Startups Keep Hiring Doormen

2 min read

Startups have no queue, and keep hiring recruiters trained to manage one.

I've yet to meet hiring managers or recruiters who know how to assess recruiters.

They use proxies instead: tenure, logos, market knowledge, networks. Shortcuts. Heuristics. The proxies exist because the real output of recruitment is hard to see. Nobody counts the people who read the advert or recruiter outreach and closed the tab, or took the call and said no, so nobody can say which recruiter would have changed their minds.

Logos mislead most.

Recruiters from Google, Meta and the like spend their days among very clever people, but their work is saying no. They are doormen at the VIP rope of an exclusive club, admitting one specific type of person. Square pegs into square holes.

At those companies the brand does the attracting. The queue is already round the block, so the job is managing it: spotting flaws, finding reasons to decline, building systems and tools to decline faster. It is a real skill. It is talent operations, not talent attraction.

Talent attraction is the promoter out on the street, working out how to get people through the door. Most walk past. The promoter fails more often than not, and each time gets better at presenting what the club has in a way that makes people want to come in.

The two jobs train opposite instincts. The doorman looks for a reason to say no. The promoter looks for a reason someone would say yes. Years at the rope never require describing the club to someone who has not heard of it.

Most companies hire on the logo. Start-ups can least afford to. They are struggling for an audience, so there is no queue. Nor are they at the square-peg stage. Their holes aren't cut yet, and the role will be shaped by whoever takes it. The people they need are high performers with options: employed, reasonably content, under no pressure to move. Nothing pulls them in until somebody makes the case for something unfinished, and doormen have never had to.

So the doorman does what the doorman knows. The advert becomes a door policy, a list of who will not be let in. The few who turn up get filtered hard. The rope goes up in front of an empty street.

None of this is a criticism of the doorman. They are good at a different job, and the logo tells you which skill they have honed.

Assessing the promoter means watching the approach, not collecting proof of it. Logos, tenure and examples are all offered as proof of certain traits, and all of them can be gamed. Most interviews ask for examples, and examples can be made up.

The acid test is simpler. Put a thin job description in front of them and see what they make of it. The doorman takes it at face value and asks what you are looking for: the must-haves, the years, the logos. They have never been out on the street canvassing interest, so they draft the door policy. The promoter asks why anyone good would leave where they are for this, what the role offers that their current one does not, and who has already said no and why. They are working out the case before they try to make it. Then ask them to pitch it back. Some will have found a reason to join. Others will read you the requirements.