Growth-Stage
Startup Recruiting Services
(Series A, B, or C funded startups with 25 to ~250 people)
“The Master Platter” Retained Executive Search
Overview: This full-service executive search workflow guarantees you’ll hire a top-tier senior GTM or C-level business leader for your team in a fraction of the time/money you’d pay if you went with one of our competitors.
In our experience, startup founders find it relatively straightforward to build their team from 0 to ~25 before most will hit the “hiring wall”. Usually, for more technical founders, their business focused GTM leadership network is very limited, which is where we come in.
We’ve proven ourselves capable, time and time again, to be our client’s “secret weapon” (their words) for helping them recruit top-10% senior GTM and C-level business talent with a primary focus on Marketing and Sales leaders, with the option of also helping with Product, Finance, and HR roles.
In almost every case, the mandate our clients give us is to poach “startup ready” leaders who have a proven track record of success with (1) demand generation (2) demand capture, and (3) demand expansion – who are working at high-growth companies 1-3 stages ahead of where they are and are working inside companies that are direct or adjacent within their same ecosystem.
The crux of these projects isn’t necessarily to find the people (that’s fairly straightforward).
The real challenge is to persuade and convince these successful and highly sought after individuals who aren’t looking to change jobs, to have serious interest in your startup, and getting them to the table to speak with you.
This type of recruiting requires a true partnership with a specialist (Bearhug) who has a proven process that will weed out tire kickers, save you time, and help you secure the very best, right-fit talent for your leadership team.
This type of recruiting requires a tremendous amount of heavy lifting upfront to collaborate together on the right sourcing and recruiting strategy. We invest an entire week into this part of the process alone (and it ALWAYS takes a full week no matter the role). And most importantly, we carefully craft the right pitch to lure in these incredibly talented and already in-demand GTM leaders and C-Level Executives.
Fun Fact: If you’re currently generating less than $10m per/year OR are “Pre-Series B” – what you’ll find is ~98% of the candidate pool you’ll be targeting will flat out reject you within 30 seconds for being “too early stage”.
However, with Bearhug as your Talent Partner, you’ll get to leverage our unique superpower where we’ve proven countless times to turn these initial “no’s” into “yes’s” so you gain access to the very best of the best who’d have otherwise denied you.
We’ve made a name for ourselves in the VC startup world of being the firm who can build trust quickly, get people to open up, and we help them connect important dots throughout their career that organically increase our candidate’s tolerance for risk, while digging deep to help them source the right kind of motivation to become interested in your organization. The same kind of intrinsic motivation you truly need from EVERY leader on your team at this critical early-stage.
So how does our model work?
As you may know, our competitors typically charge a fee equal to 33% of the hired candidate’s total first-year compensation. In most cases, they require the first third of their fee upfront to begin the search (which is standard). However, they often structure the remaining payments so the second and third installments are due on days 30 and 60—regardless of whether a placement has been made.
Under this type of incentive and billing structure, what do you think happens when challenges arise—and the firm has already been fully paid without delivering the results you expected? Unfortunately, I’ve had countless clients come to me after being let down by partners at larger, well-established executive search firms that abandoned the search before completing the job.
This is just one of many reasons why choosing a boutique talent partner like Bearhug Recruiting leads to better outcomes.
To make matters worse, we’ve heard that some larger competitors saddle their clients with unexpected add-on expenses, such as software or database access fees, travel costs, or other ‘administrative’ charges.
Sure, you could engage with one of these firms—but you’ll likely pay a higher fee, experience longer timelines, and face disappointing odds. According to the AESC, only 67% of executive search projects result in a placement—shocking, isn’t it?
None of this nonsense will happen when you partner with Bearhug Recruiting.
3 Reasons to Choose Bearhug Recruiting
Boutique Expertise, Personalized Execution
As a boutique executive search firm by choice, we ensure the person selling you the service is the same one executing 100% of the work. This means nothing gets lost in translation, and our workflow is approximately 2.5x faster (ask us for the data sheet to see the proof). We deliver a truly white-glove experience, complete with a clear audit trail for every decision, making success an iterative and inevitable process.Competitive Pricing
We undercut our competitors by keeping our overhead exceptionally low. Despite this, we maintain a high standard of quality that larger firms often struggle to match.Performance Guarantee
To eliminate 100% of your risk, we offer a “performance guarantee.” Each of our three invoices is tied to specific performance-based outcomes (see our 1-pager linked below for details).
Custom Pricing Factors
Our pricing is tailored based on three key factors:
Requirement Complexity
If your search requires highly specific criteria—such as a female candidate aged 30–45 who speaks Russian, is willing to relocate to Boise, Idaho, holds a master’s degree in physics, has 4+ years of tenure at their last two companies, and comes from a high-growth organization with 250–500 employees—you’ll pay the higher end of our pricing band. Additionally, it’s important to note that fulfilling every single requirement may not always be possible. Keep in mind we don’t create the market, and some candidates simply don’t exist!Interview Process Complexity
If your process involves six co-founders, 15 stakeholders, multiple travel requirements, a 20-hour homework assignment (without compensation), and unanimous approval from all executives, you’ll also pay the high end of our pricing band. Moreover, unless we agree to a simpler, streamlined process, we may decline to provide a proposal altogether.Our Available Capacity
We prioritize quality and fast turnaround, limiting each partner to three active projects at a time. We never launch multiple searches simultaneously, as the first 2–3 weeks of a search are critical and require our undivided attention. During our two-call discovery process (a 30-minute intro and a 60-minute deep dive), we’ll assess your needs and establish realistic timelines. If we can’t accommodate your search, we’ll add you to a waitlist and notify you when a slot opens or refer you elsewhere to someone we trust. Note: Returning clients and referrals from our VC partners offering long-term partnerships are always given priority.
Bottom Line: We believe delivering quality outcomes for you should supersede our earning potential.
Outcome: You’ll get an A-Player signed to your team within ~45 days (+/- 15) from search kick-off.
Investment: C-level search projects = $80k to $120k. Director/VP search projects = $60k to $80k*
Review “The Master Platter” Executive Search 1-Pager + See Our Recent Placements [here]
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
**Note: We often pay clients back in the form of a discount for one or more of the following: (1) volume (i.e. 2+ role bundles) (2) pre-vested equity (3) longer-term commitments (i.e. multi-project agreements) (4) referring new clients, and/or (5) case studies or marketing collaborations.
Early-Stage
Startup Recruiting Services
(Late Seed or early Series A startups that need a break on price)
“The Half Haul” Retained Executive Search
Overview: As an early-stage founder who’s unable (or unwilling) to allocate the budget for our full-service search, or if you want to make multiple part-time or full-time hires without paying placement fees, our Half-Search offering may be the right alternative for you.
With this partial service you are guaranteed the same high quality onboarding, sourcing, and recruiting experience we give to clients paying for our full-service offer. However, our support stops at the point we've delivered a deeply vetted slate of at least 5 qualified, interested, and available candidates (soft cap of ~7) that want to speak with you (whom you’ll approve), after which we will schedule your chosen candidates to speak with you for a 1st interview.
Creating a robust candidate slate, whether you sign-on for our full-service OR this half-search service requires us to be out in the market actively recruiting for at least ~3 weeks in order to talk with enough of our target list to qualify them and educate them to bring you back the best the market has to offer. This is about the time we will have our first of several weekly status calls to discuss the developing slate along with the feedback from the market so we can iterate as needed.
By about the ~45 day mark, you can expect to have more than enough high-quality candidates moving through your internal interview loop to give you confidence you can get the job done, with us stopping at the point of booking 1st interviews for you and letting you and your team run the rest of the process.
Yes, this does inject a higher degree of risk by not having us stay involved end-to-end from kick-off to close, but if we consider the fact that companies across the globe are able to successfully hire senior level talent without the support of a 3rd party, if you’ve got a robust recruiting program in place and a strong team who’s able to coordinate the execution of the search, the reduced cost of the service may be more than worth the added risk.
Historically, our clients ask us to schedule an average of 3.7 candidates off our slate to make the placement. While our full-service search has no pre-defined cap on the # of candidates we can present, with our half-search offering, our target is at least 5 candidates (soft-cap of ~7), which should be more than enough to ensure you and your team can get the job done.
Every candidate we formally present will have the data to support warranting your time and consideration. Candidates won’t just be kicking tires. At a minimum, those you choose to have us schedule for 1st interviews, you’ll agree are qualified for your time. By reading their write-up it will also be objectively clear they are both interested and available should the expectations we’ve set with them ahead of time line up with the way you and your team conduct the back half of the workflow.
Bottom Line: Reduce our fee by 50%, by taking full ownership over the back-half and the outcome.
Outcome: You’ll get an early peek at our developing slate within 21 days of search kick-off and agree there are at least 2 interview-worthy people (or 1 you want to hire), or you can cancel the search and receive a refund. Within 3-4 weeks from search kick-off you can expect to have more than enough candidates going through your internal interview loop for you and your team to get the job done.
Investment: Starting at $10,000 per/month (3-month term) per role* – No placement fees.
Review “The Half Haul” 1-Pager + See Our Recent Placements [here]
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
“The Quick Catch” Retained Search Offering
(a.k.a. “Top of Funnel Talent”, “CEO Flow” and/or “1/4 Search” << we’ve changed the name many times!)
Overview: As an early-stage founder working to find product-market-fit with very real budget constraints, you’re likely doing all the heavy lifting of sourcing and recruiting candidates for your leadership team purely as a cost-saving measure. With our help, you’ll get much higher quality candidates for each of your GTM talent funnels leading to much better hiring outcomes.
The Quick Catch – allows you to leverage our 20+ years of recruitment marketing expertise to help you identify and attract top-tier passive candidates and book them directly to your calendar at a price you CAN afford – giving you back 20+ hours p/week to focus on strategic execution.
With this offering, we bring together best practices from executive search to first identify the right people, after which we use demand generation marketing best practices, and co-pilot like automated omnichannel messaging and scheduling tools, to educate, prequalify, and recruit pre-approved target profiles and get them to book first interviews directly to your calendar.
Bottom Line: We generate demand for your open GTM reqs while you stay focused on the business.
Outcome: You’ll receive at least 5 pre-approved candidates booked directly to your calendar within ≤ 14 days of search kickoff, or you can cancel the search and receive a refund.
Investment: Starting at $5,500 per/month (3-month term) per role* – No placement fees.
Review “The Quick Catch” 1-Pager + See Our Recent Placements [here]
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
A La Carte Services
(Get support with one or more specific aspects of the GTM search workflow)
Unbundled – Startup GTM Recruiting Services
1) Drafting Your “Search Blueprint & Scorecard System”
Overview: Starting a search often presents two key challenges for companies: (1) aligning the team on the target candidate profile, and (2) establishing the ideal candidate sourcing and evaluation strategy. Overcoming these challenges is best achieved through drafting your Search Blueprint and developing your team’s hiring “Scorecard”. We deliver this service by first interviewing the hiring authority (99.9% of the time this is the CEO) over a roughly 2 hour phone call to extract all the inputs needed for the Blueprint. We will then go heads down for 24 to 48 hours in order to create a 1st draft of the Blueprint and Scorecard which will be passed over to you for final approval. This service generally requires a full work week to complete.
Outcome: You’ll get a fully board approved Search Blueprint and Scorecard ready to be executed for your most pressing executive search requirement, which you can then duplicate and customize for every search project going forward to get much higher quality recruiting outcomes without having to pay a 3rd party recruiter to run the search.
Investment: Starting at $5,500 per/project*
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
2) Crafting Your “Confidential Position Brief”
Overview: It’s time to rethink the traditional job description and job posting workflow. Posting a traditional job on your website (or on Indeed, LinkedIn, Wellfound (i.e. AngelList), or any other job board is akin to trying to sell a product by giving a consumer the product’s ingredient label or putting that label up on a billboard (not compelling!).
Instead of doing what everyone else is doing out there which is a pitiful experience for candidates and does NOTHING to help you pre-qualify and properly pre-educate your ideal target candidate, we will help you create a piece of marketing collateral to position and promote your job that will truly stand out and inspire A-players to come apply to work with you.
The best part is, this system will help you avoid wasting countless hours sorting and sifting resumes manually or trying to rely on the haphazard results from hoping you can leverage your AI based ATS system to predict and surface the best candidates.
As the saying goes: “If you put garbage in, you’ll get garbage out.”
You first need to understand how to craft a compelling message and put it in front of the right audience. Otherwise, you’ll have a pipeline overflowing with unqualified candidates who’ll waste your valuable time and you’ll be competing with the bottom 10% of the talent pool.
The approach we will teach and facilitate for you will automatically attract the right candidates to begin with, filters out the less suitable candidates, and inspire the very best to compete for your time and attention by self-educating and selling you on why you should allow them a spot on your calendar.
Outcome: We will help you craft an extremely thorough and polished written pitch you can use for any immediate hiring need you have, to attract better talent and save yourself time. And you’ll be able to easily duplicate the same structure for every search need you have going forward.
Investment: Starting at $7,500 per/project*
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
3) Building Your “Carefully Curated Talent Pipeline”
Overview: To ensure your Position Brief reaches the right audience, it's crucial to attract the right candidates. Let our sourcing team conduct a comprehensive market map of the competitive industry landscape, including direct and adjacent industries. This sourcing strategy, paired with our proprietary boolean algorithmic search methods that allows us to turn Google into our candidate database, will result in our being able to build you the perfect target candidate list for any vacancy, regardless of industry, function, location, seniority, or role complexity.
Most search projects require that our team reviews several thousand potential profiles to build a list of ~100 that we stage and debate internally. This results in a list of ~50 that we’ll present to you on a silver platter, fully enriched with all available contact info, social handles, and career history that you can take and run with.
Why 50?
Because having built countless recruitment campaigns for ourself and our clients, we’ve found that building a list of the right 50 people to begin with is the sweet spot where a carefully crafted email sequence will yield between 5 and 10 candidates scheduling 1st interviews which should enable you to fill the role.
Outcome: You’ll get access to our “client portal” where we’ll deliver a quality pipeline of at least ~50 profiles for you to then reach out to and recruit. You can then choose to execute your search from within our software OR you can download the data to a CSV file and easily upload it to your existing ATS or other recruiting tool within your talent stack.
Investment: Starting at $10,500 per/project*
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
4) Designing Your “Bespoke Outreach Campaign & Screening Funnel”
Overview: Messaging for passive vs. active candidates differs significantly, as each group has distinct motivations. It's essential to not only tailor your approach for each group, but for each type of person within each group when reaching out via email, social, text, or by phone.
Our team of copywriters specializes in crafting outreach campaigns that will resonate with your target candidate list, and drive them to take action to come interview with you. Yes, even if they have a job and aren’t in the market (which is generally where you’ll find the best talent for your team).
Our team will also help you design an extremely efficient pre-screening, live screening, and post-screening workflow that’ll double or triple the impact of whatever you’re doing today. So, rather than posting jobs online and then having to sift and sort through 600 to 1,000 inbound applicants hoping to find a needle in the haystack, you and your other hiring managers can adopt our best practices and templates to reduce your time spent “recruiting” —by as much as 90%.
Outcome: You’ll be provided with a custom 3 touch email sequence, 2 touch LinkedIn outreach campaign, 2 touch text campaign, pre-screening, live screening, and post-screening workflow outline along with a fully mapped out internal interview loop.
Investment: Starting at $5,500 per/project*
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
5) Doubling The Power Of Your Pitch
Overview: Once you are clear on exactly who you’re wanting to attract and hire, one of the easiest and simplest things you can do to promote your opportunity to the market is to have a credible 3rd party interview you about the role and require every applicant to listen to the interview as one of the filters in your funnel. This ensures you set the right tone AND will inspire the right people to take action, and the wrong people to opt out of the process.
This is one of the unique advantages of working with Bearhug. We’ve perfected this pitch process and get consistent rave reviews from both our clients and candidates about how much adding this simple bonus step to their recruiting workflow helped accelerate better outcomes and set both sides of for efficiency and success.
Outcome: You’ll receive an edited recording of the interview pitch to add to your recruitment funnel. By making it a multi-media experience for your candidates (vs. just a written and form-fill exercise) you’ll observe a 2x to 3x bump in the excitement and engagement in candidates making it all the way through your interview process.
Investment: Starting at $2,500 per/project*
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
6) Become a Featured Guest On “The Bearhug Experience” Podcast
Overview: While there are countless places you can go to have other people interview you to tell your founder story and get the word out about your innovative product, the long-form interview structure and approach we take with The Bearhug Experience podcast is truly one of a kind.
Everything from our preparation process, to how we facilitate the conversation, on through to how we edit the episode in post-production, and then promote it online is unlike any experience you’ll have on any other podcast. We aspire for you to see an ROI in one or more of the following ways:
Additional speaking opportunities and Media inquiries
New Deal Flow from unconventional sources
Accelerated Deal Flow through the increased bonding from telling your full story
An increase in the strength of your network resulting in more candidate inflow
Positive feedback from unexpected sources thanking you for your time and expertise
A meaningful artifact that documents your legacy up to this point in your career
Satisfaction knowing you’ll have inspired the next generation of Entrepreneurs by the work you’ve done, the lessons you can share, and the unique way in which you see the world.
Outcome: Once your episode is live, you’ll receive a summary of everywhere it’s published (24+ platforms and social media outlets), including a folder with links to the raw and edited files, and all the graphics, teaser copy, and workflow documents we used in the pre/post-production and promotional workflow.
Investment: Starting at $5,500 per/project*
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
7) Niche Research & List Generation
Overview: Is your marketing team in need of a targeted list to promote an upcoming event or drive inbound leads for sales? Are you gearing up for fundraising and seeking assistance in compiling a list of potential investment partners specific to your vertical and stage? If you require list-building services, we can likely provide a faster and more efficient solution than internal efforts.
Outcome: You’ll be provided with a fully researched and enriched target list (minimum of 100 profiles) loaded to our “client portal” that you can perform outreach to from within the system OR you can export to CSV and upload to any piece of tech within your stack.
Investment: Starting at $5,500 per/project*
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
8) Interim “Head of Talent”
Overview: In addition to our traditional search fee for each placement, Bearhug Recruiting offers an alternative solution. We can serve as your interim “Head of Talent” where we can handle some (or all) of your hiring needs, for a set monthly retainer. This can even involve helping to hire our replacement once you’re ready to bring someone in-house full time.
Outcome: Within an agreed upon timeline, we’ll achieve pre-agreed upon hiring quotas and quality benchmarks for whatever role(s) are needed across your organization.
Investment: Starting at $5,500 per/month with a minimum 6-month commitment*
**Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.
9) Consulting & Speaking Engagements
Overview: Are you looking to enhance your team's hiring practices or optimize your outbound recruitment funnels? Planning a company or industry event and seeking an expert to speak on the topic of Executive Recruiting best practices or Strategic Network Development for increasing referrals for recruiting, sales, or fundraising?
Outcome: We guarantee to DELIVER on our promise of adding the exact strategic value you need to any audience you put us in front of. Or we’ll refund you. Plain and simple.
Investment: On-premise 1x1 consulting or training workshops start at $25,000 per day. Virtual workshops start at $7,500 per session. Private 1x1 executive consulting sessions (1-off or series) are priced on a per project basis.*
*Note: All service contracts require prospective clients start by booking a free 30-minute exploratory call to get acquainted and explore alignment, after which a 2nd longer 1-hour deep dive consultation will need to occur to define the specifics of the project before being provided with a custom proposal that’ll fit your exact needs.