At Gray Scalable we work with a lot of start-up recruiters. We’ve sourced, interviewed, onboarded, trained and supported start-up recruiters at dozens of clients. Last month we launched a survey to gain even deeper knowledge about how recruiting gets done at at these companies.

We received over 50 responses from in-house recruiters at a diverse array of start-ups. These companies range in size - from under 20 employees all the way to ones that have grown to over 300 - and in location, with start-ups from New York, San Francisco, Boston, and London (among others) represented.

We’ll be releasing the full results soon, but here’s a sneak peek of a few things that jumped out at us:

How many jobs do start-up recruiters handle at once?
We asked: How many jobs, on average, are you responsible for at any given time?

Overall, 92% of start-up recruiters responding have less than 20 jobs open at a given time; 63% have 10 or less. Recruiters who reported they focused solely on technology & product jobs never carried over 20 roles; 68% reported having less than 10 open at any given time.

How many interviews?
We asked: How many people interview a candidate before he or she gets an offer? (including interviewing with a recruiter)?

Good news for interviewing candidates - only 2% of recruiters reported that it takes more than 10 interviews to make a hire. The remaining 98% were divided between 3-5 interviews and 6-9 before making an offer. As Google’s research has shown, after four interviews the incremental value of each additional interview levels off, so it may be beneficial for the 45% in the 6-9 category to consider shaving off a couple of interviews.

If you’re wondering whether company size makes a difference in the number of interviews conducted, we found that the larger start-ups (over 100 employees) tend to be the ones that conduct more interviews.

Focusing on Diversity
We asked: Is diversity one of your company's hiring goals?

90% of recruiters responding reported that diversity was a goal - but 75% of those said there is nothing formal in place in their process to achieve that goal.

While it’s great that the vast majority of companies are thinking about this, it’s hard to focus on diversity without some action items in place.

We wrote a blog post a couple months ago about initial actions companies can take - the post focuses mostly on women in tech, but it has links to a broad range of resources.

Stay tuned for more results! And please email feedback@grayscalable.com for any questions.

Life as a Start-Up Recruiter: Survey Sneak Peek