Overview
You'll spend your day cold calling HR leaders, talent acquisition heads, and hiring managers trying to get them interested in KASE's flexible recruiting model. You're selling against the status quo (they already have internal recruiters or use contingency firms) and trying to book discovery calls for the sales team. Most of your conversations will be short—people hanging up, saying "not interested," or asking you to send an email they won't read.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound SDR |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy (cold calls, LinkedIn, email sequences) |
| Deal Complexity | Transactional to consultative |
| Sales Cycle | N/A (you book meetings, not close deals) |
| Deal Size | N/A (not your metric) |
| Quota (est.) | 15-20 qualified meetings booked per month |
Company Context
Stage: Early-stage (10 employees, likely bootstrapped or pre-seed based on size)
Size: 10 employees
Growth: Small team hiring their first SDR—means limited sales infrastructure and you'll be figuring things out
Market Position: Challenger in a crowded recruiting services market with established players like Robert Half, Kforce, traditional RPOs, and hundreds of boutique firms
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 90% Outbound - Cold calling lists, LinkedIn prospecting, email sequences you'll likely build yourself
- 10% Inbound - Occasional website inquiries, referrals from the founder's network
SDR/AE Structure: You're likely the first or only SDR, reporting directly to founder or small sales team
SE Support: None—you're selling a service, not technical product
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Traditional contingency recruiters (20-30% placement fees), RPO providers, internal TA teams, other flexible/embedded recruiting models
How They Differentiate: Flexible monthly model vs. per-placement fees, unlimited hiring claims
Common Objections: "We already have recruiters," "We use [Agency X]," "Our hiring is too slow right now," "How is this different from RPO?"
Win Themes: Cost predictability for high-volume hiring, flexibility to scale up/down without contracts
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Cold Calling (50%) | Email/LinkedIn (25%) | Research/Admin (15%) | Meeting Handoffs (10%)
Key Activities
- Cold Calling: Make 60-80 calls per day to HR leaders and hiring managers. You're interrupting their day. Most will say no immediately. You're looking for companies actively hiring or frustrated with their current recruiting setup. Expect a lot of gatekeepers and voicemails.
- Email Sequences: Send 30-50 personalized emails daily, following up on calls and LinkedIn connections. Most get ignored. You'll spend time researching companies on LinkedIn to find hiring signals (job posts, headcount growth).
- LinkedIn Outreach: Send connection requests with notes, engage with prospect posts, watch for job posting activity. Response rates are low (5-10%).
- Meeting Handoffs: When you actually book something, brief the closer on the prospect's situation, join the first 5 minutes of the call, then drop off. Hope they show up (20-30% no-show rate is normal).
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Everyone already has recruiting solutions and switching costs are high. You're selling against inertia and existing relationships.
- Recruiting services are commoditized—prospects see you as interchangeable with 50 other firms. Hard to differentiate on a cold call.
- Small company means limited brand recognition, no case studies prospects have heard of, and you're building talk tracks as you go.
- Hiring is cyclical—when budgets freeze or hiring slows, your pipeline evaporates fast.
- You'll hear "send me info" (brush-off) constantly and waste time following up on fake interest.
What Success Looks Like
- Book 15-20 qualified meetings per month that show up and have active hiring needs
- 1-2% connect rate on cold calls, 20-30% of connects convert to meetings
- Meetings convert to opportunities at 30-40% rate (depends on AE's close rate)
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- VP/Director of Talent Acquisition at 50-500 person companies
- HR leaders at startups in growth mode
- Department heads with headcount but no TA support
What They Care About:
- Time-to-fill (their current process is too slow)
- Cost per hire (agencies are expensive, internal recruiters are overhead)
- Quality of candidates (they've been burned by bad agencies)
- Flexibility (hiring needs spike and drop, hard to predict)
Requirements
- Comfortable making 60-80 cold calls per day and hearing "no" constantly
- Thick skin for rejection and ability to not take it personally
- Strong written communication for personalized emails and LinkedIn messages
- Self-starter mentality—small company means limited training and you'll figure things out
- Manhattan-based (likely in-office at a small team environment)
- Some understanding of recruiting/HR challenges helpful but not required
- CRM hygiene and follow-up discipline (probably using HubSpot or Salesforce)