Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm a BFA/MBA who fell into talent after some time in equity trading, a failed supply chain startup, and a brief departure into human capital research topics. That led to a talent career running from the CTO's office at Microsoft to a top retained boutique (ReedShay), on to VC Platform at Signalfire - and ultimately realizing that agency and automation is the only way to scale as a recruiter.

What are you working on at Recruiting from Scratch?

All sorts of projects. From top of funnel business development, to sourcing, to helping train our team, assessments, and a lot of focus on partnerships. Many me agencies tend to be transactional with their candidates and clients, and I'm much more interested in supporting a like-minded tribe of builders.

What attracted you to the tech industry or recruiting?

All of it. For tech, it's the creativity. It draws unusual talent, and at some point, I just became fixated on the talent problem. It could just have easily been systems, which I loved to build, but I also like to spend time with people and go deeper on founder-level thinking.

What do you enjoy the most about recruiting?

For me, it's the honesty once I've established rapport and trust. I want to be a trusted partner to my clients and candidates, and tell them the truth about the market, about what talent is looking for, where I see their skills fitting as a candidate, etc. People appear to like it. My inboxes are blowing up.

What are you most excited about (professionally) for the rest of this year?

Portugal! My wife and I are expatriating to Viana do Castelo end of February. Just us, three dogs, and about eight bags. I see an incredible and nascent hub that reminds me a lot of tech in '09.

What are some words of advice you’d give to others in the tech industry?

Tech recruiters: read. Take the time to read. Start by learning the differences between distributed systems and software. Once you know more about the tech itself, you can avoid asking smart people questions that you could have already learned the answer to. RFS never does that, and that's so important to me.

What do you like to do in your free time?

Honestly, I've been working and packing and purging non-stop for months! Painting (oil), guitar, rescuing dogs, trying to make my wife laugh, reading old books over again, watching old movies over again. Lots of things!