Project example :

"Interim Recruiter at a start-up"

Interim Recruiter at a Start-up

Access to a new round of financing translated itself into ambitious growth plans for a young e-commerce start-up. Within a timeframe of three to six months, the company intended to recruit 150 employees. It would need support for this. To meet the challenge, the client decided to group several experienced Interim Recruiters who were up to the task, to tackle it as a team.

Project »Interim Recruiter«

Both the start-up founders and the Interim Recruiting team were adamant that it was not about recruiting CVs, only people. All recruiters worked on site at the company. As the Interim Recruiter team on site at the client company, this gave us the distinct advantage of a better feel for the personalities that would fit into the team and suit the start-up and which would not. These were my duties in this project:

Hands-on recruiting for a growing start-up
Active sourcing and approaching talent one-on-one
The commissioning of agencies
Conducting interviews

The status quo at the outset

The start-up worked together with different agencies for the recruitment process. The agencies had to be commissioned by us. Active sourcing was the main stance the Interim HR team would take to approach prospective talents in the market. As Interim Recruiter at a start-up, I looked after about 15 to 20 open positions in the technical and sales areas.

Course of the project

Compared to other clients, the processes at the start-up were markedly faster – without the company burdening us with any specifications or cumbersome software solutions. The profiles of prospective candidates were forwarded to the company daily. Some of the interviews could already be conducted the very next day. To facilitate the interim recruiting process, media services such as Xing and LinkedIn were enlisted flexibly, as were business networks. Active sourcing, that is to say approaching prospective talents directly one-on-one, proved to be extremely successful.

Additionally, we also relied upon your classic executive search methodology. In a competitive labour market, it lends itself very favourably to the search for executives and specialist professionals with its direct approach.

» For the start-up, active sourcing was by far the approach of choice by the Interim Recruiters who would approach prospective talents directly. «

Lars Schott, HR Manager

Active sourcing – the tool of choice

Interim Recruiters who go the active sourcing route have significantly greater success than agencies do. Why is that? Applicants know that agencies do not always have direct contact with the HR Department. Some such agencies are even regarded as “traders of CVs” and not everyone likes to talk to them. The Interim Recruiter on the other hand, can answer questions the potential candidate might have about the company or the position in an uncomplicated way – without hesitation and hence with no risk of delaying the process. The Interim Recruiter can obtain open information by calling the contact person directly and does not have to make a detour via the HR department like the agencies do.

Advantage of deploying a team of Interim Recruiters

Deploying several experienced Interim Recruiters as a joint team was a particularly advantageous move for the client. All of them had already gained many years of experience in recruiting with different clients and industries. This knowledge was exchanged among one another – constituting a “swarm intelligence” of sorts in recruiting.

As an experienced Interim Recruiter, I was able to empathise and engage very strongly with the needs of the client. On the one hand, I coordinated the search profile for the positions with the HR colleagues. On the other, I had almost daily contact with the hiring manager on site, so I formed an integral part of the company. The client therefore received a very individualistic service from me.

A proven track record

Over a period of three months, in my role as Interim Recruiter at a start-up, I was able to fill more than ten positions successfully for the company. Compared to hiring an agency, deploying an Interim Recruiter team for a talent search is the significantly cheaper solution for a company in most instances – because like this you are paid by the day. Interim Recruiters are deployable very flexibly and projects also lend themselves to being postponed, changed or cancelled at short notice.