Urgency

We're fast, like really fast. But our recipe of empathy and proactivity avoids burnout

We work really fast for clients. We (our team at Hustle Hunters) made 8 placements (so far!) in Q4. All of them on “yesterday” timelines, with teams that were stretched thin and didn’t have hiring processes in place.

As a result of these sprints and wins - we’ve been lauded a couple of times now for our incredible “urgency”. A teammate reminded me last week that “we never don’t work at the speed of urgency".”

But what comes to mind with the term “urgency”?

Panic, rushing, fear, chaos, frantic energy??

In unpacking this - I’m eager to share the “secret sauce” that has led us to be able to work at a pace that continually wows and delivers ahead of schedule, while also feeling like we are nowhere close to burning out.

I’ve recognized that our unique brand of urgency isn’t one that includes a frenzy, working all hours of the day and night (we work a 32 hour work week), or a pace that has led to burnout. Instead - our “urgency",” and ability to do our work at both a high standard in terms of matches for client teams, as well as timely, is actually rooted in two core concepts:

Empathy and Proactivity

It’s hard to not feel the palpable stress and urgency flowing across a room, or even a zoom call when we engage with a hiring team that’s feeling the dynamic pressure around adding a new person to their team. From a timeline perspective, both as they have too much work to do and need this new person to help lighten the load, and also because they are ready to be back doing their work again and not just thinking about hiring. But the more important pressure we see here is one of not making a mistake. We often think of these as opposing forces - with too much speed or rushing that tends to lead to poor decisions.

But we’ve found a different path here, one that acknowledges the stress, fears and excitement that hiring teams are feeling, while also building a tailored execution plan that will get us to the right hire in as soon a time frame as possible. Hiring so often lags not from a lack of candidates - but from a lack of strategic project management and ownership of the timeline. I’m using the term “ownership” twofold here, not only is it imperative to have someone clearly assigned this duty, but also to hold the sense of responsibility for the project goals itself.

I’ve had a client tell me that the best thing our team at Hustle Hunters does for his team is to “nag” him. While I’m always a bit cringy at that term (especially as a woman and mom determined to reduce and balance invisible labor in my personal life), my direct experiences with how much energy it takes to “nag” and hold someone to task has shown me exactly how powerful his statement is. Holding the headspace for accomplishing a big goal is not trivial thing. We often tell clients that they can go to sleep thinking about their other 99 problems, but we’ll hold onto this one in our dreams. Not only does this elicit a laugh (I like to think I’m funny, and use every new client call as an opportunity to hone my “sets”) but it also literally demonstrates where our focus is, on this niche section of their business that’s critical to success, while also often under resourced.

OK - let’s get back to empathy. We know it’s a lot on hiring teams, and enact our own urgency framework honestly because we’re eager for them to feel this weight lifted. We’re a team that’s human-first to it’s core, and while we appreciate the few centimeters that our partner’s shoulders often sink towards the end of our kick-off calls knowing that we see them and are on a mission to get this done, it’s not until that final message 6 or so months in from both candidate and hiring team that they are thriving together do we really stop focusing at least some of our empathy towards that team. So number one, we need to hire quickly so the team can keep doing their thing.

Hustle Hunters Core value: We are all HUMAN. We practice this understanding leaning on empathy with ourselves, teammates, partners, candidates and others

But secondly, there’s also candidate experience to consider. Anyone who has been on the other side of my team when they are dogged in their approach to get feedback so that we can update candidates knows how important this is to us. Anchored both in ensuring that candidates have up to date transparent information to help inform their own decisions, as well as helping us enact the next set of tactics that this feedback spurns, timely feedback is critical. Again - but not rushed.

Hustle Hunters. When I started this business and chose the name, I was never thinking about what we’ve now dubbed “hustle culture”, but instead that strategic ability to know how to strategically prioritize and get sh*t done that many of our favorite startup teammates have. For me (and now our team), “hustle” skews way more “results oriented” than “hard working” - which is what really matters in the end anyway.

Side note » if you’re reading this and it’s resonating - I recommend going deeper in learning about how “rest” and other steps away from the grind can support healthier and fuller living. Tricia Hersey’s book Rest is Resistance is incredible (esp. as an audio book). I’m working to daily internalize it’s mantras around slowness, day dreaming, and letting myself have time to let the connections based on my learnings and knowledge materialize into brilliance. I’ve even taken to putting on these patchwork-quilt-like earrings I made based on inspiration from the book when I need a tangible reminder on extra busy days.

(more about why I made these, and how to purchase my other book inspired earrings here - they are my fave bundles to gift!)

The second ingredient in our “urgency” recipe is proactivity.

Looking ahead, creating and holding timelines, and ensuring that as many data points as possible are available for decision making is critical in running a good hiring process.

For a step by step walk through of our approach here - this end of year hiring series is a good starting ground to help get ahead of a process before the chaos (that we all know is always lurking) sets in.

Keep subscribing for a front row view into the culture we’ve built at Hustle Hunters, and how we’re consistently iterating on human-first hiring practices to build badass startup teams that last!