Paramark Proves Standing for Something Is the Ultimate Recruiting Strategy

Paramark is building the future of marketing analytics. They give marketers a clear view of attribution across their funnel. No more endless debate about what moved the needle. Crisp data, clear takeaways, the ability to experiment and iterate.

We started working with Paramark on a contingency basis when they were just 6 people and shortly thereafter moved to an embedded partnership. Today they’re 23 and they’ve built one of the most values-led cultures we’ve seen at this stage.

They didn’t just hire to grow. They paused to ask: what kind of company are we actually building?

Startup values are generic and ignorable

We see two dominant approaches to values in startups:

Don’t have them or forgot about them.

This is because values are often manufactured. The company is either “laser focused on building product” (and the concept of values is a company-building distraction from the critical early-stage work required for success) OR they just regurgitate ideas they see espoused on social media and at the current slate of hot startups.

But an early-stage startup’s values and culture aren’t ultimately about ideas and documents. They’re about the founders.

Every company has a culture and every culture is built by its values - whether that company is 1 person or 10,000. And whether that company has a values page on their website or thinks values are dumb.

Whatever those values are create whatever that culture is. And whatever that culture is attracts whatever employees share those values, whether consciously or subconsciously.

If you don’t know what kind of company you want to build, or if that description is generic, you’ll struggle to recruit. Just like with your GTM strategy, you’ve got to get super crisp on what your value prop is and what ICP (ideal candidate persona) is uniquely attracted to your way of seeing the world. That might mean you end up building a company that looks a bit different than the generic vision you first began with. But, in the end, your startup is a business and this non-generic value prop and ICP is more likely to lead to hiring traction and therefore more commercial traction.

Candidates can see through manufactured values. They can tell when values have been borrowed versus actually been lived by the founders.

Who are you and what do you want to put out into the world?

Paramark’s values are Pete and Pranav’s values. They have a head start on many other founders we work with here: they have years of industry experience working on diverse teams and with each other. They’ve seen other values lived out and they’ve crafted their values over time, unique to them, meaningful and true. Whether they were building Paramark or starting a cafe or dealing with a family emergency, it’s pretty clear they just are who they are and they’d create this culture no matter where they were or what they were doing.

Defining your values is a self-discovery process. If you don’t identify what you care about and what you want to perpetuate, no one is going to know what to do with you. It’s not that you’ll get rejected, it’s just that you’ll get ignored. You’ll be lost in a sea of startups backed by “top investors” and founded by “cracked engineers” from the long-tail of impressive places.

You’ve got to stand for something. And the less generic, the better.

Not at all interested in 996

So, how do Pete and Pranav set themselves apart? As we have entered the era of 996, Paramark is anything but interested in this stereotypical grind. They’re building a sustainable, passionate, low-angst culture in the current sea of hardcore-better-do-996-or-you’re-gonna-get-left-behind startups.

Paramark’s job descriptions read like a manifesto on a micro-world they want to create than a list of requirements and tasks. The software product delivers step-changing results for top marketing teams. The internal product? Creating a world where folks can do their best, most meaningful work over the critical years of their careers.

Paramark’s commitment to these values has created a differentiation in the market. They’re different and they get noticed. The team was surprised when a reporter came across their job descriptions and wanted to interview them. Who knew people actually read job descriptions?

Paramark isn’t for everyone, but the team has figured out who they’re for

There’s nothing inherently wrong with 996. We’ve recruited for companies with this culture. Lots of people on our team work a lot. Try recruiting for some of the world’s top startups 😅

But being 996 is a constraint. All good values are. 996 means you’re going to attract some people and push others away. For example, you’re likely going to have a much easier time attracting junior candidates vs senior candidates. It’s difficult to be a good parent and only see your child on Sundays.

I can’t tell you how many engineers I’ve spoken with who said some version of “Nah, I’ve already done the 996 thing. I care about building something interesting and of value over a long period of time.” Invite someone to work 996 and you’ve also created another competitor - the startup they could build themselves in those hours.

What’s important is not whether you’re 996 or 554, in-person or remote. What’s critical is that you

1. know who you are

2. why you’re like that and not something else

3. how you consistently communicate that in the way you operate

4. and what type of persona is going to be attracted to that worldview

When I think of 996 I think of the team at Rilla. They’re unapologetically 996, maybe even a bit before it was in vogue. I’m sure 996 has created constraints for them. But that’s their flag and they’re flying it.

Paramark and Rilla have a lot in common: they’ve decided who they are, communicated it, and embraced their niche and the candidates who they find there. And for this reason, they’ve gained traction among the base of their ideal candidates, and the media is taking notice.

Most candidates who are interested in working for Rilla, aren’t going to be interested in working for Paramark, and vice versa. And that’s the point.

…and they’ve figured out how to find the people who share these values

Paramark’s interview process is designed to find strong candidates who share their values. This means they’re relatively agnostic about surface-level resume pedigree. They care much more about the complexity of the work done, the challenges overcome, the uniqueness of the person and their alignment with the culture. That means candidates who have never really thought intentionally about their own values are usually going to flunk this interview process.

This doesn’t mean Paramark is looking for 100% overlap between their values and a candidate’s. For the team, 80% alignment with no allergic response to the remaining 20% is the sweet spot. They note that this improves Paramark’s culture over time and builds a more diverse team.

Paramark also takes a bit longer to move candidates through an interview loop than others we see. This is generally a bad thing. And although we’ve worked together to increase efficiency where we can, we’ll move painfully slow if it means finding the right values-aligned candidates.

We’ve seen candidates ace most of the interview process and then not get the job. They’ve looked like shoe-ins. Perfect 10s on the technicals (for which the team has a very high bar). They get to the “values interview” and they fail miserably. Before we truly understood Pete and Pranav and their culture, we didn’t understand what was going on here. Do you know how difficult it is to find exceptional startup technical talent in this market? By many conventional measures, this would be an obvious hire.

To Pete and Pranav, that doesn’t matter.

If the candidate doesn’t truly hold the same values - including the value of actually being values-driven - then they’re going to cost the company time and money it doesn’t have to waste. They’re going to set everything back. They’re going to build a different Paramark - a Paramark Pete and Pranav don’t want to build.

It’s worth noting that Paramark’s “anti-996” posture, if you want to call it that, is at the bottom of their job descriptions. This “anti-value” is not actually that high on the stack-ranked list of things they care about. But it’s gotten perhaps the most attention because Paramark has caught the world at a moment when it is feeling like every past job has chewed them up and spit them out. For Pete and Pranav, it’s the most obvious thing in the world: “Family first” isn’t the most innovative of stuff :)

Beluga sees Paramark’s edge and leans into it

As startup partners, we see a lot of different cultures and approaches. With an outside perspective, we work hard to find and communicate your cultural differentiation. Paramark made this easy for us.

After taking time to understand Pete, Pranav, and the culture, we were able to iterate and craft effective outbound copy with reply rates above 30%, putting a strain on our ops and recruiting team 😉

With the tough thing out of the way (values differentiation, clear ideal candidate persona, and clear alignment), we were able to set a data-driven work-back plan for hard-to-fill technical roles and make hires ahead of schedule. Imagine that in this market 🙂

Candidates would get on calls with us and say, “I have never read a job description like this. This is nothing like most startups I’m seeing right now - it’s so refreshing! I feel like I really get to know what this team is like. They’re very thoughtful and intentional. I can see myself there. I’d love to meet those founders.” This attitude continued through the process: when candidates met the team and visited the office, they’d sense a cohesion between what the company said and what they do. The same continues after the candidates start - people stick and reinforce what is already a strong culture, making the next recruiting cycles more effective.

Struggling with recruiting? The problem isn’t volume, it’s that you’re boring.

There are different approaches to building your top of funnel:

There’s well-crafted outbound. This is table-stakes.

There’s finding some kind of alpha - unique access to on-the-market candidates. That could be through your network, through good contingency recruiters, or somewhere else.

But in the war for talent, nothing here is unique. And like any alpha you have, it’s not going to remain alpha for long. Instead, you need to invest in the hard work of getting noticed. And, for most teams, the product and the pedigree is not going to be enough. You’ve got to figure out who you are. And the weirder you are, the more different, the better. You can’t manufacture this. You’ve got to be that thing and live it over time. People will start to notice and maybe even publish articles about how different you are. And then you’ll attract those folks who are looking for you.

Beluga works with the world’s top startups: the weirder the better ;) Want to work with us? Sign up for our waitlist and we’ll connect with you.

Backed by Greylock, Pete, Pranav, and their growing team are becoming the secret weapon for marketing teams at companies like Square, Chime, Toast, and Haus Labs by Lady Gaga. See their values doc for more info and reach out to them if you want to meet the values in flesh and blood.