Overview
You find companies struggling to fill open roles and get them interested in Paraform's recruiting marketplace. Your targets are TA leaders, founders, and HR directors at startups and growth-stage companies. You're monitoring job boards, funding announcements, and LinkedIn to identify prospects, then cold calling and emailing to book discovery calls for AEs.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound SDR (prospecting and qualifying) |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy with some inbound lead follow-up |
| Deal Complexity | Transactional - focused on booking qualified meetings |
| Sales Cycle | 1-3 weeks from first touch to booked meeting |
| Deal Size | N/A - measured on meetings booked, not revenue |
| Quota (est.) | 15-20 qualified meetings booked per month |
Company Context
Stage: Growth stage (184 employees, 10x growth in past year)
Size: 184 employees
Growth: Rapidly scaling - moved offices 3 times in 18 months, maintaining strong revenue per employee
Market Position: Challenger in recruiting marketplace space - competing against traditional search firms and newer platforms
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 70% Cold outbound - prospecting into companies with active job postings for hard-to-fill roles
- 20% Inbound lead follow-up - companies that filled out interest forms or engaged with content
- 10% Referrals - intros from recruiters on the platform or existing customers
SDR/AE Structure: You book meetings and hand off qualified prospects to AEs for discovery and demos
SE Support: No SE involvement at SDR stage
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Traditional retained search firms, contingency recruiters, RPO providers, recruiting marketplaces, internal TA teams
How They Differentiate: Success-based model (no upfront retainer), curated recruiter network, faster time-to-fill
Common Objections: "We already have recruiters", "Just send me info", "Not interested in another recruiting vendor", "We handle hiring internally", "Too busy to take a call"
Win Themes: Speed to quality candidates, recruiter specialization, no upfront financial risk
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Prospecting/Research (30%) | Cold Calling (40%) | Email/LinkedIn (20%) | Admin/Follow-up (10%)
Key Activities
- Prospecting Research: Scanning job boards, LinkedIn, and Crunchbase to identify companies with hard-to-fill roles (senior engineering, GTM leadership, specialized positions). Building lists of TA leaders, founders, and HR directors at these companies.
- Cold Calling: Making 50-70 calls per day to prospects. Most don't answer. When they do, you have 30 seconds to explain why Paraform is relevant before they say they're busy. You're trying to identify pain ("How's that VP of Sales search going?") and book 15-30 minute intro calls.
- Email Sequences: Writing personalized emails referencing specific roles they're hiring for and problems they might be facing. Following up 3-5 times over 2 weeks. Response rates are typically 2-5%.
- Meeting Qualification: When someone agrees to a call, you're confirming they have budget authority, active hiring needs, and decision-making power before passing to an AE. You're filtering out "just curious" prospects.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Most prospects don't answer calls or respond to emails - you hear "no" or silence 95% of the time
- Recruiting is a crowded space - prospects get hit up by agencies constantly and are skeptical of "another recruiting platform"
- Timing is everything - a company might not care about Paraform until a critical role becomes urgent, so you're nurturing relationships over weeks/months
- Gatekeepers are tough - getting past EAs to reach founders or TA leaders takes persistence and creativity
- You're selling a marketplace model that's less familiar than traditional recruiting - explaining how it works in 30 seconds is a skill
What Success Looks Like
- Booking 15-20 qualified meetings per month that show up and convert to opportunities for AEs
- 60%+ of your booked meetings are qualified (prospect has authority, budget, and active hiring needs)
- Building pipeline of 50-75 active prospects in various nurture stages
- Conversion rate of 3-5% from outreach to booked meeting
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- Heads of Talent Acquisition at Series A-C startups (50-500 employees)
- Founders/CEOs at early-stage companies (especially when hiring their first sales/GTM roles)
- HR Directors at growth-stage companies with aggressive hiring targets
What They Care About:
- Time-to-fill for roles that are blocking growth or causing internal pain
- Quality of candidates vs unqualified spam from agencies
- Not wasting time on calls with vendors who don't understand their needs
- Solutions that don't require big upfront commitments or retainers
Requirements
- 0-2 years of sales or SDR experience (entry-level role, will train)
- Comfortable with high-volume cold calling and rejection
- Coachable - willing to iterate on messaging and tactics based on feedback
- Research skills - able to identify good-fit prospects and personalize outreach
- Competitive drive - you're motivated by hitting quota and being top performer
- Interest in recruiting, HR tech, or marketplace businesses is a plus
- Located in or willing to relocate to San Francisco for hybrid work setup