December 23, 2025 • 38 mins
Greg Troxell, Director of TA at Function Health, joins James Mackey to share how a single comment reshaped his hiring philosophy from resume relay to business impact. He shares how they break down the concept of skills-based scaffolding and how it drives better hires leading to reduced mis-hires.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:46):
Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show.
I'm your host, James Mackey.
We have Greg Troxwell on theshow.
He's the director of townacquisition at Function Health.
So, anyways, Greg, thanks.
Welcome to the show.
Really happy that you're here.
SPEAKER_00 (00:57):
Yeah, thanks, James.
I'm so excited.
This is gonna be fun.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
Yeah, it's uh great to have you.
Really enjoyed our prep call acouple of weeks ago, going
through some of the topics andyour background.
Speaking of which, it would begreat if we can learn more about
your background and what you'vedone professionally.
SPEAKER_00 (01:14):
Yeah, yeah, I'll dive in.
I uh so like most people intalent acquisition, I'd say
recruiting finds you.
That's maybe more of an oldersaying.
I've actually seen people who'venow just wanted their whole
career to get into recruiting ortheir whole like through college
and stuff, which is crazy.
Um, but yeah, it found me.
I was in I was a sportsmanagement major in college.
I worked in sports after, andthen the money was like lacking
(01:38):
there.
And I got a hit up from arecruiter to recruit people, and
I was like, what is this?
Uh and then I like interviewedand jumped right in.
And my my background reallystarted in agency.
Actually, my first, my firstever recruiting job was in locum
tenens, which is like temporarydoctor recruiting.
So I recruited likepsychiatrists in Florida and
(01:59):
just a bunch of differentspecialties.
And whenever a hospital ormedical system had like a
shortage of clinicians ordoctors, I would recruit the
doctors to fill those spots.
Um, very interesting, like firstrecruiting gig.
And then I moved into your moretraditional big agencies, like
your AeroTechs and Ronstads.
That was the midst of it for awhile.
(02:19):
Then I got what I call as likethe biggest, the biggest break.
And I worked for Boris at Bank.
Bank was like um an RPOconsultancy in Silicon Valley,
and they've built some of thebiggest well-known companies
that we know and love today,like Pinterest and you know,
early at Airbnb, and I mean,just numerous companies that
(02:41):
like we all know.
And what they would do is theywould embed their recruiting
teams into the startup and likewhatever you needed.
It could be like designinterview processes or hire it
at will.
Uh, whatever you needed, therecruiting team from Bank would
come in and do it.
And I got some really uniqueopportunities there, working for
Get Around, which is like theAirbnb for cars, for Zooks,
(03:03):
which is like the autonomoustaxi for DoorDash.
And the unique part of thatworld in talent was I got to see
so many different environments,companies at different stages,
different industries, differentfounders, first-time founders,
multiple-time founders, um, andreport to many different VPs of
engineering and founders andrecruiting leaders and whatever
(03:24):
it may be.
And you get to really like seewhat you like and see what you
don't like and see where youthrive and see where you
stumble, and you get to learnthrough those experiences.
And that's where I really buildup my love for the build,
working with early stagestartups there, building
something from zero, the theseed, the the almost we have
nothing, we can't even spellinterviewing ideology of like,
(03:47):
how do you build something fromzero became like my passion.
And that's what brought me tothis stage of my career, which
is startups.
I'm on my third health techstartup, which is not by plan or
by design.
I love that this mode that I'vebeen in of taking something we
have zero built, and let's builda system, an operating system to
scale a business.
And that's where I've been now.
(04:08):
Um, through three companies,Wheel, MIDI, and Function
Health, came in at the veryearly stages of the recruiting
function and started, startedscaling, which is still what I
love and still so much fun.
Uh, there's a lot of maybesleepless nights or like uh
crazy moments, but it it'sexciting to get into that space
and just you don't know what thenext day's challenge is gonna
(04:29):
bring, but you have to you haveto build it.
SPEAKER_01 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah.
And I I'm very familiar withBink as well.
So Boris actually, uh, while hewas at when Bink got acquired by
Robin Hood and he was head oftalent over there, he actually
became an advisor for my RPOembedded agency secure vision.
So I was able to work with Borisfor a couple of years, which was
(04:53):
a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00 (04:54):
He's the yeah, he's the best.
He he was like the theinnovator.
He's the one that started it offnow the most recent news with
growth by design headed toCursor.
I don't know if it was the firstone, but I feel like it was the
first one.
Like Bink being acquired byRobin Hood was the first like
RPO to be acquired by a startup.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:12):
Did you go over to Robinhood at all?
SPEAKER_00 (05:14):
Um that's where that's where that decision kind
of came.
It's like Robinhood was the bigcompany, like they had a massive
recruiting team already.
We were adding to it.
And I, through the experiences Ihad at Bank, that's what I
wasn't a huge fan of.
Um, I I just felt like I think Iwas really interested in the
(05:35):
impact, like the individualimpact that you could have at a
smaller company more than thebigger ones.
And when I was at some of thelarger projects that Bank had, I
was just like, recruit as manysoftware engineers as you can.
It wasn't like um work in yourown silo and you go.
And there's a lot of people thatlove that.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It just didn't like align.
I just didn't feel like thatvalue for me.
(05:59):
So when the Robin Hood news camedown, it was that was the
decision of like, do I jump togo early stage and do what I
know I enjoy, or do I just trythis out and see if I liked it?
I probably would have liked it,but I loved, I just knew what I
I already knew what I liked.
unknown (06:14):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (06:15):
Well, it sounds like you really like building from
the ground up.
SPEAKER_00 (06:18):
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So I joined, I was the second, Ithink, second recruiter, but
first technical recruiter atWheel, and then I moved up from
there.
And it was nice.
SPEAKER_01 (06:29):
Okay, cool.
Well, you're actually one of ourfirst guests that is coming on
with a new format of the show.
Steven Trudor named thebreakthrough hiring show.
Yeah, exactly.
It's really exciting.
Uh, so it's I'm I'm reallyexcited.
We're elevating the show, and Ithink going to through telling a
more story-oriented format isgoing to be even more impactful.
(06:51):
And so just for our gueststuning in, the new format
highlighting two, maybe more.
We'll see how the conversationgoes.
We'll see.
Maybe there's more storiesthat'll come out.
But uh two stories uh from ourguests' uh career, which is
really exciting.
And the first story being alittle bit more formative in
nature, what I'm calling almostlike a professional coming of
age, right?
Where's a story that essentiallyhighlights how that's impacted
(07:15):
how we think about talentacquisition.
All right.
So, Greg, I would I would loveto get started there, just going
through a moment in your careerthat really impacted you and the
leader that you are today.
SPEAKER_00 (07:27):
Yeah, yeah.
I I oh I think about a lot.
And it's it was while I was atBank, I was working for a client
and the VP of engineering saidsomething to me that like it's
so simple when you hear it, butit actually changed the entire
way I think about recruiting.
And it's all you're doing issending me resumes.
And like when you think aboutit, yeah, like that's yeah,
(07:49):
you're right.
That's what you want.
That's why I'm here, right?
And that's more of like um, Idon't want to generalize things,
but you can get stuck into thatagency recruiting mindset of
like, I'm gonna throw resumes atthis job until one sticks.
It's the numbers game.
That's some games that is play.
And there's a lot of people thathave been very successful, a lot
of companies that have been verysuccessful at that strategy.
But what it changed for me, andI think it's more of this impact
(08:12):
thing that I talked about alittle bit earlier, of like,
what do I really enjoy?
I took that as saying, what am Iactually, what value am I
actually bringing?
Um, and I think of like whenwhen he says that, like, you're
just sending me resumes, and Inever asked him about it, and I
probably should reach out to himand be like, hey, you don't need
you don't know you did this, butyou completely changed things
(08:32):
for me.
But he said, You're trying tofill a seat, is the way I took
it.
You're just trying to fill aseat.
Like, we have to manage thesepeople, they have to do well
here.
Like every hire determines thesuccess of a company.
And it's like the the MarkBenioff principle you can have
an average product, but if youhire the best people, you'll
win.
That's that mindset, is it'slike you're just sending me
resumes.
(08:52):
Like I want people that aregoing to elevate this company.
And it really pushed me to divein.
I sat with our technical teams,I learned what their problems
were day to day.
I understood what an iterativecoding language was.
I really dove into each piece ofthe business to determine who
was the right fit.
And again, generalizing, but uha software engineer at a Fang
(09:18):
company might not be the bestfit for our Series A because of
like speed to productivity andlike how often we chip code on a
weekly and monthly basis.
That's not an environment thatthey're used to.
And then there's like thecultural differences between
like enterprise Java and ourPython shop, right?
So, like that it allowed me justto dive into those details of
the recruit, like finding theright candidate for what we need
(09:40):
to do.
And then can they learn anditerate and grow amongst the
next six months to four years ofthe job?
And that that also expanded iteven further for me.
You guys probably are thinking,like, wow, you took one sentence
way too seriously, Greg.
But um, I think like, how do howcan I bring revenue into the
(10:01):
company?
That's what it evolved to.
And it was in a time where COVIDwas happening, a ton of
recruiting teams were gettinglaid off.
And I kept thinking about like,how do I, I know there's a value
here.
We're we're doing it wrong.
And I keep kept thinking aboutthat quote, that one sentence.
So I started thinking aboutlike, okay, if we hire a high
performer and a high performerbrings in 20% more revenue than
(10:23):
an average performer, can wetrack how much revenue
recruiting brought in thisquarter?
Because we hired X highperformers on these teams and
these teams brought in Xrevenue.
I started like doing these veryV1 calculations to determine how
much impact are we actuallybringing, and then starting to
build recruiting to enhancethose goals and those
structures.
So our goals in recruitingbecame value added to the
(10:47):
company or high performers.
So we started looking atperformance reviews.
How many of our hires got thehighest rating performance
review?
Who are the game changers?
And did we hire them versusattrition numbers and what value
are we actually creating?
Do we understand theenvironments?
Uh, are we putting the rightpeople into those environments
and also on the right teams tosucceed and grow?
(11:09):
So it took this whole differentapproach for me.
And I mean, it was down toeverything, like the recruiter
screen, like how I approachedthe recruiter screen too, like
how I sold equity.
I thought about that questioneverywhere I went.
Um, and then I made sure myfeedback notes were like so
detail oriented, way beyond theresume to do it.
It was like that aha moment thatI needed.
It's a very monotonous job.
(11:30):
And it's like a what have youdone for me lately job,
especially in the individualcontributor recruiter seat.
You get into this flow of, okay,I'm good at this.
I know this many equals thismany, like recruiter screens
equals hires.
And you can play those numbergames and understand how you
work to create success, but thatcompletely flipped it on its
(11:50):
head in a different way.
I was like, that's not reallythe right way it needs to go.
Like, yes, I need to know thesethings for my own metrics, but
there's a better way I couldserve a business with our
function, and that's where ittook me.
SPEAKER_01 (12:03):
Yeah, well, that's incredibly insightful.
I think about talent acquisitionsimilarly uh in terms of from a
ROI perspective.
Yeah.
And what's interesting is thatrecently we've started playing
with putting a ROI calculatorinto our proposals for embedded
recruiting and showing theactual impact of secure vision
(12:28):
and breaking down essentiallyhead count associated with ARR
growth.
Right.
And it's like rough estimatesof, of course, like there's no
perfect science here, and it'sit's hard to have completely
accurate attribution.
However, we can look at okay,teams that have a more
established TA motion earlier onand how that correlates to
(12:52):
future success, right?
Um, which is is reallyimpactful.
It's every hire right at thatearly stage should have a
ideally seven, if not eightfigure ROI, yeah, right.
On the value that they'reproducing for the company.
SPEAKER_00 (13:08):
It's so true.
Exactly.
So that and that's how criticalit is.
And we're even talking aboutlike customer support, having
those numbers, even if you justbreak it down to revenue per
employee, which obviously isgoing to have a margin of error.
In those early stages, you havea 200 person startup max, and
you're making 100 mil, that's asignificant employee number.
(13:31):
Right.
And if you're tracking that overtime and you see that revenue
per employee increase, there'stwo things that are happening.
Like the business is creatingthe correct efficiencies, the
product market fit is there.
So I guess that's three things.
And the third is like you'rehiring the folks.
And that's the part that doesn'tget mentioned much.
It's almost like recruiting isan automatic in a lot of
companies.
It's like, oh, but this is justwhat happens when you grow.
(13:54):
But we've all seen, and being inthe space, you know when it's
done poorly, and we've seen itget done poorly and planned
poorly.
And if you can show that storyof growth on the ROI component,
it completely changes the waythe business views the talent
function.
And that's the mission at theend of the day.
And it would be cool to get downto we're hiring this senior
software engineer, and we'vedetermined like senior software
(14:16):
engineers make X amount ofrevenue per year.
We open the role, we're expectedto hire it in 45 days.
Here's how much money we loseevery day after 45 because this
role's been open too long.
And that's a maybe a negativemetric for recruiting, but how
much value, like when theleadership sees how much money
they could lose if we delay thathire two weeks or a month, no
(14:40):
one thinks about the lostdollars and the amount of money
not earned because there isn't aperformer in the seat.
So getting those calculations ismy next V2 what I want to get
to, but that's super impactfulto get to be able to talk
dollars from the recruitingfunction, which until recently
wasn't really a focus, which I'mhappy a lot more folks are in on
(15:00):
it now.
SPEAKER_01 (15:02):
Did this uh breakthrough uh impact how you
actually evaluated talent interms of during the screening
and interview process?
And if so, how how so?
SPEAKER_00 (15:14):
Yeah, like I think evaluation just came from a
typical kickoff conversationwhere we were like, what
questions do you want me to askin the recruiter screen?
And is there anything I can helpevaluate for you to you know
you're getting a great personfor the higher manager screen?
That was like the layup questionthat we would ask.
And then it it turned into likewhen I mentioned I would do
these sit-downs and I'm gonna doa bad job.
(15:37):
I don't remember who the authoris, but it's a book for
technical recruiters, like howto talk technical as a technical
recruiter, but it's written byan engineer.
I can't remember the name of it,but I read that book like front
to back.
And then I started talking toour engineers and scheduling
one-on-ones with them.
What do they do day to day andwhere's the gap on the team and
what's the hard part?
And I would really just dive inand I would ask the stupid
(15:59):
question with our teams like,why would we not consider
somebody that has a Javabackground, even though we're a
Python shop?
I wanted to know what's the gap.
And I think that's that was thedifference.
It it seems like simple.
It seems very intuitive.
Like, why wouldn't you do thisimmediately?
But what that did, my screensturned into like in front of
like, hey, let me, whatquestions can I ask?
(16:21):
To when I'm done this recruiterscreen, you're gonna know
exactly the culture that theycame from, the engineering
cultures or sales culture,whatever it may be.
I'm just picking engineering fornow.
And like, you know, how big weretheir teams?
What was the their budgets?
Like, how fast did it take toget to production and what parts
did they own?
Instead of like, oh, you were onthis project at Spotify.
(16:43):
That's great.
And like pass, move forward.
And it just went from, I guessthe best way to describe it.
I'm getting a little verbose,but it's like, what did you do
versus what's the first part?
What did you do at thesecompanies and how long were you
here?
To what was the impact?
What was the team size?
What broke?
When did you know it broke?
How did you fix it?
How many people were involved infixing it?
What role did you play in fixingit?
And really get into the detailsbecause I want to take that
(17:05):
person from their seat and putthem in our seat, knowing what
our environment wasinterconnectedly.
And I'd want to fill that spot.
So somebody who's shipping codeonce a quarter, cleaning the
bolts on the ivory tower isn'tthe environment for somebody
like in the mud on theconstruction team, basically.
And I wanted like I foundimmense success from changing
(17:29):
that and really diving intothose questions.
So the recruiter screen becamenot necessarily a technical
interview.
There's only so deep I could go,but like a day in the life of
you, what actual role youplayed, what mistakes did you
make?
How did you fix them?
And I used to always come withthe phrase, like, that's
impossible to be perfect.
So where did you mess up?
How did you learn you messed up?
(17:50):
And what was the team thatneeded to fix that mess up?
And it it became like thatunderstanding of how intuitive
they were, how self-aware theywere.
And those are the environmentsthat we needed.
We needed somebody who couldwork in ambiguous, who knew that
mistakes were normal, but couldidentify the mistakes before
they became too serious and thenfix them and was curious enough
(18:10):
to fix them and ask the rightquestions.
So that's how the evaluationsturned into versus checkbox
recruiter screen to like fullydeep dive.
And then when I teed up thefeedback to the hiring manager,
they could just do multiplelayers of different interviewing
from that point on.
So we've really sped up how deepwe could go in the interview
(18:31):
process.
SPEAKER_01 (18:32):
Yeah, I think it's uh what I'm hearing too is that
it can be easy, particularlywhen you're building a program
from the ground up, andparticularly when you start to
enter scale to put such a largeemphasis on systems, yeah, that
sometimes we you're away fromspending a lot of time with the
(18:53):
teams that we're hiring for.
Yeah.
Right?
And actually.
Yeah.
And you you start to recognize,okay, on the team, the top
performers, maybe the folks thatare struggling, the differences,
the nuance in terms of skillset, behavior, yeah, background
at times, like where theexperience that they had and the
(19:15):
environments that they've workedin.
And there's all this nuance thatcan then inform how you manage
the screening, right?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (19:23):
Yeah.
And even to your point therewith like top performers and not
top performers.
I think I tell our recruitingteam this a lot.
Like when you do a kickoff, findout who's the best three
employees on their team, andthen do a market map with that
talent.
Those just take the threeLinkedIn profiles, find out the
similarities because there'll besimilarities.
They came from these types ofcompanies, or their first jobs
(19:47):
were in these types ofcompanies.
We'll find some similarities,like some training grounds, or
maybe they did come from thesame employer.
There's definitely things thatwe'll find that we can start
creating a talent ecosystem mapof finding out what type of
environments our top performerscame from in each department.
That's the type of goal.
Just turning the key a littlebit more to say, I don't need to
(20:08):
make a hire.
I need to bring somebody in thebusiness that will 10X us in
this department, not 10X thecompany.
But I mean, that would be cooltoo.
Yeah, that's great too.
SPEAKER_01 (20:17):
Yeah.
Let's always shoot for that.
Yeah.
I'd love to transition more soto something that you're
currently working on, abreakthrough that you're looking
to achieve over the next 12months, or maybe one that you've
achieved over the past 12months.
Yeah.
So let's dive into thatconversation and what you're
solving currently or recently.
SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, you know, function health isis been awesome.
I'm just still recently here,like three and a half, four
months in, and the big shift.
That we're making is kind oflike in in in very related to
what we're doing, but we'retaking our hiring from pedigree
base.
So, like trying to avoidgenerally, oh, your resume says
(20:59):
you went to these companies.
So we should hire you because weknow those companies hire great
people and have a high bar.
It's kind of going into thatprevious conversation, is taking
pedigree might not be what'sserving us, but hiring for
slope, I'm seeing it more andmore.
And actually, I just saw apodcast get released the other
day ago with a VC talent partnerabout slope hiring.
(21:19):
But think of it as likescaffolding.
We're going to build aninterview structure for your
team.
We're going to look at all thecompetencies for this role.
And then when if we take thesecompetencies, so let's say
there's eight of them or 10 ofthem for this role, what does
your team not have today, orwhere's the gap?
And that becomes the mostimportant competency that we're
going to assess in our interviewprocess.
(21:39):
Maybe there's three that we lackor don't have enough of.
So we start to search this role,and we may have five people that
are in this position today, butthis one's going to be a bit
different because this is thegap that this team doesn't have.
Maybe it's marketing is acompetency, or think of a
product marketing manager.
The competency that we don'ttypically have on the team is
(22:00):
let's say it's data analytics,just really diving into data.
They're great with how to liftup a product, how to push it out
there, how to communicate it tothe masses, but taking the data
and action in it may be aweakness on this team.
So we're going to have hire aPMM who's that's their strength
now, which is going to be verydifferent from the PMMs that
we've hired previously.
But that team is going to be waybetter because of it.
(22:20):
So we're lifting that team up.
So we're building our interviewprocess around this skill-based
slope scaffolding where we havethese sets of competencies for
each role, but what becomes thepriority changes over how we
scale and allows theorganization to make micro
adjustments around if we hit our2026 headcount plan, we can
(22:41):
still hire for the gaps thatwe're finding throughout the
year based on this slope.
So if we have X amount of hiresin this department, we know we
can hire different people withdifferent backgrounds.
We get very caught up into thisevergreen hiring format,
especially if you take likesales or software engineering or
even customer support, forexample.
(23:02):
But there's actual skills thatare being utilized on the team
and there's gaps being createdbecause of it that we're not
finding.
And it allows these teams tobecome more high-performing by
slightly adjusting the profileof the talent pools we're
bringing in.
And then we build an interviewprocess for that.
So obviously, it wouldn't needto be this exact same interview
process if we're interviewing alot of different skills or the
(23:23):
high priority skills of change.
We can switch it up too and getpeople who are strong in those
areas to assess.
But it's allowing us to likelift the team up with each hire
and make them a higherperforming team with each hire.
And then hopefully calculatingthe revenue from that and seeing
revenue per employee increaseand those things.
So that's what we're buildingnow is taking pedigree out of it
(23:44):
and becoming very skills-basedoperating system, like ideas.
And we have essentially mysaying is we have an operating
system, we do it this way, weassess this way, but within it
is the scaffolding that we buildbased on those competencies.
So that's what we're in themidst of.
And comms are going out to thecompany this week or next week.
SPEAKER_01 (24:04):
Oh, nice.
So this is a recent evolution.
Yeah.
And just to understand, so whereis function health in terms of
scale or growth?
Where the size of the team,potentially funding round, if
that's relevant.
Just where are you today?
SPEAKER_00 (24:19):
Yeah, we actually just raised a$298 million series
B.
SPEAKER_01 (24:23):
Oh, wow.
Oh, congratulations.
That's a big series B.
SPEAKER_00 (24:25):
Yep.
About a month ago, we announcedthat.
So that's amazing.
And we're in this mass growthstage now as we're going to hit
2026, just getting bigger andbigger.
And there's like this otherlayers of artificial
intelligence versus scale andcreating efficiencies across the
business within that.
We're doing a lot of that in2026 game planning now.
But we're in this point wherewhy we're building it this way
(24:48):
is like we need to make sureevery hire counts because it's
so critical now.
We have this funding, we havethe product market fit.
We have the over immense amountof customers that are paying
these yearly membership fees tojoin us.
So, how do we take this and makesure every single person is
servicing the members in thebest way?
And that's one of the internalvalues of the company is like
(25:09):
member first.
And so we want to likeencapsulate that in hiring too.
We need to hire the best personso our members can get the best
results from the product.
And that's a little bit of ashout-out to Jim Miller at
Ashby.
Some of the things we're doingon the top of funnel, if we're
not, if the recruiter screenhire funnel is 10 to one, we
want to triple that on the topof funnel.
(25:30):
So we want to do 30 screens foreach role and we get three
finalists.
And if we hire all three, great.
If we hire one, we're going topick the best three out of the
800 people that applied.
But we're going to look at everyapplicant, we're going to
source, we're going to getreferrals, and we're going to
pick the top 30 from that entirepool and interview them.
(25:50):
And we're going to try todecrease the margin of error of
hiring, making a miss hire,essentially, by just really
assessing every resume,interview them, interviewing the
best, and then selecting thebest from it.
So combining all of thattogether allows us to make those
adjustments, but still stay trueto hiring the best of the best
(26:12):
that's available to us in thetalent pool.
SPEAKER_01 (26:15):
With this slope hiring, it involves tying back
even to your first the firstconversation we were having
around doing more than sendingresumes and hiring folks that
are actually building thebusiness.
You need to have a it soundslike a very close relationship
with the teams that you'rehiring for, with the function
leader, the team of engineeringkind of sales, right?
(26:39):
Truly understanding the topperformers, what they may have
in common.
But not only that, actuallypotentially the gaps on the team
which can elevate everyone,right?
Um if you solve for that.
So that's how much time do youspend with the teams that you're
hiring for?
And what is there maybe thereisn't necessarily the need for a
(27:02):
consistent cadence, but how doyou manage that?
Because you're scaling, I'massuming, like rapidly with that
type of funding, it sounds likeyou're probably going to be
building from a percentage basisincreasing headcount
significantly.
So how do you how do you stayclose with the priorities of
those teams?
SPEAKER_00 (27:23):
This has been the hard part because in order for
this to be successful, we needto stay close because like even
you need to you need our leadersto have the strategic muscle as
well.
If we get caught in theheadcount cycle where it's like,
here's our headcount plan, butthen a month later it's actually
I need to hire these on my team.
It's hard for us to stay aheadbecause if we're going to do
(27:44):
this approach, we need to beproactive about how we recruit
versus the opposite.
And reactivity is, I think it'svery normal in a startup, but
you try to stay out of it asmuch as you can.
But I think you have to havethick skin in the early stage
startup world because that'sjust I don't know an early stage
startup that has the strategyfigured out.
(28:04):
You kind of have to go with theflow.
And the number one principle islike we cannot slow the company
down.
We have to hire at the pace thatthe business needs.
Now we would have toovercommunicate as we're getting
these profiles kicked off.
Like that is my slowdown.
But what I'm saying to thebusiness is if you give me this
extra week to kick this role offto really understand your team,
(28:25):
to really understand this role,to understand the gap, to build
the interview process, to lookat every resume, to source the
candidates, to get referrals.
Just give me one extra week.
What we're gonna bring to you tothe table is we're gonna bring
the top talent from the marketwe can put together.
And all of them are great.
So you're gonna get candidatesthat are great.
And as an interviewer, now youcan just be decisive and make
(28:45):
the call between two fantasticpeople.
And now we're just like pickingbetween hairs.
So the wasted time is going todecrease significantly.
And maybe the total time mightbe 45 days, but the recruiting
time is 28 because we're gettingthe best profiles to you right
away, and we're just storingthrough an interview process.
So I'm asking for the weactually did this in a
(29:06):
recruiting off site, and it wasa really cool exercise in
creating our operating system.
We talked about each step ofeverything we do, or like the
main step of everything do.
So sorry with headcount process,then roll kickoff, then like
scope and compensation, thensourcing, then applicant
questions.
And, you know, we went all theway down.
(29:27):
And I think there was like 11 or12 things that we do or steps,
and six of them are before therole gets posted.
So my emphasis was like, weshould spend 50% of our time
launching a role in like in thistheory, because if we do this
right, then it flows quicklythrough the rest of the funnel.
But I think we tend to forgethow much it is to kick something
(29:50):
off.
But if we do it the right way,the quality of the candidate
pool, the time you can movecandidates through because
they're the right fit, they'reactivated, they're excited, the
matches there from what thecandidate's motivators are and
what the business is.
Like you've done the right,you've done what you do well by
market mapping the topperformers from the recruiting
expertise side of it.
It's like we've done those thosepieces of work.
(30:11):
So it's going to make ourprocess go cleaner once it
actually kicks off.
But I'm just asking for a littlebit longer of a week to get it
really started.
So that's where the methodologyis based around.
It's a learning.
It takes time to get that going.
SPEAKER_01 (30:29):
Yeah.
And I also I like how yousegment the time from
essentially time to fill versusalmost time of recruiting.
Yeah because you there's thatgap which should be there.
That's how you can develop morecertainty around your ability to
hit your hiring plan becauseyou've done the work that you
have to do to be reallyeffective once you start
(30:53):
running.
It's you need to make sureyou're running the right
direction.
SPEAKER_00 (30:58):
We have a hiring manager here, and we primarily
use agencies.
And we have a hiring managerhere who's never passed a
candidate through the hiringmanager screen in a short amount
of time, but quite a good bit ofcandidates that hasn't passed.
We did this process and we tookthe time in the beginning and
the first four candidates wesent right through.
(31:18):
Um I love that.
And it's just we took the time,we learned the business, we know
the gaps.
We've talked to the candidatesthat can fill the gaps, and they
just stormed right through theprocess.
So um, we're seeing the actualdividends from it.
And it does, it it can be a slogin recruiting because you have
to go, you feel you have to go,go, go all the time.
But almost likecounterintuitively saying slow
down, learn it, spend the timewith the hiring manager, have
(31:40):
one-on-one with the teammembers, really make sure that
you understand what you'rerecruiting for here because it
will serve you at the end, Ipromise.
Uh but yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (31:49):
Well, this has been a really informative uh session
that we're having here.
And I'm I'm really excited aboutpublishing this and getting in
front of our guests.
I have a few rapid firequestions for you, shorter
responses uh here where we'rejust covering some some
different uh questions that aretop of mind for a lot of folks
are you know, also a little bitmore fun and lighthearted
(32:10):
questions here.
But um, so the first one to kickus off.
This is the big one.
Uh will AI replace recruiters?
SPEAKER_00 (32:17):
Whoa.
I'll say this.
I I think we will hear sometimewithin a year from now, we'll
hear of a recruiting team thatis fully 100% AI.
There will be, I think therewill be a founder that tries it.
And I think we'll we'll see thatit won't work to the fullest
extent.
It will it will create a lot oftime for the teams to manage,
(32:41):
but it will probably come back.
But I think it will happen.
I think we'll see it.
And I think my synopsis rightnow is like I see resume
screening, scheduling, somesourcing, admin work, knockout
questions, early filtering.
You can already, if you know howto prompt AI, you can do that
really well.
But as far as judgment underambiguous conditions and early
stage startup or assessingmotivation of a candidate, I
(33:03):
think those are the clearrunaways where recruiting is
very safe.
I'd say my short answer is likemaybe the tough answer is it
won't replace recruiting, but itwill replace recruiters who
don't evolve with it and canmove faster from it.
So that's probably my take onit.
But I'm interested to see thefounder who actually just tries
(33:24):
it and we can all joke about itlater.
SPEAKER_01 (33:27):
Right.
Yeah, that'll be reallyinteresting to see.
Yeah.
So, next question what is moreproductive, an office or remote?
SPEAKER_00 (33:35):
I love remote work, but I find when we can get
together, uh, there's just somuch more that we can get done
when we're just like sittingthere and brainstorming.
But I think talent is sodispersed now.
And if you hyperlocate yourtalent, you're not going to get
the best talent.
And you have to be okay withthat as a business.
So it's like kind of acounterintuitive.
I think remote is the best withopportunities to be in person.
(34:00):
If that makes sense.
Is that cheating?
SPEAKER_01 (34:03):
It's not.
And it's actually, it soundslike that's the culture at
function health where you are aremote team but have a fair
amount of offsite and ability tocome together as a team and
collaborate, right?
SPEAKER_00 (34:14):
Yeah.
Yep.
Exactly.
I think there's like a ton ofvalue there in doing that.
And like, I mean, we had arecruiting team off-site in
Houston, and the things we wereable to get done in three days,
it was just like the focus time,just uh block it all off and get
it done.
So that's I I think that's myhopefully not cheating answer.
SPEAKER_01 (34:34):
I love it.
Um, so what book has had thebiggest impact on your life and
or career?
SPEAKER_00 (34:41):
The book, it would so I'll I'll go to like Radical
Candor, I think is a great oneby Kim Scott.
I actually I have it sittingover here.
I always have it on my desk.
And it's like one, it's it'sreally good from especially
leading in recruiting.
You don't get a lot of feedback.
It's like, what have you donefor me lately?
But in leading, when you firstget your first manager job, it's
(35:02):
like, am I doing a good job?
I don't know.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
And I think Kim Scott justreally brilliantly was like, you
need to care about your people.
And the first step is you haveto get, you have to ask for
negative feedback and sit therecomfortably until somebody on
your team gives you negativefeedback about yourself and to
learn about yourself and toevolve.
And I thought those principleswere very good in creating the
(35:22):
psychological safety on yourteam to, hey, I really care
about you.
And I'm giving you this feedbackbecause it's going to make you
better, not because I need togive you bad feedback.
She really paints that picturereally well.
But also, there's a really cooluh piece in the book where she
tells you how to manage yourtime if you're a leader.
Like, how many hours a weekshould you spend for your team?
How many hours a week should youspend doing strategy or focus
(35:44):
work on your own?
And how many hours a week shouldyou leave for the business?
And that just really helps tostructure my weeks and think
about how I should take on eachweek is like giving the right
amount of time to certainthings.
So that's a big tip that sheit's not very much highlighted
in the book, but when I readthat section, I remember writing
it down.
I still use it today.
So that's a good one.
And the other one I'll justmention is like, oh, it's called
(36:06):
Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins.
He's an interesting character,but just the mindset of I'm in
control of all of this.
If I mess up, I can fix it.
But I need to know I mess upfirst.
And like just internalizing itall and saying I can get out of
these situations.
I can, I can win, I can bebetter, I can be worse, but it's
(36:27):
my choice.
And it's what actions I put intoit.
Those are the two that reallywere like, oh yeah, this is
totally right.
Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (36:35):
That's great.
Yeah, those are both uh booksI've heard of that I have not
had a chance to read, which nowI am going to.
So thanks for thoserecommendations.
We'll need a follow-up, James.
Yeah, oh, definitely.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Well, Greg, look, this has beenawesome.
I've really enjoyed getting toknow you.
I know our audience will aswell.
Your insights have been veryhelpful.
And I think just yourbackground, working for at this
(36:59):
point, several differentenvironments for a lot of
startups and growth stagecompanies.
It's going to resonate withfolks.
They're going to learn from it.
So I wanted to say thank you somuch for contributing to our
audience and our community.
SPEAKER_00 (37:11):
Thanks, James.
Appreciate it.
It was so much fun.
SPEAKER_01 (37:14):
It was a great time.
And for everybody tuning in,thank you so much for joining
us.
And we'll see you next time.
Take care.
Hello, welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show.
I'm your host, James Mackey.
We have Greg Troxwell on theshow.
He's the director of townacquisition at Function Health.
So, anyways, Greg, thanks.
Welcome to the show.
Really happy that you're here.
SPEAKER_00 (00:57):
Yeah, thanks, James.
I'm so excited.
This is gonna be fun.
SPEAKER_01 (01:00):
Yeah, it's uh great to have you.
Really enjoyed our prep call acouple of weeks ago, going
through some of the topics andyour background.
Speaking of which, it would begreat if we can learn more about
your background and what you'vedone professionally.
SPEAKER_00 (01:14):
Yeah, yeah, I'll dive in.
I uh so like most people intalent acquisition, I'd say
recruiting finds you.
That's maybe more of an oldersaying.
I've actually seen people who'venow just wanted their whole
career to get into recruiting ortheir whole like through college
and stuff, which is crazy.
Um, but yeah, it found me.
I was in I was a sportsmanagement major in college.
I worked in sports after, andthen the money was like lacking
(01:38):
there.
And I got a hit up from arecruiter to recruit people, and
I was like, what is this?
Uh and then I like interviewedand jumped right in.
And my my background reallystarted in agency.
Actually, my first, my firstever recruiting job was in locum
tenens, which is like temporarydoctor recruiting.
So I recruited likepsychiatrists in Florida and
(01:59):
just a bunch of differentspecialties.
And whenever a hospital ormedical system had like a
shortage of clinicians ordoctors, I would recruit the
doctors to fill those spots.
Um, very interesting, like firstrecruiting gig.
And then I moved into your moretraditional big agencies, like
your AeroTechs and Ronstads.
That was the midst of it for awhile.
(02:19):
Then I got what I call as likethe biggest, the biggest break.
And I worked for Boris at Bank.
Bank was like um an RPOconsultancy in Silicon Valley,
and they've built some of thebiggest well-known companies
that we know and love today,like Pinterest and you know,
early at Airbnb, and I mean,just numerous companies that
(02:41):
like we all know.
And what they would do is theywould embed their recruiting
teams into the startup and likewhatever you needed.
It could be like designinterview processes or hire it
at will.
Uh, whatever you needed, therecruiting team from Bank would
come in and do it.
And I got some really uniqueopportunities there, working for
Get Around, which is like theAirbnb for cars, for Zooks,
(03:03):
which is like the autonomoustaxi for DoorDash.
And the unique part of thatworld in talent was I got to see
so many different environments,companies at different stages,
different industries, differentfounders, first-time founders,
multiple-time founders, um, andreport to many different VPs of
engineering and founders andrecruiting leaders and whatever
(03:24):
it may be.
And you get to really like seewhat you like and see what you
don't like and see where youthrive and see where you
stumble, and you get to learnthrough those experiences.
And that's where I really buildup my love for the build,
working with early stagestartups there, building
something from zero, the theseed, the the almost we have
nothing, we can't even spellinterviewing ideology of like,
(03:47):
how do you build something fromzero became like my passion.
And that's what brought me tothis stage of my career, which
is startups.
I'm on my third health techstartup, which is not by plan or
by design.
I love that this mode that I'vebeen in of taking something we
have zero built, and let's builda system, an operating system to
scale a business.
And that's where I've been now.
(04:08):
Um, through three companies,Wheel, MIDI, and Function
Health, came in at the veryearly stages of the recruiting
function and started, startedscaling, which is still what I
love and still so much fun.
Uh, there's a lot of maybesleepless nights or like uh
crazy moments, but it it'sexciting to get into that space
and just you don't know what thenext day's challenge is gonna
(04:29):
bring, but you have to you haveto build it.
SPEAKER_01 (04:32):
Yeah, yeah.
And I I'm very familiar withBink as well.
So Boris actually, uh, while hewas at when Bink got acquired by
Robin Hood and he was head oftalent over there, he actually
became an advisor for my RPOembedded agency secure vision.
So I was able to work with Borisfor a couple of years, which was
(04:53):
a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00 (04:54):
He's the yeah, he's the best.
He he was like the theinnovator.
He's the one that started it offnow the most recent news with
growth by design headed toCursor.
I don't know if it was the firstone, but I feel like it was the
first one.
Like Bink being acquired byRobin Hood was the first like
RPO to be acquired by a startup.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:12):
Did you go over to Robinhood at all?
SPEAKER_00 (05:14):
Um that's where that's where that decision kind
of came.
It's like Robinhood was the bigcompany, like they had a massive
recruiting team already.
We were adding to it.
And I, through the experiences Ihad at Bank, that's what I
wasn't a huge fan of.
Um, I I just felt like I think Iwas really interested in the
(05:35):
impact, like the individualimpact that you could have at a
smaller company more than thebigger ones.
And when I was at some of thelarger projects that Bank had, I
was just like, recruit as manysoftware engineers as you can.
It wasn't like um work in yourown silo and you go.
And there's a lot of people thatlove that.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It just didn't like align.
I just didn't feel like thatvalue for me.
(05:59):
So when the Robin Hood news camedown, it was that was the
decision of like, do I jump togo early stage and do what I
know I enjoy, or do I just trythis out and see if I liked it?
I probably would have liked it,but I loved, I just knew what I
I already knew what I liked.
unknown (06:14):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (06:15):
Well, it sounds like you really like building from
the ground up.
SPEAKER_00 (06:18):
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So I joined, I was the second, Ithink, second recruiter, but
first technical recruiter atWheel, and then I moved up from
there.
And it was nice.
SPEAKER_01 (06:29):
Okay, cool.
Well, you're actually one of ourfirst guests that is coming on
with a new format of the show.
Steven Trudor named thebreakthrough hiring show.
Yeah, exactly.
It's really exciting.
Uh, so it's I'm I'm reallyexcited.
We're elevating the show, and Ithink going to through telling a
more story-oriented format isgoing to be even more impactful.
(06:51):
And so just for our gueststuning in, the new format
highlighting two, maybe more.
We'll see how the conversationgoes.
We'll see.
Maybe there's more storiesthat'll come out.
But uh two stories uh from ourguests' uh career, which is
really exciting.
And the first story being alittle bit more formative in
nature, what I'm calling almostlike a professional coming of
age, right?
Where's a story that essentiallyhighlights how that's impacted
(07:15):
how we think about talentacquisition.
All right.
So, Greg, I would I would loveto get started there, just going
through a moment in your careerthat really impacted you and the
leader that you are today.
SPEAKER_00 (07:27):
Yeah, yeah.
I I oh I think about a lot.
And it's it was while I was atBank, I was working for a client
and the VP of engineering saidsomething to me that like it's
so simple when you hear it, butit actually changed the entire
way I think about recruiting.
And it's all you're doing issending me resumes.
And like when you think aboutit, yeah, like that's yeah,
(07:49):
you're right.
That's what you want.
That's why I'm here, right?
And that's more of like um, Idon't want to generalize things,
but you can get stuck into thatagency recruiting mindset of
like, I'm gonna throw resumes atthis job until one sticks.
It's the numbers game.
That's some games that is play.
And there's a lot of people thathave been very successful, a lot
of companies that have been verysuccessful at that strategy.
But what it changed for me, andI think it's more of this impact
(08:12):
thing that I talked about alittle bit earlier, of like,
what do I really enjoy?
I took that as saying, what am Iactually, what value am I
actually bringing?
Um, and I think of like whenwhen he says that, like, you're
just sending me resumes, and Inever asked him about it, and I
probably should reach out to himand be like, hey, you don't need
you don't know you did this, butyou completely changed things
(08:32):
for me.
But he said, You're trying tofill a seat, is the way I took
it.
You're just trying to fill aseat.
Like, we have to manage thesepeople, they have to do well
here.
Like every hire determines thesuccess of a company.
And it's like the the MarkBenioff principle you can have
an average product, but if youhire the best people, you'll
win.
That's that mindset, is it'slike you're just sending me
resumes.
(08:52):
Like I want people that aregoing to elevate this company.
And it really pushed me to divein.
I sat with our technical teams,I learned what their problems
were day to day.
I understood what an iterativecoding language was.
I really dove into each piece ofthe business to determine who
was the right fit.
And again, generalizing, but uha software engineer at a Fang
(09:18):
company might not be the bestfit for our Series A because of
like speed to productivity andlike how often we chip code on a
weekly and monthly basis.
That's not an environment thatthey're used to.
And then there's like thecultural differences between
like enterprise Java and ourPython shop, right?
So, like that it allowed me justto dive into those details of
the recruit, like finding theright candidate for what we need
(09:40):
to do.
And then can they learn anditerate and grow amongst the
next six months to four years ofthe job?
And that that also expanded iteven further for me.
You guys probably are thinking,like, wow, you took one sentence
way too seriously, Greg.
But um, I think like, how do howcan I bring revenue into the
(10:01):
company?
That's what it evolved to.
And it was in a time where COVIDwas happening, a ton of
recruiting teams were gettinglaid off.
And I kept thinking about like,how do I, I know there's a value
here.
We're we're doing it wrong.
And I keep kept thinking aboutthat quote, that one sentence.
So I started thinking aboutlike, okay, if we hire a high
performer and a high performerbrings in 20% more revenue than
(10:23):
an average performer, can wetrack how much revenue
recruiting brought in thisquarter?
Because we hired X highperformers on these teams and
these teams brought in Xrevenue.
I started like doing these veryV1 calculations to determine how
much impact are we actuallybringing, and then starting to
build recruiting to enhancethose goals and those
structures.
So our goals in recruitingbecame value added to the
(10:47):
company or high performers.
So we started looking atperformance reviews.
How many of our hires got thehighest rating performance
review?
Who are the game changers?
And did we hire them versusattrition numbers and what value
are we actually creating?
Do we understand theenvironments?
Uh, are we putting the rightpeople into those environments
and also on the right teams tosucceed and grow?
(11:09):
So it took this whole differentapproach for me.
And I mean, it was down toeverything, like the recruiter
screen, like how I approachedthe recruiter screen too, like
how I sold equity.
I thought about that questioneverywhere I went.
Um, and then I made sure myfeedback notes were like so
detail oriented, way beyond theresume to do it.
It was like that aha moment thatI needed.
It's a very monotonous job.
(11:30):
And it's like a what have youdone for me lately job,
especially in the individualcontributor recruiter seat.
You get into this flow of, okay,I'm good at this.
I know this many equals thismany, like recruiter screens
equals hires.
And you can play those numbergames and understand how you
work to create success, but thatcompletely flipped it on its
(11:50):
head in a different way.
I was like, that's not reallythe right way it needs to go.
Like, yes, I need to know thesethings for my own metrics, but
there's a better way I couldserve a business with our
function, and that's where ittook me.
SPEAKER_01 (12:03):
Yeah, well, that's incredibly insightful.
I think about talent acquisitionsimilarly uh in terms of from a
ROI perspective.
Yeah.
And what's interesting is thatrecently we've started playing
with putting a ROI calculatorinto our proposals for embedded
recruiting and showing theactual impact of secure vision
(12:28):
and breaking down essentiallyhead count associated with ARR
growth.
Right.
And it's like rough estimatesof, of course, like there's no
perfect science here, and it'sit's hard to have completely
accurate attribution.
However, we can look at okay,teams that have a more
established TA motion earlier onand how that correlates to
(12:52):
future success, right?
Um, which is is reallyimpactful.
It's every hire right at thatearly stage should have a
ideally seven, if not eightfigure ROI, yeah, right.
On the value that they'reproducing for the company.
SPEAKER_00 (13:08):
It's so true.
Exactly.
So that and that's how criticalit is.
And we're even talking aboutlike customer support, having
those numbers, even if you justbreak it down to revenue per
employee, which obviously isgoing to have a margin of error.
In those early stages, you havea 200 person startup max, and
you're making 100 mil, that's asignificant employee number.
(13:31):
Right.
And if you're tracking that overtime and you see that revenue
per employee increase, there'stwo things that are happening.
Like the business is creatingthe correct efficiencies, the
product market fit is there.
So I guess that's three things.
And the third is like you'rehiring the folks.
And that's the part that doesn'tget mentioned much.
It's almost like recruiting isan automatic in a lot of
companies.
It's like, oh, but this is justwhat happens when you grow.
(13:54):
But we've all seen, and being inthe space, you know when it's
done poorly, and we've seen itget done poorly and planned
poorly.
And if you can show that storyof growth on the ROI component,
it completely changes the waythe business views the talent
function.
And that's the mission at theend of the day.
And it would be cool to get downto we're hiring this senior
software engineer, and we'vedetermined like senior software
(14:16):
engineers make X amount ofrevenue per year.
We open the role, we're expectedto hire it in 45 days.
Here's how much money we loseevery day after 45 because this
role's been open too long.
And that's a maybe a negativemetric for recruiting, but how
much value, like when theleadership sees how much money
they could lose if we delay thathire two weeks or a month, no
(14:40):
one thinks about the lostdollars and the amount of money
not earned because there isn't aperformer in the seat.
So getting those calculations ismy next V2 what I want to get
to, but that's super impactfulto get to be able to talk
dollars from the recruitingfunction, which until recently
wasn't really a focus, which I'mhappy a lot more folks are in on
(15:00):
it now.
SPEAKER_01 (15:02):
Did this uh breakthrough uh impact how you
actually evaluated talent interms of during the screening
and interview process?
And if so, how how so?
SPEAKER_00 (15:14):
Yeah, like I think evaluation just came from a
typical kickoff conversationwhere we were like, what
questions do you want me to askin the recruiter screen?
And is there anything I can helpevaluate for you to you know
you're getting a great personfor the higher manager screen?
That was like the layup questionthat we would ask.
And then it it turned into likewhen I mentioned I would do
these sit-downs and I'm gonna doa bad job.
(15:37):
I don't remember who the authoris, but it's a book for
technical recruiters, like howto talk technical as a technical
recruiter, but it's written byan engineer.
I can't remember the name of it,but I read that book like front
to back.
And then I started talking toour engineers and scheduling
one-on-ones with them.
What do they do day to day andwhere's the gap on the team and
what's the hard part?
And I would really just dive inand I would ask the stupid
(15:59):
question with our teams like,why would we not consider
somebody that has a Javabackground, even though we're a
Python shop?
I wanted to know what's the gap.
And I think that's that was thedifference.
It it seems like simple.
It seems very intuitive.
Like, why wouldn't you do thisimmediately?
But what that did, my screensturned into like in front of
like, hey, let me, whatquestions can I ask?
(16:21):
To when I'm done this recruiterscreen, you're gonna know
exactly the culture that theycame from, the engineering
cultures or sales culture,whatever it may be.
I'm just picking engineering fornow.
And like, you know, how big weretheir teams?
What was the their budgets?
Like, how fast did it take toget to production and what parts
did they own?
Instead of like, oh, you were onthis project at Spotify.
(16:43):
That's great.
And like pass, move forward.
And it just went from, I guessthe best way to describe it.
I'm getting a little verbose,but it's like, what did you do
versus what's the first part?
What did you do at thesecompanies and how long were you
here?
To what was the impact?
What was the team size?
What broke?
When did you know it broke?
How did you fix it?
How many people were involved infixing it?
What role did you play in fixingit?
And really get into the detailsbecause I want to take that
(17:05):
person from their seat and putthem in our seat, knowing what
our environment wasinterconnectedly.
And I'd want to fill that spot.
So somebody who's shipping codeonce a quarter, cleaning the
bolts on the ivory tower isn'tthe environment for somebody
like in the mud on theconstruction team, basically.
And I wanted like I foundimmense success from changing
(17:29):
that and really diving intothose questions.
So the recruiter screen becamenot necessarily a technical
interview.
There's only so deep I could go,but like a day in the life of
you, what actual role youplayed, what mistakes did you
make?
How did you fix them?
And I used to always come withthe phrase, like, that's
impossible to be perfect.
So where did you mess up?
How did you learn you messed up?
(17:50):
And what was the team thatneeded to fix that mess up?
And it it became like thatunderstanding of how intuitive
they were, how self-aware theywere.
And those are the environmentsthat we needed.
We needed somebody who couldwork in ambiguous, who knew that
mistakes were normal, but couldidentify the mistakes before
they became too serious and thenfix them and was curious enough
(18:10):
to fix them and ask the rightquestions.
So that's how the evaluationsturned into versus checkbox
recruiter screen to like fullydeep dive.
And then when I teed up thefeedback to the hiring manager,
they could just do multiplelayers of different interviewing
from that point on.
So we've really sped up how deepwe could go in the interview
(18:31):
process.
SPEAKER_01 (18:32):
Yeah, I think it's uh what I'm hearing too is that
it can be easy, particularlywhen you're building a program
from the ground up, andparticularly when you start to
enter scale to put such a largeemphasis on systems, yeah, that
sometimes we you're away fromspending a lot of time with the
(18:53):
teams that we're hiring for.
Yeah.
Right?
And actually.
Yeah.
And you you start to recognize,okay, on the team, the top
performers, maybe the folks thatare struggling, the differences,
the nuance in terms of skillset, behavior, yeah, background
at times, like where theexperience that they had and the
(19:15):
environments that they've workedin.
And there's all this nuance thatcan then inform how you manage
the screening, right?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (19:23):
Yeah.
And even to your point therewith like top performers and not
top performers.
I think I tell our recruitingteam this a lot.
Like when you do a kickoff, findout who's the best three
employees on their team, andthen do a market map with that
talent.
Those just take the threeLinkedIn profiles, find out the
similarities because there'll besimilarities.
They came from these types ofcompanies, or their first jobs
(19:47):
were in these types ofcompanies.
We'll find some similarities,like some training grounds, or
maybe they did come from thesame employer.
There's definitely things thatwe'll find that we can start
creating a talent ecosystem mapof finding out what type of
environments our top performerscame from in each department.
That's the type of goal.
Just turning the key a littlebit more to say, I don't need to
(20:08):
make a hire.
I need to bring somebody in thebusiness that will 10X us in
this department, not 10X thecompany.
But I mean, that would be cooltoo.
Yeah, that's great too.
SPEAKER_01 (20:17):
Yeah.
Let's always shoot for that.
Yeah.
I'd love to transition more soto something that you're
currently working on, abreakthrough that you're looking
to achieve over the next 12months, or maybe one that you've
achieved over the past 12months.
Yeah.
So let's dive into thatconversation and what you're
solving currently or recently.
SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, you know, function health isis been awesome.
I'm just still recently here,like three and a half, four
months in, and the big shift.
That we're making is kind oflike in in in very related to
what we're doing, but we'retaking our hiring from pedigree
base.
So, like trying to avoidgenerally, oh, your resume says
(20:59):
you went to these companies.
So we should hire you because weknow those companies hire great
people and have a high bar.
It's kind of going into thatprevious conversation, is taking
pedigree might not be what'sserving us, but hiring for
slope, I'm seeing it more andmore.
And actually, I just saw apodcast get released the other
day ago with a VC talent partnerabout slope hiring.
(21:19):
But think of it as likescaffolding.
We're going to build aninterview structure for your
team.
We're going to look at all thecompetencies for this role.
And then when if we take thesecompetencies, so let's say
there's eight of them or 10 ofthem for this role, what does
your team not have today, orwhere's the gap?
And that becomes the mostimportant competency that we're
going to assess in our interviewprocess.
(21:39):
Maybe there's three that we lackor don't have enough of.
So we start to search this role,and we may have five people that
are in this position today, butthis one's going to be a bit
different because this is thegap that this team doesn't have.
Maybe it's marketing is acompetency, or think of a
product marketing manager.
The competency that we don'ttypically have on the team is
(22:00):
let's say it's data analytics,just really diving into data.
They're great with how to liftup a product, how to push it out
there, how to communicate it tothe masses, but taking the data
and action in it may be aweakness on this team.
So we're going to have hire aPMM who's that's their strength
now, which is going to be verydifferent from the PMMs that
we've hired previously.
But that team is going to be waybetter because of it.
(22:20):
So we're lifting that team up.
So we're building our interviewprocess around this skill-based
slope scaffolding where we havethese sets of competencies for
each role, but what becomes thepriority changes over how we
scale and allows theorganization to make micro
adjustments around if we hit our2026 headcount plan, we can
(22:41):
still hire for the gaps thatwe're finding throughout the
year based on this slope.
So if we have X amount of hiresin this department, we know we
can hire different people withdifferent backgrounds.
We get very caught up into thisevergreen hiring format,
especially if you take likesales or software engineering or
even customer support, forexample.
(23:02):
But there's actual skills thatare being utilized on the team
and there's gaps being createdbecause of it that we're not
finding.
And it allows these teams tobecome more high-performing by
slightly adjusting the profileof the talent pools we're
bringing in.
And then we build an interviewprocess for that.
So obviously, it wouldn't needto be this exact same interview
process if we're interviewing alot of different skills or the
(23:23):
high priority skills of change.
We can switch it up too and getpeople who are strong in those
areas to assess.
But it's allowing us to likelift the team up with each hire
and make them a higherperforming team with each hire.
And then hopefully calculatingthe revenue from that and seeing
revenue per employee increaseand those things.
So that's what we're buildingnow is taking pedigree out of it
(23:44):
and becoming very skills-basedoperating system, like ideas.
And we have essentially mysaying is we have an operating
system, we do it this way, weassess this way, but within it
is the scaffolding that we buildbased on those competencies.
So that's what we're in themidst of.
And comms are going out to thecompany this week or next week.
SPEAKER_01 (24:04):
Oh, nice.
So this is a recent evolution.
Yeah.
And just to understand, so whereis function health in terms of
scale or growth?
Where the size of the team,potentially funding round, if
that's relevant.
Just where are you today?
SPEAKER_00 (24:19):
Yeah, we actually just raised a$298 million series
B.
SPEAKER_01 (24:23):
Oh, wow.
Oh, congratulations.
That's a big series B.
SPEAKER_00 (24:25):
Yep.
About a month ago, we announcedthat.
So that's amazing.
And we're in this mass growthstage now as we're going to hit
2026, just getting bigger andbigger.
And there's like this otherlayers of artificial
intelligence versus scale andcreating efficiencies across the
business within that.
We're doing a lot of that in2026 game planning now.
But we're in this point wherewhy we're building it this way
(24:48):
is like we need to make sureevery hire counts because it's
so critical now.
We have this funding, we havethe product market fit.
We have the over immense amountof customers that are paying
these yearly membership fees tojoin us.
So, how do we take this and makesure every single person is
servicing the members in thebest way?
And that's one of the internalvalues of the company is like
(25:09):
member first.
And so we want to likeencapsulate that in hiring too.
We need to hire the best personso our members can get the best
results from the product.
And that's a little bit of ashout-out to Jim Miller at
Ashby.
Some of the things we're doingon the top of funnel, if we're
not, if the recruiter screenhire funnel is 10 to one, we
want to triple that on the topof funnel.
(25:30):
So we want to do 30 screens foreach role and we get three
finalists.
And if we hire all three, great.
If we hire one, we're going topick the best three out of the
800 people that applied.
But we're going to look at everyapplicant, we're going to
source, we're going to getreferrals, and we're going to
pick the top 30 from that entirepool and interview them.
(25:50):
And we're going to try todecrease the margin of error of
hiring, making a miss hire,essentially, by just really
assessing every resume,interview them, interviewing the
best, and then selecting thebest from it.
So combining all of thattogether allows us to make those
adjustments, but still stay trueto hiring the best of the best
(26:12):
that's available to us in thetalent pool.
SPEAKER_01 (26:15):
With this slope hiring, it involves tying back
even to your first the firstconversation we were having
around doing more than sendingresumes and hiring folks that
are actually building thebusiness.
You need to have a it soundslike a very close relationship
with the teams that you'rehiring for, with the function
leader, the team of engineeringkind of sales, right?
(26:39):
Truly understanding the topperformers, what they may have
in common.
But not only that, actuallypotentially the gaps on the team
which can elevate everyone,right?
Um if you solve for that.
So that's how much time do youspend with the teams that you're
hiring for?
And what is there maybe thereisn't necessarily the need for a
(27:02):
consistent cadence, but how doyou manage that?
Because you're scaling, I'massuming, like rapidly with that
type of funding, it sounds likeyou're probably going to be
building from a percentage basisincreasing headcount
significantly.
So how do you how do you stayclose with the priorities of
those teams?
SPEAKER_00 (27:23):
This has been the hard part because in order for
this to be successful, we needto stay close because like even
you need to you need our leadersto have the strategic muscle as
well.
If we get caught in theheadcount cycle where it's like,
here's our headcount plan, butthen a month later it's actually
I need to hire these on my team.
It's hard for us to stay aheadbecause if we're going to do
(27:44):
this approach, we need to beproactive about how we recruit
versus the opposite.
And reactivity is, I think it'svery normal in a startup, but
you try to stay out of it asmuch as you can.
But I think you have to havethick skin in the early stage
startup world because that'sjust I don't know an early stage
startup that has the strategyfigured out.
(28:04):
You kind of have to go with theflow.
And the number one principle islike we cannot slow the company
down.
We have to hire at the pace thatthe business needs.
Now we would have toovercommunicate as we're getting
these profiles kicked off.
Like that is my slowdown.
But what I'm saying to thebusiness is if you give me this
extra week to kick this role offto really understand your team,
(28:25):
to really understand this role,to understand the gap, to build
the interview process, to lookat every resume, to source the
candidates, to get referrals.
Just give me one extra week.
What we're gonna bring to you tothe table is we're gonna bring
the top talent from the marketwe can put together.
And all of them are great.
So you're gonna get candidatesthat are great.
And as an interviewer, now youcan just be decisive and make
(28:45):
the call between two fantasticpeople.
And now we're just like pickingbetween hairs.
So the wasted time is going todecrease significantly.
And maybe the total time mightbe 45 days, but the recruiting
time is 28 because we're gettingthe best profiles to you right
away, and we're just storingthrough an interview process.
So I'm asking for the weactually did this in a
(29:06):
recruiting off site, and it wasa really cool exercise in
creating our operating system.
We talked about each step ofeverything we do, or like the
main step of everything do.
So sorry with headcount process,then roll kickoff, then like
scope and compensation, thensourcing, then applicant
questions.
And, you know, we went all theway down.
(29:27):
And I think there was like 11 or12 things that we do or steps,
and six of them are before therole gets posted.
So my emphasis was like, weshould spend 50% of our time
launching a role in like in thistheory, because if we do this
right, then it flows quicklythrough the rest of the funnel.
But I think we tend to forgethow much it is to kick something
(29:50):
off.
But if we do it the right way,the quality of the candidate
pool, the time you can movecandidates through because
they're the right fit, they'reactivated, they're excited, the
matches there from what thecandidate's motivators are and
what the business is.
Like you've done the right,you've done what you do well by
market mapping the topperformers from the recruiting
expertise side of it.
It's like we've done those thosepieces of work.
(30:11):
So it's going to make ourprocess go cleaner once it
actually kicks off.
But I'm just asking for a littlebit longer of a week to get it
really started.
So that's where the methodologyis based around.
It's a learning.
It takes time to get that going.
SPEAKER_01 (30:29):
Yeah.
And I also I like how yousegment the time from
essentially time to fill versusalmost time of recruiting.
Yeah because you there's thatgap which should be there.
That's how you can develop morecertainty around your ability to
hit your hiring plan becauseyou've done the work that you
have to do to be reallyeffective once you start
(30:53):
running.
It's you need to make sureyou're running the right
direction.
SPEAKER_00 (30:58):
We have a hiring manager here, and we primarily
use agencies.
And we have a hiring managerhere who's never passed a
candidate through the hiringmanager screen in a short amount
of time, but quite a good bit ofcandidates that hasn't passed.
We did this process and we tookthe time in the beginning and
the first four candidates wesent right through.
(31:18):
Um I love that.
And it's just we took the time,we learned the business, we know
the gaps.
We've talked to the candidatesthat can fill the gaps, and they
just stormed right through theprocess.
So um, we're seeing the actualdividends from it.
And it does, it it can be a slogin recruiting because you have
to go, you feel you have to go,go, go all the time.
But almost likecounterintuitively saying slow
down, learn it, spend the timewith the hiring manager, have
(31:40):
one-on-one with the teammembers, really make sure that
you understand what you'rerecruiting for here because it
will serve you at the end, Ipromise.
Uh but yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (31:49):
Well, this has been a really informative uh session
that we're having here.
And I'm I'm really excited aboutpublishing this and getting in
front of our guests.
I have a few rapid firequestions for you, shorter
responses uh here where we'rejust covering some some
different uh questions that aretop of mind for a lot of folks
are you know, also a little bitmore fun and lighthearted
(32:10):
questions here.
But um, so the first one to kickus off.
This is the big one.
Uh will AI replace recruiters?
SPEAKER_00 (32:17):
Whoa.
I'll say this.
I I think we will hear sometimewithin a year from now, we'll
hear of a recruiting team thatis fully 100% AI.
There will be, I think therewill be a founder that tries it.
And I think we'll we'll see thatit won't work to the fullest
extent.
It will it will create a lot oftime for the teams to manage,
(32:41):
but it will probably come back.
But I think it will happen.
I think we'll see it.
And I think my synopsis rightnow is like I see resume
screening, scheduling, somesourcing, admin work, knockout
questions, early filtering.
You can already, if you know howto prompt AI, you can do that
really well.
But as far as judgment underambiguous conditions and early
stage startup or assessingmotivation of a candidate, I
(33:03):
think those are the clearrunaways where recruiting is
very safe.
I'd say my short answer is likemaybe the tough answer is it
won't replace recruiting, but itwill replace recruiters who
don't evolve with it and canmove faster from it.
So that's probably my take onit.
But I'm interested to see thefounder who actually just tries
(33:24):
it and we can all joke about itlater.
SPEAKER_01 (33:27):
Right.
Yeah, that'll be reallyinteresting to see.
Yeah.
So, next question what is moreproductive, an office or remote?
SPEAKER_00 (33:35):
I love remote work, but I find when we can get
together, uh, there's just somuch more that we can get done
when we're just like sittingthere and brainstorming.
But I think talent is sodispersed now.
And if you hyperlocate yourtalent, you're not going to get
the best talent.
And you have to be okay withthat as a business.
So it's like kind of acounterintuitive.
I think remote is the best withopportunities to be in person.
(34:00):
If that makes sense.
Is that cheating?
SPEAKER_01 (34:03):
It's not.
And it's actually, it soundslike that's the culture at
function health where you are aremote team but have a fair
amount of offsite and ability tocome together as a team and
collaborate, right?
SPEAKER_00 (34:14):
Yeah.
Yep.
Exactly.
I think there's like a ton ofvalue there in doing that.
And like, I mean, we had arecruiting team off-site in
Houston, and the things we wereable to get done in three days,
it was just like the focus time,just uh block it all off and get
it done.
So that's I I think that's myhopefully not cheating answer.
SPEAKER_01 (34:34):
I love it.
Um, so what book has had thebiggest impact on your life and
or career?
SPEAKER_00 (34:41):
The book, it would so I'll I'll go to like Radical
Candor, I think is a great oneby Kim Scott.
I actually I have it sittingover here.
I always have it on my desk.
And it's like one, it's it'sreally good from especially
leading in recruiting.
You don't get a lot of feedback.
It's like, what have you donefor me lately?
But in leading, when you firstget your first manager job, it's
(35:02):
like, am I doing a good job?
I don't know.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
And I think Kim Scott justreally brilliantly was like, you
need to care about your people.
And the first step is you haveto get, you have to ask for
negative feedback and sit therecomfortably until somebody on
your team gives you negativefeedback about yourself and to
learn about yourself and toevolve.
And I thought those principleswere very good in creating the
(35:22):
psychological safety on yourteam to, hey, I really care
about you.
And I'm giving you this feedbackbecause it's going to make you
better, not because I need togive you bad feedback.
She really paints that picturereally well.
But also, there's a really cooluh piece in the book where she
tells you how to manage yourtime if you're a leader.
Like, how many hours a weekshould you spend for your team?
How many hours a week should youspend doing strategy or focus
(35:44):
work on your own?
And how many hours a week shouldyou leave for the business?
And that just really helps tostructure my weeks and think
about how I should take on eachweek is like giving the right
amount of time to certainthings.
So that's a big tip that sheit's not very much highlighted
in the book, but when I readthat section, I remember writing
it down.
I still use it today.
So that's a good one.
And the other one I'll justmention is like, oh, it's called
(36:06):
Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins.
He's an interesting character,but just the mindset of I'm in
control of all of this.
If I mess up, I can fix it.
But I need to know I mess upfirst.
And like just internalizing itall and saying I can get out of
these situations.
I can, I can win, I can bebetter, I can be worse, but it's
(36:27):
my choice.
And it's what actions I put intoit.
Those are the two that reallywere like, oh yeah, this is
totally right.
Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (36:35):
That's great.
Yeah, those are both uh booksI've heard of that I have not
had a chance to read, which nowI am going to.
So thanks for thoserecommendations.
We'll need a follow-up, James.
Yeah, oh, definitely.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Well, Greg, look, this has beenawesome.
I've really enjoyed getting toknow you.
I know our audience will aswell.
Your insights have been veryhelpful.
And I think just yourbackground, working for at this
(36:59):
point, several differentenvironments for a lot of
startups and growth stagecompanies.
It's going to resonate withfolks.
They're going to learn from it.
So I wanted to say thank you somuch for contributing to our
audience and our community.
SPEAKER_00 (37:11):
Thanks, James.
Appreciate it.
It was so much fun.
SPEAKER_01 (37:14):
It was a great time.
And for everybody tuning in,thank you so much for joining
us.
And we'll see you next time.
Take care.
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.