Another day, another tech industry layoff. At least, that’s how it’s felt lately, with tech titans’ layoffs and hiring freezes dominating headlines. If you’re a startup watching this all happen, you may be wondering what this all means for your own growth and hiring — especially as the stock market falls and interest rates rise.

While the Great Resignation was spurred on by the pandemic, the real reason employees are leaving jobs has little to do with COVID-19. For employers that are now backfilling empty roles, that’s an important distinction to make — because it means an entirely different approach to recruiting is needed.

The war for talent has never felt fiercer. If you’re a startup in the tech space, that battle can feel especially rough — after all, you’re facing up against titans like Google, Meta, and Apple when it comes to attracting potential employees. If you’re using traditional hiring methods, it can feel like your cold emails are going unread and your job postings unnoticed.

One of the most frequent questions first-time founders ask as they start to grow their business is: “How many…?” How many employees should you hire before your Series A? How many engineers are generally hired in the seed stage? How many people should you be hiring per quarter?

Using The Swarm, 500 Emerging Europe is able to unify and search through their collective network. They're already using the platform to introduce founders to top talent and plan to use it for sales and other high-potential introductions.

Bringing the right people on board is one of the most crucial parts of building any successful business, and few people understand that better than Monarch Money Founder Ozzie Osman.

Matt Maasdam, Ex Navy SEALs Instructor and Co-Founder at PECOS Outdoor, didn’t take the most traditional path to entrepreneurship. In fact, his career journey matches few others. Maasdam started his career with the Navy SEALs, where he spent 20 years working in candidate selection and training. He later carried the nuclear codes for President Obama during his two years as the White House’s Military Aide. Since then, Maasdam has run strategy programs at Under Armour and worked as the COO of startup Revtown. Today, he’s the co-founder of PECOS Outdoors, an e-commerce company that produces outdoor gear.

Experts explain the tactical, network-based approaches companies should take to succeed in 2023 — and why they matter: Richard Cho (Advisor & Former Chief Recruiting Officer at Gem), Nolan Church (CEO at Continuum), David Connors (Co-Founder & CEO at The Swarm). Panel event moderated by Opal Franklin (Events Lead at The Swarm).

At this stage, most leaders know that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plays an important role in their company’s success. Companies that are more diverse and inclusive are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors and 70% more likely to capture new markets. They also have a much easier time sourcing candidates, with two out of three candidates saying they actively seek out companies that have diverse workforces. Hear from experts on how to best infuse DEI into your recruitment strategy and hiring process.

With the recent economic downturn, many startups have slowed — if not altogether frozen — their hiring plans. And understandably so: as funding rounds stretch longer and inflation impacts people’s spending, leaders are keeping a more watchful eye on budgets. However, even if your hiring has slowed, your recruiting function should never stop.

If you’re a first-time founder, the thought of hiring your first 10 employees can seem daunting. Compared to an established company, you don’t have brand recognition, endless budgets, or teams of recruiters available to help. It might, in fact, be just you at this stage.

We're releasing a new feature that automatically calculates and displays a "connection strength score" for each profile in your network. It's a game-changer to help lower the noise of weak connections and enhance the signal of strong connections.

Companies can now instantly sign up for a free account to build their company networks and activate it for sales, recruiting, fundraising, and more. More than 300 teams have joined the platform so far. We’ve watched them build and grow their company networks in real time. Here’s what we’ve seen.

Work overlaps is a new feature allowing our users to automatically find and import up to 300 former colleagues — even if they’re not connected on LinkedIn or via email.

The Swarm can now also be used for sales purposes, in addition to recruiting and building investor networks. New features allow you to use The Swarm to discover warm connection paths into target companies, identify net new target companies within your Swarm network, and prioritize your sales pipeline based on network connectivity.