EP 11: No Weak Links: The Secrets to Running a Lean, High-Impact Recruitment Team

[00:00:49] Adriaan: All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I have the honor of hosting Alli Trussel on the Leaders in Talent podcast. Alli is currently the SVP at Bilt Rewards. As a former actor and theater company leader, her unconventional path has shaped her approach to building high-performance teams.

[00:01:10] Adriaan: Before Bilt, Alli scaled operations at Wunderkind from 700 employees down to 500, then back up to over 1,200 employees when she left. Alli, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:23] Alli: Thank you! I’m so excited to be here.

[00:01:25] Adriaan: I know things are pretty busy and crazy at Bilt, so I’m really grateful that you’ve taken the time to share your insights with us.

[00:01:34] Adriaan: When preparing for this podcast, one common theme stood out: you’ve been able to drive phenomenal results with a very lean team. Before diving into the details, can you share a bit about your journey and how your background in theater has shaped your approach to hiring and scaling teams?

[00:02:08] Alli: So many of us didn’t end up in the jobs we went to college for. It’s crazy to think that at 17, people are expected to know exactly what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives. I was passionate about theater. I thought, I’ll be an actress—that way, I can have every career for the duration of a play.

[00:02:23] Alli: Like many theater kids, I moved to New York to pursue acting. I had about eight different jobs at one point just to support that dream, including running my own theater company. Running a theater company isn’t that different from working in tech—you have no budget, no time, massive personalities, and you’re expected to make magic happen. In some ways, transitioning into the corporate world felt like a huge leap, but in others, it felt like I had a leg up because chaos was what I was used to.

[00:03:38] Alli: I landed in tech by accident. I worked for various people, including a CEO who later hired me full-time. I initially resisted—I didn’t want a 9-to-5 job or to sit at a desk. But he convinced me that it wouldn’t be a traditional corporate job and that I’d be entertained by the people around me.

[00:03:58] Alli: I started on the operations side, figuring out how to make things work. I enjoyed doing a little bit of everything myself, which probably explains my preference for lean teams. Quickly, I realized that people are the key ingredient to making anything work. You can’t just throw a fancy process on top of the wrong people and expect success.

[00:04:41] Alli: I became increasingly drawn to the people side of the business, especially recruiting. I knew nothing about recruiting at the time. I wasn’t the kind of recruiter who scoured LinkedIn for the perfect candidate. But I approached it with common sense, which was a huge advantage.

[00:05:03] Alli: My first real experience with recruiting happened when I saw an incredible speaker at a conference. He was the CMO of Boxed at the time, and I was so moved by his speech that I decided he had to work with us. I went all out—found out he liked yellow Laffy Taffy, stocked our office with it when he visited, even commissioned a mural for him. I was determined to make him feel like he belonged with us.

[00:06:15] Alli: He didn’t end up joining, but we became friends. And what I took from that experience was that recruiting, like HR, is about making people feel special and cared for. That human connection is what makes someone say, Yes, I want to work here. Often, that feeling outweighs compensation and other factors.

[00:07:17] Alli: I’ve always worked at places where your job is a part of your identity. That’s something I look for when hiring for lean teams—people who are passionate and willing to put faith in the chaos. Those are the people who thrive in fast-moving environments.

[00:07:30] Adriaan: Tell me what happened at Wunderkind during COVID. Like most businesses, you were impacted, had to lay off nearly your entire recruitment team, and then suddenly, two months later, you had to ramp back up, filling 80 open positions in a month with a super small team.

[00:07:49] Alli: Yes, it was wild. In March 2020, like everyone else, we panicked. But as things settled, our business started helping other companies transition from brick-and-mortar to online, and demand skyrocketed. By early fall, we realized we couldn’t keep up.

[00:08:13] Alli: First, we tried to rehire the people we’d laid off. Many came back, but we still had 80 open headcounts. I stepped in to lead talent and worked with two incredible recruiters, Lauren and Talia. I told them, This will be crazy, but if we do it right, it will be a defining moment in our careers.

[00:08:35] Alli: They buckled down. Once we got our system up and running, we were sending two to three offers a day. By the end, we’d hired 60 people in a month—with just two recruiters.

[00:09:16] Adriaan: That’s incredible. What do you think made it work?

[00:09:20] Alli: A combination of things. First, we had clear goals. Second, we were incredibly motivated. And third, we embraced a culture of ownership. When you’re running a lean team, every person has to step up. It’s not about just doing your job—it’s about doing whatever it takes to succeed.

[00:09:42] Alli: We also maintained a high bar for talent. We didn’t just hire quickly—we hired people who could thrive in a fast-paced environment. That’s a crucial distinction.

[00:10:00] Adriaan: So during that pressure cooker period, what were the key lessons you took away? Were there things you did really well, or things you would do differently?

[00:10:10] Alli: Honestly, I don’t remember many specifics because we were sprinting on a hamster wheel. But one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned since is the importance of balancing speed and quality.

[00:10:22] Alli: There’s always pressure to fill roles quickly, especially in high-growth environments. But you have to be careful not to compromise on quality. We’ve all seen companies that overhire during a boom and then have to lay people off later. You have to be disciplined and thoughtful about every single hire.

[00:10:41] Alli: I’ve also learned that recruiting should be transparent. The best compliment I get from candidates is when they say, This job is exactly what I expected. That’s my goal in every hiring process—to make sure both sides know exactly what they’re signing up for.

[00:10:59] Alli: And like, had to deliver something. And I think that is inherently human. You don’t want to let the team down, you know? And so it was an incredible performance and we sustained it for quite a while, as you see to where we ended up later. But yeah, I think it was just a buckling down. I’m not sure. I know you have a question in here about like, what tactics, what would you do?

[00:11:20] Alli: I think we just agreed to like all do our best and it was just wanting it and being motivated and being really connected and understanding what impact we could have. I think that’s what drove it. And they were really talented.

[00:11:34] Adriaan: But it’s not for everyone.

[00:11:36] Alli: It’s not for everyone. No, it’s not. So it has to be the right people.

[00:11:40] Alli: You know what I mean? And I think that’s the other piece of having a lean team, right? You, unfortunately in a lean team, you can’t have a weak link and you do have, I think there’s like two groups of people. And I talk about this a lot, actually on interviews. I think, you know, I’m a person who I think probably because I grew up in theater.

[00:12:02] Alli: What I do is part of who I am, right? Like, I like my job. I like the portion of my day that is at my job. Do I every now and then get annoyed when my alarm clock goes off in the morning? Yes, but I love what I do. And it is a part of my life. It is not something that I do in support of my real life. You know what I mean?

[00:12:23] Alli: And in lean teams, I think you have to have people in that former camp because you all kind of have this like unwritten agreement that like, you’re going to get it done. But I think the payoff on that, that your work matters and like, not even in some mission driven way, but just that your work matters for the other people at the company and the teammates that you really care about and the potential of the company.

[00:12:51] Alli: That has to be really exciting. You also have to be incredibly disciplined and you have to be a little psychotic in how much you like to work at times. But I really think if you have the right people, if you have a high bar for talent and you’re all in it together, it does work.

[00:13:07] Adriaan: So we’re there during that pressure cooker, right next to like buckle up, like really hard work, work with people that are willing to do the grind.

[00:13:15] Adriaan: Right. What are any other things now looking back where you’re like, Oh, that’s something that we did really well, or that’s something maybe if you are in a similar position, you would have changed slightly.

[00:13:27] Alli: Probably would have changed a lot. I honestly don’t, I don’t know if I remember any specifics from that time period, to be quite honest, because it was so much like we were sprinting on a hamster wheel.

[00:13:38] Alli: What I have focused on more as I’ve gotten a little bit more settled in my career, I’ve had a little bit more of it under my belt is making sure that you don’t sacrifice quality for speed. And I think there is, because you’ve seen the flip side of this, right? Like there was COVID there was like the blow up of the market and then everyone overhired and then they had to shrink again.

[00:14:03] Alli: And so I think there’s this really tricky thing. In recruiting, and it was definitely something that ebbed and flowed at Wunderkind was like, on one hand, you’re incentivizing, how many people can you close? And it’s kind of like a sales job. And it’s like, let’s just get these people in. Let’s get them in fast.

[00:14:18] Alli: Let’s win on whatever. And then, you know, not to say that you’re not making the right hires there, because I think more often than not, we actually were. But in times where speed may not be the focus, like what else do you celebrate? And it’s really making sure that you have the right people in the right seats.

[00:14:35] Alli: And sometimes these can be in opposition. And I think that’s the interesting thing about where I sit now is we try to hold both of these in really, really high regard. Which is fun but can be a challenge and it really requires you to constantly have that conversation with yourself of like, is this the right person?

[00:14:54] Alli: Have I asked the right questions? Have I been totally honest in this? Because I want this person to work out. Like I think recruiting is like sales, but it’s like really honest sales if it’s done right. You know, like I’m not trying to sell you a product that doesn’t exist. I think the greatest compliment somebody can give me.

[00:15:13] Alli: When they come in and I check in with them after 90 days is saying, yeah, this is exactly what I expected from their process. And I think that should always be the goal.

[00:15:23] Adriaan: So how do you then balance that, right? The quality, quantity, speed, right? Also build, I know is you’re doing phenomenal, right? Like there’s, there’s a lot of growth.

[00:15:31] Adriaan: There’s a lot of momentum that you’re experiencing. How does that translate?

[00:15:36] Alli: Well, you don’t always perfectly succeed at both. What’s the magic? I’d be lying to you if I said I did. I think on one hand it’s being really clear on how you articulate. Your culture, you know, like one of the things that I always try to do.

[00:15:52] Alli: And one of the things that I did when I came in is I tried to really quickly identify, like, who are the top performers here? And it’s a company of very high performers, but who, who are those people where it seems like it is so effortless for them to exist in this dynamic and it doesn’t feel hard for them.

[00:16:11] Alli: And they just. You know, they’re really genuinely connected and they’re genuinely excited to be here every day. And like, what do they have in common? And can we nail that down? And like, can we recruit for that? One of the things that we did, we have a lot of collateral. Like we send you a lot about who we are at the beginning of the process.

[00:16:31] Alli: A lot about how we think about growth, how we think about comp, how we think about the impact that you can have here. And like, That should get you excited or not. And most of the time it gets people excited. But it’s so much worse to mishire. Then it is to go, you know, stretch a little bit being a little bit understaffed. And I think to my earlier point, it is remarkable what you can do with a limited number of people if they’re all the right people.

[00:17:02] Adriaan: So true, so true. Hey, so would you always maintain that philosophy of the smaller the better?

[00:17:09] Alli: Me personally, I think so. Yes. You know what I mean? There’s there’s a sub stack that I love by Ravi Gupta and it’s on being simultaneously demanding and supportive. How did you let me get this? I think that that is how I try to run my teams and that is like how I stay lean is like people, it’s also like one thing that I think about a lot. And one thing that like, I’ve learned as a manager and probably struggled with as a manager, to be totally honest is.

[00:17:39] Alli: I push myself pretty hard and I’ve been pushed pretty hard in my career and it’s always been good. You know what I mean? Like, like I said earlier, there’s always something I’ve learned about myself and always some way that I’ve grown on the other side of that. But we all as like nice, empathetic people can have this feeling of like, Oh my God, I don’t want to burn somebody.

[00:17:58] Alli: I don’t want to like push this person over the edge. I don’t want them to hate me. I don’t want them to like, Have to answer this slack at 10 PM. And again, like, you know, we could get into a whole work life balance conversation here, which we do not need to, but I didn’t have that standard for myself. And I’m sitting here saying like, I actually liked what I learned about myself on the other side of being pushed a little bit.

[00:18:21] Alli: And most people are okay being pushed as long as it’s also balanced with you being a human. Yeah, on the other side of that. And also being like, I know I’m pushing you like crazy here. Here’s what I hope you’re learning. Let me know if it’s not that and like, what do you need? What do you need to keep pushing?

[00:18:36] Alli: Because let’s figure this out together. He has a line in there where it’s basically like the best coaches, the best parents that he’s known are able to balance those two. Dynamics really, really well. And that is something that I certainly am not perfect at. But that is kind of how I strive to operate a lean team so that it can stay a lean team because there is a lot of demand on a lean team, you know, like we don’t have a boring moment in our day.

[00:19:01] Adriaan: Do you set that expectations up front though? Like, do you set, okay.

[00:19:06] Alli: Yes, I do. I’m pretty, what you see is what you get. And so I, you know, I basically tell people, like, I’m going to Give you more until you tell me, no, you know what I mean?

[00:19:19] Alli: Like you’re going to have to tell me, no, I’m not going to self regulate for you. I’m also assuming that it’s within reason going to understand. I think it’s also, you know, I’ve mostly worked for founders and, or, you know, co founders or somebody who was really early in the business just had that self drive and they had to push that hard to get something off the ground.

[00:19:42] Alli: And so inherently that is the way that I have been managed is, you know, cool. You know, I, I stood this business up and so, you know, I’m also going to have high expectations for you. And I, I think the worst thing in the world, the thing that would be the least motivating for me in the entire world is somebody who didn’t have high expectations for me. I think that’s actually the worst thing a manager can do.

[00:20:07] Adriaan: Yeah, I just experienced the same with my SDR, who was always following up on, on my to do’s and in a hotspot, et cetera. And it was a pretty repetitive, like not the most exciting job, but I always felt that the leap and he’s now our head of partnership, but I felt that the leap was a really big leap.

[00:20:29] Adriaan: And I wasn’t sure if he could, you know, handle both tasks and everything. Until our Head of Marketing last year, you know, had to take a month absence because of some personal issues. And we had no one else. He jumped in the gap and he did phenomenal. He was working late at night, figuring everything out.

[00:20:44] Adriaan: His energy was up. Like, you know, like things, yes. Things were falling left and right through the cracks, but he was open to feedback. And I realized like I’ve been holding him back by just not pushing him and seeing when when it would crack, you know, and that was my mistake as as his manager and he’s now our head of partnerships does his task and he’s thriving.

[00:21:04] Alli: Yeah. And doesn’t that feel like awesome on both sides? You know, like, I think there is, you know, and there are exceptions, you know, like when we look for an engineer, they have to be able to code at a certain level. So you can’t just wheel your way into every single job. I’m luckily on the side of the house that you didn’t go to college for, and you don’t pass a technical exam for or wouldn’t be here.

[00:21:23] Alli: But there is something, and, you know, I think. I did a year of consulting between and I worked with a lot of very young companies, a lot of like seed stage companies who didn’t have the flashy name, didn’t have the brand recognition to be able to potentially get people with like the quote unquote pedigrees.

[00:21:43] Alli: That they wanted for some of these roles. And I remember talking to a CEO and I was like, you know, there’s this whole will versus skill argument. And so maybe we actually need to pivot what we’re looking for. We’re not going to get the perfect resume here. Like we’re not at a comp level to get the perfect resume.

[00:21:59] Alli: You’re not at a stability level from a business perspective to get the perfect resume. So let’s, let’s look for somebody who like wants to run through a wall. You know what I mean? And to your point, I love it. That’s like the best feeling in the world when somebody. Just is so much better, even than your high expectations and honestly, like prayers and hopes at that point.

[00:22:22] Alli: You know what I mean? So I completely agree with you I think People generally rise to the occasion. I don’t know if that’s like super Pollyanna or if I just have a decently Positive outlook on the workspace and I’m not super jaded, but I think I

[00:22:39] Adriaan: am so I fully agree because I’ve seen it time and time again and sometimes you have people don’t write up to the occasion, but then that’s that’s the lesson. That’s the learning, right? Yeah. And you get give give reviews a little bit of context. What’s your work at Bilt entitles? What is Bilt Rewards?

[00:22:56] Alli: So at Bilt I’ve only been here gosh, about seven months at this point, it feels like seven years and all, all of the good ways. But I oversee the people department here at Belt, which is talent and people, culture facilities. Bilt is an incredible company.

[00:23:12] Adriaan: Awesome. Hey, give me in terms of how big is a team.

[00:23:16] Alli: My team the people team on the HR side is three people and on the recruiting side is two people. So similar headcount demands from the time the team is incredible built right now is about 180 people.

[00:23:31] Alli: So an incredibly lean team across the board. We’re not the only lean team. It operates like 10 different startups in one. So each product line is its own pod, which is a really cool structure and cool dynamic. And everybody to my earlier points, and I think what keeps me so excited here is because we operate that way, because we operate with this disciplined fitness or leanness, everyone actively gets to hold a part of the product.

[00:23:58] Alli: And they know what they’re working on and how that plugs into the greater business. And like, you can have great managers, you can have a great product, you can have very cushy employee benefits and perks. But if people don’t actually feel that connection and they don’t feel like they’re working on something important, it will never work.

[00:24:15] Alli: So that is where I’m so passionate about what we’re doing. I know what people work on. You can point to somebody in this company and I can probably tell you what they own here. And coming from Wunderkind, the learners that you have, they’re a lean team, but also, you know, the rep, it’s sharp.

[00:24:30] Alli: huge team at one point at Wunderkind and it was a blast. So it’s not that I’ve never had a huge team. I love them dearly. They were also wildly successful, I think. I’m, you know, there’s a certain amount of pride and being able to do something when you’re like running all the way up the mountain.

[00:24:46] Alli: But not to say I don’t love a large team every con then too. And maybe the founders of Built are also listening, you know, I was like certain point, you know, I’m just going to hire like 12 recruiters. It’s going to be very chill.

[00:24:59] Adriaan: Oh, great. Yeah. So, so what were some of the lessons when you, when you set seven months ago, you set foot for the first time at Bilt in terms of your on the procurement process and the hiring.

[00:25:09] Alli: That was happening at Bilt. I always knew this to be true, but it was so even more true here. Like, you know, I had somebody tell me the other day that they chose us over Meta because of the care we took and the time we took to explain the process to them and how we were going to hold their hand through it, they said that human touch is why they joined.

[00:25:33] Alli: We probably did spend an hour or two on the phone, trying to work this out. And that stuff matters. I think, you know, it is so easy to get caught up in like trying to hire really, really fast and like trying to find stuff that works for the masses. And like, it works for a little bit, you know what I mean?

[00:25:50] Alli: Like, yeah, I came in and I like cleaned up a few bumps in the process and you get a little boost from that. But like, you know, right now I am doing several offer calls myself and, you know, I will get on the phone with anybody and I will talk through, you know, Their own personal aspirations and how that works here or doesn’t.

[00:26:14] Alli: I think it’s just been a constant reminder of how every person is different. Every offer process is different. Everyone cares about something slightly different, but it does need to fit in the overall built culture and you, you, you just can’t. You can’t get complacent and I think that is something special and something that has repeatedly like hit me in the face here that like you you need to keep the gas all the way on and you really need to take the time to invest both for your sake and the company’s sake but also for the candidate’s sake to really get to know somebody and dig all the way in and like Have all these conversations up front so that when you bring somebody in, you’re really confident about them and they are really excited about Bilt.

[00:26:55] Adriaan: Yeah. Is that, is that your biggest learning up? Because I, I remember you telling me. You temporarily had to step back in into more of, of hands on recruitment recently. Yeah. How’s it to be back?

[00:27:07] Alli: My fantastic recruiter had a lovely baby who is adorable and she, you know, bless her. She did an incredible job setting us up for success when she went out.

[00:27:19] Alli: And she’s an incredible recruiter, like hands on. She’s amazing. And so I was a little nervous. I was like, Oh my gosh, it’s like, it’s been a minute since I’ve been all the way back in, like in the nitty gritty. And it’s so fascinating to be pulled all the way back in. And, you know, I’ve kind of like tinkered with how are we wording this in our, you know, offer call, how are we doing this?

[00:27:44] Alli: Is this a call? Is this a zoom? Is this whatever. And it’s been fun to go back in the weeds. And I, you know, I sit here. I felt a little bit like a hypocrite because I spent most of my day telling managers to like, get back in the weeds. And I was like, I haven’t done it myself. And so I think it’s just, somebody told me once, like, stay close to the work and not the person don’t don’t micromanage anybody, but stay really close to the work and what’s working and the work.

[00:28:09] Alli: You know, my recruiter had built a machine that really, really worked. So now I just get to go in and like tinker with a couple of screws here and there. But it’s been really cool to go all the way back in and hear what’s working and like hear what messaging has kind of gotten stale because that’s the other thing too, is like all this stuff needs to constantly be updated.

[00:28:28] Alli: And especially with the job market that’s gone up and down, people care about different things. You know what I mean? Like go back to, you can’t get complacent. The messaging that was working. You know, last February when the job market was way down and we’re starting to see it pick back up again, it’s going to be different messaging right now.

[00:28:43] Alli: You know what I mean? Like right now, you have the, when the job market is high, people don’t care that we’re constantly messaging, you know, that like we are a startup without any of the startup angst, you know what I mean? We don’t have to worry about You know, runway stuff like that. And, you know, people want to hear more about growth and exciting and future facing now.

[00:29:04] Alli: And so what matters just changes so quickly. And so just staying really close to it has been fun thing. And I think the lesson is to just always check back in, always, always just be trying something a little bit different. You never know what’s going to hit and usually it’s a small thing.

[00:29:22] Adriaan: Listening to this, to this podcast or, or, or anyone for that, for that matter. What advice would you give our audience for building high impact, lean recruitment teams that can deliver on the pressure?

[00:29:33] Alli: I would tell them as much as they can, like do one day, like kind of trying to throw everything, you know, out the window, you know what I mean?

[00:29:43] Alli: Like, how would you actually convince somebody to do something without all of like the standard Tricks and tools that, you know, you don’t, I mean, you actually convince people to do things all day, every day. But like kind of throw the rule book out the window. And I think my bigger advice, and I think I’ve been saying it sort of this whole podcast is like, don’t underestimate what people are capable of particularly if you have high standards for yourself.

[00:30:08] Alli: And I think that is, you know and I think that’s a great lesson, not only for you, but for everyone that you’re working with and for their future careers as well.

[00:30:14] Adriaan: Wow. Such great advice. Ellie, where can people connect with you if they want to, you know, if they’re listening to this podcast, LinkedIn?

[00:30:22] Alli: Yes, you can find me on LinkedIn. If you’re a really great engineer, if you’re really a product minded person, if you’re excited about built and you want to come work at built, you should definitely chat with me. We are always hiring. Really smart, hardworking, fun people. So yes, definitely come find me on LinkedIn.

[00:30:55] Adriaan: I like this was so lovely. I’m so glad we could find a time. Thank you for your wisdom. You inspired me. People can do so much more than what you think that they’re capable of. Good luck with everything.

[00:31:08] Adriaan: And I hope to see you very, very soon.

[00:31:10] Alli: Thank you. I’ll talk to you soon.