Nexus IT Group is your trusted recruiting partner for startup technology professionals, connecting early-stage and growth-stage companies with tech talent committed to driving innovation and building transformative products. As a staffing company focused on the startup ecosystem, we have extensive networks of software engineers, product managers, full-stack developers, and DevOps specialists who can help you scale your team, accelerate product development, and achieve your growth milestones. This is critical because the top startup technology professionals aren’t actively looking for a job–in fact, they’re contacted so frequently by headhunters they’ve shut down the most common ways to get opportunities in front of them.
In today’s world, startups are a transformative force for innovation and technological advancement. From the engineering teams you build to develop your MVP to your data infrastructure and go-to-market technology stack, startup tech capabilities are becoming essential to achieving product-market fit, securing funding, and scaling efficiently. Equally important is building with speed, maintaining code quality, and navigating the unique challenges of resource constraints and rapid pivots. Our recruiting teams’ acumen and understanding of the startup ecosystem let us balance all of these demands to bring early-stage companies the right employees for their needs. We can identify top talent at all levels, including executive search as well as individual contributors like front-end engineers, backend developers, data engineers, and cloud architects. The staffing services we provide at Nexus can help you build a world-class startup tech team, giving you the competitive edge to attract investors, ship products faster, and scale your organization.
Whether you’re a hiring manager with a set of difficult startup roles to fill or a technology professional considering joining a high-growth startup, we would love to chat about your needs and how our team of startup recruiters can serve as partners in your search. The startup sector is evolving rapidly, and having an experienced professional on your side can help you successfully navigate this changing landscape. Even if you just want some insights into how our recruiters help connect talent with startup opportunities, we hope you’ll reach out to our search firm so we can share our expertise and help your organization or career continue to move forward.
81%
of our successful candidates are submitted within one week
92%
of our candidates will accept your offer
96%
of our candidates are employed with your firm after 12 months
We run retained searches for the first senior hires a startup makes, including founding engineers, first VP of Engineering and the technical leaders a Seed or Series A board wants to meet before an offer goes out. These searches are as much about selling the company as screening the candidate, so we work closely with founders on the story before we approach anyone. Our retained placements hold a 96% candidate retention rate.
Startups compete for engineers against companies that can simply pay more, which means the search has to be run on fit and conviction rather than on a posting. Our recruiters work outbound and deliver a vetted shortlist within 4 days of taking the requirement, screened for people who have genuinely worked without a playbook. A first engineering hire has to cover more ground than any later one, so the search is run against the whole stack the product needs rather than against a single specialism.
Early-stage runway makes a permanent hire a serious commitment, and some work simply does not warrant one yet. We act as both the recruiter and the W2 employer for the contract term, so co-employment risk stays with us and you can convert the person once the work proves itself. Our contract placements hold a 94.3% quality of hire ratio.
Founders do most of the recruiting themselves until it starts eating the week, which is usually the point at which the hiring plan is growing fastest. Our Recruitment as a Service subscription handles candidate marketing, sourcing, screening and delivery on a monthly fee, so founders only run final interviews. We generate an engaged pipeline for a named role in under 7 days.
The great thing about nexus IT group is that it has a smaller family feel, but they are able to deliver IT candidates better than the largest IT staffing suppliers that we work with. They have delivered high quality cybersecurity professionals for several years to our firm.
I’ve been in Talent Acquisition for 15 years and have used many IT staffing firms over the years. I highly recommend Nick and nexus IT group over any other IT staffing services. nexus’ commitment to quality and delivery is top tier. They take the time to understand your needs, provide thorough screening, and make sure that candidates have a positive on-boarding experience.
Working with nexus IT group has made my job much easier. Having a recruiting firm who specializes in IT and within my industry, and who understands our specific culture and hiring needs has been instrumental in our talent acquisition talent strategy.
Capital One has used nexus IT group’s recruitment services for a number of IT positions at varying levels, over the past 4 years. We’ve had a high success rate working with nexus IT group which is a testament to the caliber of their work and their internal sourcing and vetting practices.
I’ve dealt with a lot of hiring firms in my 18 years in the investment banking profession, and the majority of them have been awful to mediocre at best. Dealing with Nexus IT Group, on the other hand, was a breath of fresh air. After only one one opening, I was blown away by the quality and quantity of resumes I received. Nexus IT Group pays close attention to my demands and requirements. As a result, the individuals who were referred to me were excellent fits for our open positions. I appreciate the personal and professional expertise you offer to the process.
SAIC provides government services to several federal agencies across the US. We needed to recruit several new cybersecurity talent for our growing practice area. Travis quickly understood our business and the requirements of each cybersecurity need. nexus IT group showed patience, flexibility, and expertise in the search process. If you’re looking for good cybersecurity recruiters then you can’t go wrong with nexus IT group.
It is hard to put into words what nexus IT group has done for our organization. nexus IT group knows exactly what we look for and they get the right candidates 99% of the time. Anyone looking to hire tech talent would be lucky to have nexus IT group on their side. They have great work ethic, responsive, and a wide array of market knowledge.
We’ve enlisted the help of a number of IT recruiting firms in the past. Nexus IT Group has contributed to the success of many great hires by working professionally, diligently, and efficiently. We contacted Nexus IT Group after being introduced to them, and we were instantly impressed by their promptness and ability to focus on our needs. We received 3 resumes the same day and 3 more the next day, and we were able to hire four people in less than a week. We added an additional individual through Nexus IT Group a few weeks later as a result of vast network, service and professionalism. I highly recommend working with Nexus IT Group.
Our client had a working prototype, one technical founder and eight months of runway, and needed a first engineer who would be comfortable owning the whole stack. The search was as much about selling the company as assessing candidates, so we worked with the founders on the story before approaching anybody. We presented four candidates and the hire started three weeks later.
A Series A company had grown to eleven engineers reporting to a founder who no longer had time for them. The board wanted somebody who had taken a team from ten to forty without breaking what made it work in the first place. We ran the process confidentially, presented five candidates and the client hired a leader who had done exactly that twice.
Our client is a seed stage company whose job posting had been open for four months and produced nothing usable. They needed somebody who had worked without a playbook, which does not show up on a resume. We sourced 158 candidates, screened for people who had joined a company under twenty and placed the role in 26 days.
A startup with strong engineering and no product function was shipping whatever the loudest customer asked for. They needed a first product leader who could say no and be trusted while doing it. We presented four candidates and the founders made an offer to the first person they met after a second interview.
Our client had outgrown the infrastructure their founder built and had nobody left who could safely change it. The role was the first dedicated infrastructure hire, so it needed somebody comfortable being the only person who understood the system. We submitted three candidates and the hire had the deployment pipeline rebuilt in two months.
To nexus IT group, placement is an art—one that requires the proper alignment of talent with opportunity, experience with need, personality with environment, and aspirations with value. The startup sector is a fast-paced, highly competitive recruiting environment that offers big opportunities for tech candidates. Our full-cycle recruiting system is a 51 step touchpoint process from start to finish. Our engagement process starts with a discovery call to understand the needs of the role. With this series of questions, our startup recruiters are able to build a sales cadence that we will use to deploy a multi-touch recruiting cadence precisely and accurately to hundreds of candidates that fit the expectations of the role. Once our targeted search is executed, we spend a series of 3 calls to get to know the candidates’ needs, wants, and future career interests. Once we’ve created a shortlist of qualified and fully vetted candidates, we will deliver our top 2 to 3 candidates to the startup hiring manager. Once the interview process starts, we work with the candidate and the hiring team to make sure communication is responsive and transparent. Once a candidate is placed, we stay in touch with the placed candidate for 2 years just to see how things are going.
Our candidate sourcing can be described in 3 words: Identify. Engage. Toolstack. Typically, the best job prospects are those who are passive. This indicates that they are not actively seeking employment. As a result, they are not surfing the Internet in search of online job postings. And because they are not viewing online job postings, we have developed a robust and 100% outbound recruiting strategy. We begin our sourcing strategy by creating a candidate persona. Once we have successfully created the candidate persona, we will then create a content strategy that will attract top talent in the startup space. Once we’ve developed our cadence, we will use a number of sources to scour the web to get our message in front of the right candidates. Strategies include searching our database, sourcing for referrals, sourcing from specific organizations, LinkedIn, Meetup, Angel List, Dice, alumni boards, GitHub, and many other niche tech community sites. We craft highly personalized messages that drive above industry reply rates. Our recruiting strategy is to begin conversations with passive candidates to learn about their future career interests, needs, and wants and align those needs with future openings with a high-touch approach.
Quality of Hire is very important for nexus IT group and our startup recruiting team. Currently our startup recruiters hold a 96.08% quality of hire ratio. This is measured by any contractor who successfully completes their contract, and/or a direct placement candidate who is at our client for at least 6 months of duration.
Currently our 1 year retention rate with our startup clients is running right at 96.2%.
The startup hiring space is fast-paced, so our team of startup recruiters are trained to work swiftly. The time required to send qualified candidates to the startup hiring manager varies on the position you are seeking to fill and the challenges we will face such as lower than market compensation, equity concerns, slow feedback, onsite expectations, etc. We can deliver applicants on the day of contract signing, within a few days, or within a few weeks.
We’ve spent a great deal of time in early-stage recruiting and have had the distinct pleasure of collaborating with a number of amazing VCs and founders. From our perspective, the Musks of the world represent the future of technology, and we are major believers and investors in technology because, of course, it is the future. The startup revolution is particularly exciting as we help companies build teams that are shaping the next generation of innovative products and services. However, recruiting for Seed and Series A/B early-stage firms presents a distinct set of obstacles.
Startup recruiters specialize in a specific market sector. Every day, our startup recruiters contact a specialized set of tech candidates who thrive in fast-paced, high-growth environments. When starting a new search, our team has a pool of personally-known candidates to call immediately. The point is that specialized startup recruiters sprint out of the gate more effectively than staffing firms that go back to the drawing board for each search.
When employers receive a resume from a startup recruiting firm, there is a high probability that they are familiar with the individual. Our clients trust that we have thoroughly screened the candidate over a series of multiple conversations, and that they will be worth the hiring manager’s time to interview.
Another benefit of using a specialized startup recruiting firm is you will experience less of a “resume broker” relationship and more of a “sector expert.” We spend countless hours every day conversing with tech prospects and startup employers, making us more “in the know” about the startup space. Startup recruiters can provide insight into the landscape of startup employment, equity compensation, current pay, and the most recent candidate challenges.
Ultimately, startup recruiters have access to a concentrated pool of candidates, resulting in increased efficiency during the hiring process and the ability to establish long-lasting relationships with the industry’s top talent.
Our startup recruiting practice is hyper-focused on clients in the early-stage through growth-stage startup space. Our startup recruiting team has successfully worked with clients ranging from pre-seed startups to Series C+ organizations, as well as venture-backed companies across various tech sectors.
Whether you’re recruiting for Software Engineers, Product Managers, DevOps Engineers, Data Scientists, Full-Stack Developers, or Cloud Architects – our recruiting solutions have you covered. Our hires range from just about anything you can imagine that a startup would need when building a tech team — including leadership roles like CTO, VP of Engineering, Head of Product, and many more—with a niche focus in startup tech staffing.
Our startup recruiters use a series of stages to make sure we minimize candidate fallout during the recruiting cycle. Our recruiters will perform an in-depth conversation where they work to uncover the needs, wants, and desires of their next career move. We ask candidates specific questions about their experience with startup environments, technical skillsets, ability to wear multiple hats, and comfort with ambiguity. If the team feels that there’s a fit, then another person from our team will speak with the candidate. If the 2 nexus reps feel that there’s a good fit, then we ask the candidate to complete a 4 question feedback form so we can better understand if the role is a good or great fit. Once we receive the candidate’s feedback, then we will perform a “Lockdown” conversation where we ask a series of questions around counteroffers, interview stages, target salary expectations, equity expectations, and much more. If this goes well, then we will submit the candidate for client review.
First, it is incredibly difficult for startup hiring managers with little time to receive responses to job ads. Second, an increasing number of professionals do not respond to recruiters, particularly top tech talent. They prefer to hear directly from the CTO or founder, which brings us to the third challenge: recruitment is a full-time, highly specialized profession for which startup hiring managers do not have time.
Our startup recruiting fee is 22% to 25% of the candidate’s first year base salary. We do our best to find a payment structure that works best for your team.
Our startup recruiters are paid by the companies for which they place candidates. Your recruiter does earn a commission if you are hired, but the commission is paid by the company that hires you. Our recruiting fee isn’t taken out of your salary, and it doesn’t lower the salary that you would be offered. Another misconception is that if you are presented by a recruiter, and another candidate is not, that you would be at a disadvantage because you have a fee associated with you getting that role. In our experience, companies are seeking the best person for the job, and they are not concerned about a fee being paid at that point. In fact, candidates that work with recruiters actually tend to make more than those who job hunt alone.