Preparing Your Recruiting Team for an IPO
To our Talent Community,
If you received an email today announcing that your company has filed its S-1, would your recruiting team know what to do? Do you know what an S-1 is? From our experience, that email has been followed by, “YAY, we’re finally going public!”, immediately followed by panic inducing questions like, “what are we allowed to say to candidates?” or “how do we pitch a job opportunity if you can’t talk about the value of an offer?”
With the recent IPOs of Instacart, Reddit, Klaviyo, ARM, and Rubrik there’s cautious optimism about the current trickle getting stronger with more companies starting to consider transitioning to public markets. If you get caught unprepared, at best it’s a huge scramble for your team. Worse-case, it can create a big liability to the company if your recruiters aren’t fully armed with how to effectively navigate the many questions coming from candidates and external partners. So, while your company may not be filing at this moment, if it’s on the horizon in the next year or two, we’d suggest getting educated on the terminology, process itself, and how to lead your recruiting team through it.
Since IPOs can be a once in a lifetime experience, there aren’t many people to learn from that have first hand experience navigating the challenges of recruiting through an IPO process.
Our team has experienced the IPO process several times both as part of the confidentially disclosed team responsible for taking a company public and on the ‘surprise, we've filed our S-1 today’ receiving end of the process as well. We wanted to share some tips for preparing yourself and your team based on these experiences. If you want more detailed guidance, we recently put all of our learning into a guide to help recruiting teams navigate an IPO. It includes real examples and in-depth FAQs.
Prepare yourself:
There are several things you can consider doing now to prepare.
Learn more about different paths to public markets (IPO, SPAC, DPO).
Understand what’s involved during the typical IPO process - IPO readiness and preparation, confidential S-1 filing, public S-1 filing, quiet period, roadshow, pricing, IPO listing day, lockup period and blackout periods.
Talk to leaders that have been through the process and learn from their experience before you’re thrown into the fire.
Here’s an overview of how we’ve seen the process play out:
In the lead up to filing with the SEC, the company will be preparing to go public by completing the necessary diligence and preparing financial statements, legal documents, and disclosures. Most of this will happen behind the scenes for recruiters, but there are specific things that will likely evolve that impact recruiting operations. Financial controls will become very important as a public company. For example, to minimize risk of fraud, it’s probably a bad idea for the person that creates headcount to also be able to create a job and hire someone into that job without approval, and start them on payroll. The company will need to document processes that demonstrate the proper oversight is in place to minimize risks - access controls, NDAs, background checks, approvals for headcount and offers, record of signed offer letters, compensation philosophy and guidelines, etc.
Once the filing is submitted to the SEC, the pricing of the stock will fluctuate and not be completely clear until the first trade happens on IPO day. The media will make strong cases for why your company will be great and why it won’t. Your recruiting team can’t comment on any of it. This can cause a lot of anxiety and uncertainty with you, your team, and candidates throughout the process.
Prepare your team:
Some new processes will likely feel more restrictive than they have in the past to mature the business. It’s also a path to the company’s stock having ‘real’ value, which may sometimes be worth reminding the grumpy members on the team about. Every business and IPO will have nuances in what needs to be communicated and when, which will be difficult to anticipate. For example, you may or may not be in the middle of university recruiting season where you’ve extended value-based offers. Your company may end up doing a stock split of some kind as part of the IPO process.
At each stage of the process, there will be new questions that arise, so a robust set of FAQs is critical for your team to reference. You could start to get guidance from your legal and comms teams on what their talking points would be for questions like how to talk to candidates about the equity value of their offers or how the team would respond to questions about press stories that will inevitably get referenced by candidates. It will be crucial to have a solid FAQ prepared and vetted with your legal team that your recruiters can reference during candidate calls! During the IPO process, you could take it a step further by putting in place office hours or collaboration spaces to give your team direct access to others to practice talking points and get quick feedback on questions that come up during candidate conversations.
Regardless of specific circumstances, your team can benefit from a basic understanding of the IPO process itself. It can also be helpful to have people on the team or in the company that have been through the process before to come share their experiences. This is a great step towards preparing your team.
This just scratches the surface. If you are looking for a partner to help prepare yourself or your recruiting team, our team has in-house experience leading teams through the IPO process at Facebook/Meta, Pinterest, and Airbnb. We have also helped recruiting teams navigate this process through our advising and coaching services. Let us know if you’d like to learn more.
Next month we’ll touch on building out internal executive recruiting capabilities. In addition to operational readiness, the company will also need to have the executive team in place with a strong bench of leaders to de-risk the business for public markets. Many companies will start to consider bringing executive recruiting in-house as part of the preparation process to ensure the company has sustainable capabilities to build the team for the long-term. We’re excited to share more on that next month.
- Mike, Jill & Adam
Open Positions
Active searches we're working on with clients + Recruiting leadership openings in the market
Client Opportunities
Adept - Head of Talent
Credo AI - Head of People
Credo AI - Channel Sales Lead
If you are interested in learning more about any of our open roles, please reach out to applications@gbdtalent.com
Client Spotlight
Credo AI is on a mission to empower enterprises to responsibly build, adopt, procure, and use AI at scale. Credo AI’s cutting-edge AI governance platform automates AI oversight and risk management while enabling regulatory compliance to emerging global standards like the EU AI Act, NIST, and ISO. Credo AI keeps humans in control of AI for better business and society.
In addition to hiring for their Head of People, we are also hiring for their Channel Sales Lead. If you are interested in learning more, please reach out to applications@gbdtalent.com.
Upcoming Events
Virtual Leadership and Development Opportunities
Upcoming Events:
Academy: Resource and Capacity Planning (May 7th, 9:30-11:30am PT)
Join us for our upcoming academy course on Capacity Planning. This is a great course for talent leaders looking to take a deep dive into headcount planning and capacity modeling and you will be given tools and templates to jump start planning for your company.
Academy: Influencing with data (June 4th & 6th, 1:30-3:30pm PT)
You will learn common formulas and learn how to quickly transform data, saving hours of time and wasted energy. Build flexible summary views to analyze and aggregate data and learn tips on how to present that data effectively.
Playbooks:
Your Guide to Evaluating and Selecting an ATS: A guide with helpful process frameworks, and evaluation templates to help you make an informed decision about selecting the ATS that is the best fit for your company.
Navigating an IPO: A guide to help you navigate your team through the IPO process. It includes tools and tactics to prepare your team, proactively communicate to pending candidates, and evolve your recruiting operations to support the shift in business.
Visit our website for additional information on GBD playbooks and reach out to hello@gbdtalent.com if you have any questions.
Highlights I Leadership Moves I Reading List
Placement Highlights
We are thrilled to announce Chris Tobin as the new Chief People Officer for Zūm!
Leadership Moves in the Market
We are tracking recruiting leadership moves in the market. Here are the ones announced this past month.
Chris Tobin, former Senior Vice President of People at Intercom, has joined Zūm as their Chief People Officer.
Sibel Kündeş, former Talent Acquisition Senior Manager at Delivery Hero has been promoted to Director of Talent Acquisition.
Sreyas Paravastu has joined Stay AI as the Director of People and Talent.
Derrick G., former Vice President of Talent at Bitski, has joined Socket as the Head of Talent.
Aaron Goldberg, former SVP, University Talent Acquisition at AlixPartners, has joined Petra Funds Group as the Chief Talent Officer.
Danielle Klebanov, former Head of Global Talent Acquisition at SNOW Diamonds, has joined Panorama Education as the Head of Talent Acquisition.
Soinneah Monks, former Head of Talent at Mutiny, has joined OpenAI leading GTM Recruiting.
Clifton Tay, former Global Early In Career Community Lead at Roche, has joined OpenAI as the Emerging Talent Lead.
Shikha Mathur, former Head of R&D Recruiting North America at Databrikcs, has joined SAIGroup the Senior Talent Acquisition Leader.
Katie (Frazier) Campbell, former Recruiting Manager at Box, has joined JM Search as the Vice President, Executive Search - Healthcare & Life Sciences.
Christine Hanley, former Recruiting Lead at Palantir Technologies, has joined Citadel as a Senior Recruiter.
Vibha Bhatia, former Principal at Purple Phoenix Consulting Services LLC, has joined 3E as the Head of Global Talent Acquisition.
Amina Moinuddin, former Head of People and Talent at Hightouch, has joined Vercel as the Global Head of Talent and Talent Strategy.
Amy Brandt, former Senior Principal, Talent at Human Capital, has joined Homeward as the Head of Talent Management.
Robert Gonzalez, former Senior Manager, Talent Acquistion at Robinhood, has joined Pebble’s Talent Acquisition team.
David Delaney, former Director, Recruiting at Cockroach Labs, has joined Courier Health as the Recruiting Lead.
Joy Lakey, former Talent Brand Specialist at Block, has joined Snowflake as the Talent Brand Manager.
Andii Lee, former Head of Talent Acquisition at Komodo Health, has joined Aerodome as the Head of Talent and People.
Francesca Bertone, former Director, Talent Acquisiton at Square, has joined Personio as the Head of Talent.
Kate Botler Kodesh, former Chief People Officer at Color, has joined Homebase as the Chief People Officer.
Kristen Walsh, former Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Course Hero, has joined Academia as the VP of Talent.
Matt Valentino, former People and Recruiting Leader at Stealth Startup, has joined Shape Therapeutics Inc. as the Chief People Officer.
Ben Blundell, former Senior Director, Recruiting Enablement at Oracle, has joined the Recruiting Staff at OpenAI.
Chris Juliano, former Senior Director, Talent Acquisition at Navan, has joined Front as the Head of Talent.
Marcus Dubois, former Senior Manager of Recruiting at RevenueCat, has joined Wise as the Talent Acquisition Manager, Americas.
T.J. Lee, former Head of Global Tech Recruiting at CloudKitchens, has joined Talent Acquisition at Keystone AI.
Katina Young, former Director at Daversa Partners, has joined A24 as the Head of Talent Acquisition.
Mark Jacobson, former CEO of Terrain Analytics, has joined Findem as the GM of Executive Search.
Nicole Jagoe, former Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition at Docusign, has joined Intuitive as the Vice President of Talent Acquisition.
Did we miss your career change? Let us know: hello@gbdtalent.com
📚 What We’re Reading, Watching, and Listening to:
A must listen: Leadership as a Craft with Arvind KC (Chief People and Systems Officer at Roblox) - Leading Large podcast
Benchmark your org - Felicis, Michelle Delcambre
SignalFire Resources
Introducing PMF (Product Market Fit) - First Round Capital
The Secrets to Transitioning from Corporate to Venture Capital - Lars Schmidt
Airbnb CEO: Brian Chesky - The Diary of a CEO
How to Hire - HBR, Patty McCord
Performance Calibrations that Work - Rachel Kleban
GTC March 2024 Keynote - NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang
Kate Aronowitz: Shaping the story of design in business - Design Better Podcast
Testing team performance reviews & insights from survey sent to 61 first-time CPOs: David Hanrahan (Chief People Officer, Flare) - The Modern People Leader: Forward-Thinking HR
Driving Business Through People at Truckstop: HR’s Strategic Impact on Revenue and Growth - The HR Impact Podcast
Job trend 'resenteeism' has employees coasting through workdays and hanging on, rather than quitting - Fox Business