Today’s episode is with Steven Bartel, co-founder and CEO of Gem.

Before building the talent acquisition platform, Steven was an early engineer at Dropbox, where he spent 5 years working on analytics, Dropbox Paper, and hiring as the company grew from 25 to 1500 people.

This experience from Dropbox, combined with his lessons from building out Gem’s own team and talking to his customer base of recruiters makes Steven the perfect person to talk to about early-stage recruiting.

In our conversation we focus on how to make those fourth, fifth, or tenth hires — those really early days when your startup has zero brand recognition or recruiting help. Here’s a preview of his tactical advice:

• A trick for sourcing second-degree network connections
• The power of sending a “break-up” message in your candidate outreach. 
• How Gem brought candidates on to work with them in very structured trial periods before making a full-time offer. 
• Advice for working on your recruiting pitch and nurturing passive talent
• The similarities between early-stage hiring and founder-led sales

You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson