Day 1 Recruiting Audit

You just started. Before you build anything, you need to know what exists.

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The 6 Questions a Recruiter Needs to Know on Day One

1. What are the current talent acquisition systems?

• The tools: What does the company use to outreach, track candidates, and create agreements?
• The ideal state: If you could snap your fingers and have world class talent knocking at your door, what does the system for that look like?
• The gap: How far off are we from that system with what we currently have in place?

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2. How are you tracking candidates?

• Where candidates live: Airtable, Ashby, Lever, Greenhouse, a spreadsheet, or nothing at all.
• Pipeline status: What's the status on current open roles? Who's in pipeline for each role: early, mid, or late stage? Who are we trying to get that we can't yet?
• Founder conversations: Most founder conversations are about fundraising, making the product better, or hiring great people. Are those being tracked?
• Inbound tracking: When potential candidates reach out to members of the team, what does the team currently do with those candidates?

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3. Where are you sourcing candidates from?

• The tools: LinkedIn Recruiter, Zelco, Apollo, something else?
• What's working: Which channels are producing results and which ones aren't?
• The list: Can I see the people you've already sourced?

Unique ponds: Every company has talent pools that are unique to them. Channels no other company has access to.

• A company with 50k users on their platform? Those users could be candidates.
• A company with a popular newsletter? Readers could be candidates.
• A company with a community (Discord, Slack, Mighty Networks)? Members could be candidates.

For Wispr Flow:

• Power users who love the product
• Voice AI community members
• People already talking about Wispr on Twitter/LinkedIn

The question to ask: What audience does this company have that could become candidates?

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4. What does the company pitch look like?

• The pitch: Is there a documented way to sell the company to candidates?
• The assets: What exists: a deck, a video, a one-pager?
• If nothing exists: That's the first thing to build.

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5. Do you have a recorded interview call I can watch?

This tells me more than any description ever could.

• The style: What's the current interview approach?
• What's working: What's landing with candidates and what's not?
• Evaluation: How are candidates being assessed?

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6. Is there a standardized interview structure?

• The flow: Intro call, team call, discovery project, close.
• The team: Who's involved at each stage?
• The drop-off: Where are candidates falling out of the process?

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After the Audit: What to Build

Based on what's missing, prioritize building:

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The Sync Cadence

For startups: Daily check-ins. Multiple times a day if needed.

The recruiter should have ONE massive priority that makes all other priorities irrelevant. Work on that thing until it's done. The faster the check-ins, the better.

Why daily matters: Things take as long as you say they will. If you say something's gonna take a week, it'll take a week. If you say it's gonna take three hours, you'll try to make it in three hours. Weekly cadences are fine for mid and later stage companies. Not for startups.

What to sync on:

• The one priority that matters right now
• Where you can support them
• Active candidates and next steps
• Gaps in the process

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Output of This Audit

By the end of day one, you should know:

• Current talent acquisition systems and how far off from ideal
• Where candidates are tracked and how founder conversations are captured
• Where sourcing is happening and what's working
• What the company pitch looks like (or if one needs to be built)
• Current interview style and how candidates are evaluated
• Interview structure and where candidates are dropping off
• The unique ponds for this company
• What needs to be built first

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These are the things I would need to know day one, prior to day one, to hit the ground running and be useful to the organization.