Last week, I joined Austin Belcak of Cultivated Culture to talk to job seekers about one thing: how to get on a recruiter’s radar. We walked through how recruiters search, what catches their attention, and what gives them a reason to reach out.

That’s a different audience from this newsletter, I know. But halfway through, I realized we were describing exactly how we run searches for our clients.

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Three takeaways worth stealing:

1. The title is the least interesting part of the search.

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On the webinar, we pulled up an Account Executive search in DFW. It started at 16,000 profiles. Filtering for software got it to about 1,000. Even then, we had a lot of work ahead to understand who might fit.

That’s why our conversations with clients go beyond the title. Who will this person sell to? What will they inherit? Are they building a territory, creating a sales motion, or stepping into a process that already works?

That context shapes who we look for and the questions we ask.

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2. Past performance needs context.

Say someone hit 140%. Did they have a strong territory, inbound pipeline, and an SDR team behind them? Or did they build it themselves? Both are real wins. They just tell you very different things about how that person will do at a 30-person, founder-led company.

If someone exceeded quota, how did they do it? What opportunities and support did they have? What did they personally build or improve?

Those questions matter because our clients operate in different environments. Success on an established team gives us something to investigate, but we still need to understand how that experience translates to a founder-led business or a company entering a new market. We owe our clients a clear explanation of why someone fits the work ahead.

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3. The best time to talk to your recruiter is before you need one.

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Our average time to fill a GTM role this year has been 42 days, from job intake to hire. If you need someone in the role next week, you might already be behind.

The more we know about your growth plans, your buyers, and where the team is stretched, the faster we can move when a role opens.

Sometimes that conversation also helps clarify which role you need to hire next.

That’s the philosophy we bring to our work at Pursuit. We want to understand what you’re building and help you find the people who can move it forward.

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