Matthew Ellis on working with your hiring managers

Matthew Ellis is currently working as a TA Business Partner at Open Insurance. He’s spent most of his career working with high-growth startups.

Matthew shares with Mike his sourcing processes and how he works with hiring managers to secure talent.

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Matthew is a huge advocate for not just engaging with your hiring manager, but embedding yourself within their team, to truly understand the role and the people that you are hiring for.

Embedding myself in those team and learning about those people is really important, knowing the type of work that’s going on. Sometimes it’s really difficult like some of the more complex engineering languages or heavy risk and compliance. The more I make that effort, the more they can trust me to find those people.

Matthew Ellis

The close-knit relationships Matthew builds with his hiring managers means he’s able to quickly iterate on roles that are ever-changing and able to hire faster, and more efficiently.

If you’ve put in the hard work of knowing that team, it’s much easier to pick up roles and run with it. If you don’t understand the requirements – and the actual requirements aren’t always listed in that JD – if you don’t understand it you’re wasting 1 – 2 weeks of your time…why would you ignore components of engaging your hiring manager and not know the role you’re trying to fill and the team you’re trying to grow.

Matthew Ellis

He also shares some advice on bringing hiring managers along for the outreach journey, and acknowledges how difficult it can be for hiring managers who are outside of their comfort zone when messaging candidates.

For some people it’s really daunting to put yourself out there as a non-talent person, to reach out with the potential of getting rejected. So taking them on that journey, and saying it’s actually okay, and not only is it okay there’s probably a better chance that you’ll get a response.

Matthew Ellis

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