Joe Atkinson and Jason Miller run PromptMates, a global talent community. They are also both experienced recruiters. Joe founded and exited PURPL, an online learning platform for talent acquisition professionals, and Jason is Head of People Intelligence and AI at Natera. So when it came to making PromptMates’ first hire, they had a clear idea of the profile they wanted.
Jill understood the goal behind the brief rather than the signals Joe had used to describe it. That meant she could surface someone Joe would probably not have found through a more literal search. Her job title and experience looked different on paper, but her entrepreneurial track record and her motivation pointed to what PromptMates actually needed. The first candidate they interviewed was the person they hired.
Seeing the person behind the profile
On paper, she was not the obvious candidate. Her experience sat outside the job title Joe had in mind, and her entrepreneurial background left him with a question her CV could not answer: did she really want to work at a company like PromptMates?
“We initially looked for more experience in a similar role. Then Jill showed us a candidate with experience outside the job title who was highly motivated to join a company like ours.”
Joe Atkinson, Co-founder, PromptMates
Jill knew that she did. Candidates in the Jack & Jill network have already spoken to Jack about what they have done, what drives them and what they want next. That gave Jill a clearer picture of both the candidate’s experience and her ambitions. She could explain why working closely with a founder at a company of this size was not a compromise for this person, but the reason she was interested.
The signals were there in her history and her ambitions. Jill joined them up.
Hiring, without leaving Slack
The whole process happened inside Slack. Joe could review candidates, ask Jill follow-up questions, give feedback and request introductions exactly where the team was already working.
As Joe and Jason reviewed more people, they reacted to candidates and told Jill what they liked and what was not quite right. That feedback sharpened the search as it went, and gave PromptMates a small, high-signal set of candidates rather than a large pool to work through.
Two weeks from brief to offer
It took two weeks from briefing Jill to making an offer.
The experience on the other side of the process mattered too. Jason asked candidates what they thought of it and heard the same positive answer every time. For PromptMates, that combination was the difference: Jill surfaced someone the team could easily have missed, gave Joe the context to understand why she was worth meeting, and helped create a candidate experience that reflected the community they are building.