as possible in your answers to the questions hiring managers have about candidates. They already have access to candidate’s LinkedIn and resume, so there is no need for a redundant summary using ChatGPT.
What’s really valuable and what we tend to see work well with successful recruiters is if you can share insights that you have on the candidate that only you know about.
All of the following: something the candidate told you in your screening call, anything that’s not on paper that’s a strong signal, reasons as to why they left their previous company, their salary expectations etc can be helpful for hiring managers to make a decision and often can get things across the finish line.
6. What's next
Once you fill out the form, your candidate will be successfully submitted and you will get a confirmation email.
But what’s next? In the next article, we will explain what happens after a candidate is submitted and what’s expected of you as a recruiter.