Playing the long game

When diversity is one of your company’s four core values, walking the walk is imperative. The recruiting software maker Gem has found success recruiting women to its leadership team, which — with last month’s hiring of Lesley Young as chief revenue officer — is now almost 60% women, twice the national average for the C-suite.

Hiring executives in this market is challenging as it is: Candidates have options, and it’s hard to differentiate yourself as a company. I recently spoke with Gem’s chief people officer, Heather Dunn, about how her team thinks about sourcing executive candidates with representation in mind.

Always be sourcing talent — long before there’s a job opening. You should be building a pipeline before you’re actively searching, Dunn said.

• This is a balancing act in the startup world, where things move fast and leaders shoulder too many responsibilities. But playing the “long-term game” is a huge boon to recruiting senior talent, Dunn said.
• “I do think it comes back to really nurturing talent for a long period of time and finding different folks to network with early,” Dunn said. “It’s likely going to be six months, nine-plus months of nurturing and forming relationships there.”

Tap into networks of underrepresented talent. Gem partnered with Black Women on Boards as part of its $100 million series C funding round last year, which Dunn said exposed Gem to underrepresented leaders. Gem has also been working with BossmakeHer, which makes confidential intros to women executives.

Ask people you admire for advice — often. Gem co-founder and CEO Steve Bartel would ask Dunn for her perspective on HR issues he was facing every two months or so, long before offering her a job. He used a similar tactic to eventually recruit Shella Neba, Gem’s general counsel.

• “It was definitely not an interview, but it was giving him a sense of the strength of candidates he was talking to,” Dunn said.

Prioritize executive recruiting. “I think Steve’s probably the best exec recruiter I’ve ever met, and that’s because when he has an exec search going on, he is brutally prioritizing everything else on his plate,” Dunn said. “We are hiring a CRO, that’s his No. 1 priority.”