Build a candidate portal fast: founder-led hiring playbook
Founders can’t outpay Big Tech — but they can out-execute. Learn how to launch a candidate portal fast, use automation before headcount, and run an anti-sell that attracts true builders. Troy Sultan shows the exact playbook.
How do you attract builders who want hard problems and day-one impact?
Troy Sultan is a two-time founder who sold his last company to Gem in 2021. He spent nearly a decade recruiting across scrappy startups and Google, and today he’s building Guide — an AI-powered interview scheduler born from hundreds of interviews he ran himself.
His take: founders can’t win on salary or brand, so they have to win on story, systems, and signal.
When Troy needed to hire without a big-company war chest, he leaned into founder-led recruiting: make your story concrete, give candidates real-time visibility, and pressure-test for fit with an anti-sell — not a hard sell. The result is a process that attracts builders who want the hard problems and day-one impact.
Founders can’t outsource talent. It’s as crucial as the next deal you close or the next feature you ship.
Troy Sultan
Mitgründer und CEO at Guide
After learning these lessons the hard way, Troy built a repeatable playbook any early-stage team can run — whether you’ve got a polished ATS or you’re shipping with Notion and calendar links.
In this episode, Troy unpacks...
Ship a candidate “home base” in 1–2 weeks. Plug your roles and interview flow into one place, write the story once (mission, hard problems, day-one impact), and go live. Scheduling becomes the trigger for a simple candidate portal — what’s next, who they’ll meet, and prep links.
Hire last — force automation first. Before opening a role, run a 2-week automation sprint. If you can automate ≥30% of the scope, keep iterating. You’ll grow the muscle that compounds after your first hire.
If you must hire, run the anti-sell. Founder takes the first screen and the final call. On call one: mission + why now + the blemishes (thin management layer, thrash, calendar ownership). On the last call: unvarnished month-three breakers — then pause and let them self-select. Acceptance after this is high-signal fit.
For founders wrestling with how to win A+ talent without enterprise budgets, this episode shows how to turn clarity into a competitive edge — design the process, automate the admin, and tell the story yourself. You’ll leave with concrete scripts, a 1–2 week rollout plan for a candidate portal, and a play-by-play for the anti-sell so the right people lean in and the wrong people opt out.
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