#recruitloop

Recruiting in the Digital Age: Must-have tools and tactics for HR

By Michael Overell, CEO and founder of RecruitLoop

To remain competitive — and even pull ahead in your industry — it’s essential your HR department stays ahead of the digital curve. This is no easy task when it seems like new technology and tools pop up every other day. But if you can understand the current trends, you’ll have a much stronger ability to keep your recruitment strategy relevant.

Si…

What is Elastic Recruiting? It’s getting an expert recruiter who bills by the hour, gives you the help you want/need, & tells you everything that he/she is doing.

This morning our founding team celebrated another rewarding and interesting year together. With a walk.

This has become something of a tradition for RecruitLoop to close out the year. We've now shared two in Sydney, and had our first in San Francisco a few weeks ago.

We walk outdoors, in nature, early morning for roughly 2 to 4 hours. Some people might call it a hike. The pace is enjoyable, not overly exerting. At the end point we share a meal and (some of us) a glass of champagne, to recognise and celebrate the year spent working incredibly hard together.

There are no speeches or formalities. We try to avoid talking shop. Just spend some time together in beautiful surrounds outdoors.

Some people find this a weird and/or interesting idea. I thought I'd share why we do it.

Team Sydney overlooking Harbour mouth

Why we walk

For the past two years, this walk has taken the place of a more 'traditional' boozy Christmas party or long lunch. Why would anyone want to avoid such a long-standing and oft-regretted hallmark of the silly season? Several reasons:

It fits with our culture.

We're an active bunch who place an incredibly high value on health and wellness. We each do this in our own ways, but I'd say it's almost a defining characteristic of our team of 7.

We like spending time outdoors. And importantly, there are several non-drinkers among us.

Some companies seem built around a culture of drinking and associated camaraderie. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not us. That's not to say a few of us don't enjoy a delicious glass of red or a long lunch. But shared time outdoors seems a more appropriate and inclusive way of celebrating the year as an entire team.

It's quality time, away from work.

We spend a LOT of time together. Mostly in or around the office, focused on work. When you get outside, somewhere seemingly remote, a strange thing happens. We don't talk shop!

For a few hours we're not checking emails or smashing out tasks, just connecting as friends.

There's no hangover or awkward moments.

Year-end parties can be fun. But we've all seen the standard drill. Someone drinks too much, says something stupid or inappropriate. Either way, everyone wakes up feeling worse than when they started.

A side benefit of a morning walk? We leave feeling better than when we started.

We live in two of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Sydney and San Francisco are phenomenal cities. Water, coastline, mountains, warm climates. Few other world cities can claim such a range of natural beauty within 30 minutes of downtown.

We'd be crazy not to treasure these places.

Team SF by the coast

Future Steps

We've committed to keeping up the tradition, and may look to expand it for semi-annual or quarterly getaways.

As we continue to grow, there's a few things I'll be thinking about:

How to incorporate the entire team, when we're split across 3 continents.

How the format evolves with a larger team.

Whether we can include partners.

And obviously, how to avoid danger and possible death. That's no fun for anyone.

It's been a wild ride with RecruitLoop over the past 2 years. It felt like time to properly capture and share the journey. Here is it...

RecruitLoop: The First 2 Years - #MyStartupStory from RecruitLoop

Today's my first day with RecruitLoop.  Add in Mr. Mayfield's crooning, Pete Rock's production, a little Kanye vulgarity and there you have it folks, joy.

Hiring at a startup is hard and time-consuming. But it's your job as a founder. Here are the steps and process we followed to make our first 2 key hires at RecruitLoop.

I'm delighted to confirm a story from Techcrunch this week. RecruitLoop has raised seed funding, from investors in Australia, Singapore, Europe and the Middle East.

First, we're incredibly excited by the milestone, and deeply appreciative to the investors who back our vision for RecruitLoop. 

It's also not the only news we'll be sharing in the coming weeks, when we can announce a few other big projects and milestones we've been hard at work on.

The funding has been a few months in the making, so it's definitely a milestone we're proud of. But it's just that - a single milestone. Startup funding is one of the 'necessary' parts of the journey, but we see it as the means, not the end.

It will give us some flexibility to run harder in proving out our model, both in Australia and the US. How will we invest it? Hold that question for the next week or two. But typically, startup funding is used for people, product and growth.

One thing we obviously won't be doing: taking our foot off the pedal. 

Seed funding does not equal success.

It most certainly doesn't mean wealth. It basically buys some more time to turn the vision in our heads into a reality. To convince the market (and subsequent investors) that we're not crazy. That we're making a dent. Building something with ongoing and sustainable value.

That's why we're so grateful to the investors who've backed us from an early stage, and our family and friends who've supported us from the very beginning. 

Why the title of this post? We've all had friends who've commented that we must be wildly successful:

How will you be spending all your cash...?! 

As if it was transferred personally to our local savings accounts. 

Don't worry, it wasn't. My personal bank account is an embarrassment, compared to when I left the corporate world two years ago. We're building value on paper, but it's a long time (if ever) before startup founders see any of it. That's ok. It's part of the deal. But startup funding does not equal wealth and success.

So, we're having a tonne of fun. Having a swing, and kicking some goals. But with the very real, weighty, expectations and responsibilities that come with every dollar of someone else's money.

And after the Techcrunch Bump early this week it's back to 'life as usual': driving growth, client support and product strategy.