I am a Senior Director at Integrity Power Search, a boutique recruiting agency that works with technology startups at various stages of growth. I am doing full-desk recruiting and also managing a team of 4 recruiters. Our goal is to work with our clients, understand their needs, and find the perfect person for the role they’re trying to fill as fast as possible.

‍How big is it?

There are 4 people: all Senior Talent Partners. 

Where are your teammates located?

Boston, MA, Atlanta, GA, and Scottdale, AZ. I myself sit in Los Angeles, CA.

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?

My team consists of 4 technology recruiters, and they all started with our company in the year 2021. Although they each had recruiting experience previously, I have been a part of their transition in helping them learn our processes and run their business while recruiting for our clients.

I manage a team of 4 full-desk recruiters focused on technical/product positions with our clients. I am responsible for working directly with our clients, and helping my team throughout the full process of the search. I help them with the search strategy, filter candidates, and eventually help with the offer process before a candidate officially joins our client’s team.

Open communication - I think it’s so important to still have open dialogue throughout the day and be able to collaborate, whether that is over chat or hopping on a video call. My team has multiple meetings a week to collaborate and discuss our strategy for moving our business forward.

I share my calendar with everyone on my team, so they know when I am available or what meetings I have that day. Our team has a few in-person meetups a year, which I think goes a long way in building rapport with one another and feeling like you can reach out to other people on the team whenever you need help or need someone to talk to.

I focus on not being a micromanager, and truly allowing my team to have the flexibility and autonomy that a remote workplace should offer. If someone has to run to the vet or pick up their kid from school, that should never be an issue as I trust they are getting their work done.

I have weekly meetings with my team and try to structure it in a way more so of “how can I help you be successful?” rather than “you did not hit X goal and where are we with X order of business.”

If a search is not going well, I want to understand why, and help with our strategy moving forward. What is it we need to change? My recruiters know that we are a team, and I will be there to support them in any way I can.

I also try to check in on a personal level, in terms of how they are feeling about work. Sales can be a stressful job when you aren’t seeing results. It’s important to put your mental health first and make sure your mind is in the right place, and I truly believe that is the foundation underneath the building blocks of success, no matter the job.

My biggest challenge is sometimes not knowing when my team needs help, because we aren’t in the same room working together. However, I try to instill a “proactive vs. reactive” mentality as well as open communication and trust so they feel they can come to me at any time for anything.

My team does bi-weekly happy hours and we aim to have in-person meetups 3-4 times a year. Since we are all over the US, we usually do a good job of meeting up with each other if we’re traveling and happen to be in the same city, too, which is really cool to see.

We love games at IPS. Our favorites are Codenames, Trivia, and Quiplash.

We usually don’t start meetings with ice breakers but rather conversation around the people in the meeting, what’s new in their lives, where they’re working from that day, etc.

We use G-chat and Google Hangout videos for everything which is great for constant communication. We have a group chat with our entire company that we talk in multiple times a day.

I like to read books and read articles as I see them about what makes a great leader/manager. One book we love at IPS is Radical Candor, which is how we try to go about our management style throughout the company. Direct and honest feedback.