What I learned building a ‘recruiting machine’ to hire 30+ people in 2 years

Photo credit: Helena Lopes

While I was the head of product at Blue Apron, I saw first-hand how important it is to build a well-oiled recruiting machine that efficiently and consistently brings in top talent. In two years, I had to hire 30+ people across multiple functions and seniority levels.

I’ll be honest. At first, recruiting was incredibly difficult.

For the first six months, I had to run recruiting on my own, as our in-house recruiting team was nascent and short-staffed. Every weekend, I spent 6+ hours trolling LinkedIn and messaging potential candidates. And every Monday morning, I still felt like I was drowning in the process.

Then, one late night in the office, I mentioned to my colleague Kristen (who had just joined Blue Apron a month prior) how grueling it was trying to keep up with the hiring needs. So, she and her team jumped in to help me build out a recruiting machine that could handle the growing talent need of my department.

Building this machine changed everything.

Long gone were the meandering LinkedIn searches, and in their place was a focused recruiting process that helped us quickly and effectively find top talent.

When I joined NextView Ventures, I saw how helpful this process and know-how could be for our portfolio companies. So, Kristen and I are partnering to build a new hiring bootcamp.

As we put the new talent program together, I reflected back on this all-consuming, yet rewarding journey at Blue Apron.

Here’s what I learned building out a recruiting machine.

Embrace an ‘always be hiring’ mentality

As a leader of a team/function/department/company, one of the most important things you can do is to consistently spend time building your talent pipeline.

The reality is, by the time you finally open a role for X, you’re already three weeks behind. And from there, it’ll take another two to three weeks to fill your recruiting funnel with quality candidates. Five weeks after the need first emerges, you still haven’t interviewed anyone!

Having an “always be hiring” mentality is hard —it’s much easier to focus on only the urgent matters —but you must push yourself to think six to 12 months ahead at all times.

Always have a prioritized running list of roles and direct your energy accordingly. For example, if you’d need a senior design leader in the next 12 months, spend time now to learn about design culture at various companies, gather intel on who others respect in the community, and start building relationships and selling (subtly) about the potential future opportunity.

Stop doing the work

Make hiring top talent everyone’s priority

Run your recruiting process like a marketing funnel

Get rid of your recruiting process waste