Recruiting Manager (RC Manager)

Overview

You manage a team of recruiters at Betts who place sales, marketing, and customer success professionals at tech companies. You're coaching recruiters on their search processes, maintaining relationships with client hiring managers, and ultimately responsible for your team hitting their placement goals. You report to Juliet Goswell and work out of the Tribeca office twice a week.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Bootstrapped/Profitable (founded ~2010, 138 employees)

Size: 138 employees

Growth: Steady - average tenure is 4.5 years which suggests stable business, not hypergrowth chaos

Market Position: Established player in tech GTM recruiting - nearly 15 years of relationships with SaaS companies

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 60% Existing client relationships - companies you've placed with before come back with new reqs
• 30% Outbound BD - recruiters and BD team prospecting into new tech companies
• 10% Inbound - referrals and website leads from companies searching for GTM recruiting help

Team Structure: You manage 4-6 recruiters (mix of junior and mid-level). Each recruiter typically works 8-12 active searches at a time across multiple clients.

Support Model: Betts has a BD team that helps open new accounts, but your recruiters also do client management and upselling once relationships exist.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Other tech recruiting agencies (Terminus Group, Kadar Partners, Sales Talent Agency), internal recruiting teams, LinkedIn Recruiter self-service

How They Differentiate: 15 years of GTM-specific focus means deep candidate networks and pattern recognition on what works. They offer multiple service models (contingency, RaaS, retained) which most agencies don't.

Common Objections: "We'll just hire an internal recruiter" or "LinkedIn Recruiter is cheaper" or "Your fee is too high"

Win Themes: Speed to fill, quality of GTM-specific candidate pipeline, ability to scale with RaaS model, long track record with similar companies

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Team Coaching (35%) | Client Management (25%) | Internal Ops (20%) | Recruiting (20%)

Key Activities

• 1-on-1s with your recruiters: You're reviewing their active searches, looking at pipeline (how many candidates submitted, in-process, at offer stage), coaching on sourcing strategies, helping unstick deals that are stalling. You're pushing them on metrics: submittals per week, interviews scheduled, offer acceptance rate.
• Client relationship management: You jump on calls with hiring managers when searches are tricky, when there's pushback on fees, or when a client wants to expand the partnership. You're the escalation point when a recruiter's candidate falls out or a client is unhappy with quality.
• Process improvement: You're looking at team data to find bottlenecks. Why is time-to-fill too long? Why are interview-to-offer ratios dropping? You adjust sourcing strategies, messaging templates, interview prep processes.
• Still recruiting: You carry 2-4 of your own searches, usually the most difficult or highest-value ones. This keeps you credible with your team and client-facing.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You live and die by your team's numbers: If recruiters don't make placements, you don't hit quota. You can coach and improve process, but ultimately you need them to execute. Turnover on your team (even one person leaving) destroys your quarter.
• Client expectations vs candidate reality: Clients often want unicorns (10 years of SaaS AE experience, enterprise deals, specific industry, willing to take startup risk, below-market comp). Your job is managing those expectations while your recruiters scramble to find someone close enough.
• Placement fall-through rate is brutal: You can work a search for 6 weeks, get someone to offer stage, and have them accept a counter-offer from their current company or ghost at the last minute. You get paid nothing. This happens 20-30% of the time at offer stage.
• Recruiting is a grind: Your team is doing the same high-volume outreach as SDRs but to passive candidates who mostly ignore them. You're keeping them motivated through rejection and deals falling apart.

What Success Looks Like

• Your team places 3-5 candidates per month consistently (varies by team size and recruiter experience)
• Client retention rate above 80% - they come back with more reqs
• Recruiter tenure above 18 months (industry average is ~12 months)
• Time-to-fill trending down, offer acceptance rate trending up

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP Sales or CRO at Series A-C tech companies (main buyer - they have budget and urgency)
• Head of Talent/Recruiting at scaling startups (gatekeeper - need their buy-in even if sales leader wants you)

What They Care About:

• Speed: Can you fill this SDR role in 3 weeks because they're missing pipeline?
• Quality over quantity: They've been burned by other agencies sending 100 mediocre resumes
• GTM-specific pattern matching: Do you understand what makes a good AE for their sales motion?
• Flexibility: Can you do contingency for one role and RaaS for a bigger hiring initiative?

Requirements

• 4-7+ years in recruiting (agency or internal), OR 2+ years managing/mentoring recruiters or SDR teams
• Experience recruiting for GTM roles (sales, marketing, CS) is a major plus - you need to understand what these jobs actually entail
• Track record of hitting team metrics and developing people
• Comfortable with the operational side: analyzing data, tweaking processes, holding people accountable
• Based in NYC with ability to be in Tribeca office 2x/week
• Background in SaaS or high-growth tech environment preferred (you need to speak the language of your clients)