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
Co-founder and 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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