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Why you, why us, why us together.
Hazel Mulhare
An old boss of mine who was a veteran in the world of executive search / headhunting, once told me that before he even calls a candidate he has spoken to at least three people about them. I say called, because despite the year being 2016, he’d only just signed up for Linkedin and always managed to wrangle people’s phone numbers (and this was also the fading era of the desk line). The benefit for me was that I was able to listen in to his introductory phone calls to said candidate and hear exactly how he always used the context he had on these people with precision. He made it clear why he was calling them specifically - their skills, their focus areas, their achievements. All of this, before he would start to outline why his client could be a good fit, and rounding it off with an explanation of why there would be some new kind of alchemy once this person joined the company in question.
And so, whenever I am talking to a founder about a hire they are looking to make, whether that’s someone they are doing an initial reach out to themselves, someone they are interviewing and pitching their company to, or a key hire they are trying to ‘close’ to come join the business, there are three key points to land - ‘why you’, ‘why us’, ‘why us together’.
In the early days of the evolution of a start-up, if the hire is important (and usually it follows that an important hire is a competitive one) the founder is the one doing the initial reach out. Given the fierce competition for talent across functions and levels of experience how do you make a Linkedin message stand out from the crowd - you lead with context. Even if the person hasn’t been directly referred through a mutual connection (although ideally in a lot of these instances they have). It’s possible to make a cold outreach precise and contextual - it might be clear to you why the business they are at and the work they have done is relevant to you but if you don’t lead with that it’s hard to set it apart from a bunch of spammy messages from recruiters with no real personalisation. Even simply stating that the function and area they are involved in is interesting to you and why. Bonus if you have a view on why what they’ve done is impressive, because no matter who the person is, ego is still very much a thing. And if they’ve been referred ‘I’ve heard you’re great at X & Y’ rather than just ‘I’ve heard you’re great’.
Whether it’s in a note, or a first call or meeting, grounding yourself in why this is a person of particular interest to you helps you hone the message of ‘why us’, because while a lot of the key points will be similar to discussions with an investor or a potential customer, the emphasis will shift based on what you know about the person. At the risk of oversimplification, if they are a sales person you lead with revenue metrics and projections and customer traction and feedback. If they are product or tech, what the technical differentiation is, what’s been achieved so far and why you are approaching them for their skills to unlock in the next phase.
The time when this triptych becomes most clear is when you move to make an offer. Throughout the process, you are ideally getting to test your original hypothesis on why them (‘why you’) and find out more about who they are as a professional and as a person, which also helps you understand what in particular appeals to them about your business (‘why us’). If you are moving to offering them a role, then the ‘why us together’ should be especially clear, you know what you’d like for them to achieve as part of your business. Which is why my suggestion is always at this point, to write it down. The purpose of this is two fold - before you make an offer, this is a sense check on whether your thesis is clear on the hire. It doesn’t need to be an essay and might only be two sentences or so under each question (although if it’s a leadership hire later on in your business, it’s likely to fill at least a page). When you read through, these are the points you want to land when you call the person to offer to join your company and, then you send the three paragraphs (short or long) to them as part of the follow up offer letter post phone call. This is something many candidates have told me they have reread many times, whether it’s an easy decision for them to join, or a hard one.
Even if you don’t have the stalker skills of a seasoned headhunter, you can still make a compelling case at every turn of the process, and land that superstar, specifically.
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