10x Recruiting: 10 ways top teams outhired the competition in 2025
Hiring in 2025 is a whole new game, and most teams are still playing catch-up. The market’s crazy competitive, candidates are savvier, and AI has reshaped the recruiting playbook.
The gap between good and great recruitment? It's now a chasm. And we all need tips, tools, and tactics to bridge it.
Across dozens of 10x Recruiting podcast episodes this year, we’ve spoken with the sharpest minds in the industry. The ones actually winning. They’re not just running tighter processes, they’re operating with clearer intent, deeper self-awareness, and way better judgment.
This roundup distills 10 of the most powerful lessons from those conversations. Not generic “best practices,” but real, field-tested insights on how today’s top recruiting teams are standing out and leading the pack.
1. Win on quality, not headcount.
The best recruiting teams are re-writing the playbook on how to measure success. In previous eras, the thinking may have been the more new people in seats, the better. But the best recruiters care more about how new hires fit into organizations and the value they add.
At Vercel, Head of Talent Amina Moinuddin Darwish makes this a key principle to evaluate recruiter performance:
ShipBob VP of Talent Andy Pittman lasers in on quality when interviewing recruiters: “People always talk about how many hires they can make. But if I ask, ‘How many of those engineers were still at the company after a year, or on the path to promotion?’ Most people can’t answer that. That’s the gap I’m looking to close.”
Heading into 2026, you should be focused even harder on quality of hire, and your ability to land the right hires who contribute for the long run.
2. Treat hiring like the craft that it is.
Just as volume should be balanced against quality, so should speed. It’s easy to become obsessive about velocity metrics like time to fill.
But as a16z’s Jordan Mazer says, “the pure efficiency mindset, while natural, is an indication that companies don’t understand that being really good often takes a lot of effort.”
You can (and should) find ways to reduce manual sourcing effort, automate notetaking, and speed up your most repetitive tasks. But when you treat hiring as a cost center, rather than a strategic advantage, you’re in trouble.
- Jordan Mazer, Talent Partner @ a16z
“Founders either understand it implicitly, or they have to learn it by feeling a bad outcome. Once you’ve managed a number of low performers, you come to realize that the challenges presented by having the wrong person are far worse than having no person at all.”
Treating recruiting as an investment extends to equipping teams with the right skills to hire well. Most people think they’re great at interviewing. But after a decade in the trenches, including at Riot, Amazon, and now a16z, Jordan’s seen the truth: most people are actually bad at it.
“Interviewing isn’t a naturally occurring skill. People want to believe they’re good at assessing others because it validates how they navigate life. But in reality, it takes real training, structure, and accountability.”
The best companies don’t just hope interviewers get it right. They train, assess, and incentivize it. At Amazon, every single interview loop was reviewed—often by someone outside the team—based on whether the interview feedback aligned with expectations for the role and level.
And great interviewers weren’t just applauded—they were promoted faster. Bad ones? Removed from panels.
It’s not just about culture. It’s about incentives.
3. Logos don't matter. Fit does.
It’s easy for an average recruiter to have their judgement clouded by pedigree. But the real ones know that finding the best talent for your team is about so much more than that. ShipBob VP of Global Talent Andy Pittman is adamant that culture and values alignment is far more determinative of successful hires than the shiny logos on their CVs.
- Andy Pittman, VP of Global Talent @ ShipBob
Personio VP of Talent Fritz Singer echoes this sentiment. “There are great people in every big tech company. But they're not always the right fit for a scaling startup. As we were scaling Personio, there were times we probably over-emphasized the logo rather than the people. And we probably weren't rigorous enough in terms of assessing the behaviors, the principles and the scrappiness we still needed.”
Developing a talent strategy requires the same approach as an overall organizational strategy or roadmap. Andy suggests you “start with ‘what’s our purpose? What’s our winning aspiration? And what kinds of talent do we need?
“I'm not talking about skills, necessarily. And I'm not talking about the other companies people have worked for. Really get to the root of the behavioral competencies and motivations of individuals.”
This helps you determine your message to prospects, and who to give your fullest energy and attention.
4. Make radical honesty your differentiator.
Most companies still hide behind vague language and over-polished pitches. Candidates don’t know what (or who) to believe.
"So many founders say the same things," says Plenty Search Managing Partner Thach Nguyen. "The opportunity to ‘build something,’ to be a part of a ‘bigger mission.’ These are descriptive of all your talent competitors, and not unique at all.”
Instead, he suggests getting specific: What will be hard? What happens if things don’t work out? What will someone walk away with even if the equity ends up worthless? “The best founders have the ability to be honest about what working for them will be like.”
- Thach Nguyen, Managing Partner @ Plenty Search
Honesty builds trust, and proves that you’re a real company. Founders and recruiters should get comfortable saying what might not be great about the role. If you can cut through the noise and talk plainly about what’s real, top candidates will notice.
5. Start slow to hire fast.
Most sourcing failures aren’t the result of bad tools or messaging. They stem from misalignment. “A lot of recruiters or sourcers come into an engagement right off the bat and start sourcing,” says TA veteran and Uber’s OG sourcer, Chris Adams.
For Chris, calibration is the #1 factor in success. Without close alignment and definition of what the founder actually wants, the search is doomed from the start.
It inevitably leads to weeks of wasted outbound effort, 30+ “interested” candidates who get rejected immediately, poor candidate experiences, and frustration between recruiters and hiring managers.
So what’s the better approach?
- Chris Adams, Uber's OG Sourcer
And it needs to be live, so “you can ask follow-up questions and read the nonverbal communication as they’re reading a profile. That helps you a ton.”
It can be time-consuming work, and most teams skip it. But they pay for it later.
6. EQ is the moat AI can't cross.
Sourcing, scheduling, stack-ranking, data analyzing: faster than ever. But the hard stuff—persuasion, trust, judgment? That’s still very much human territory.
AI can help you work smarter. But it can’t close candidates, align teams, or build conviction.
Dan McCarthy (Head of Talent at Paradigm) says recruiters have two jobs:
- Figure out who’s good.
- Convince them to join.
AI is catching up on job #1. It’s getting better at filtering signals and spotting top talent. But job #2—the selling, the connection, the “why us”—isn’t going anywhere.
- Dan McCarthy, Talent Partner @ Paradigm
That’s the moat. And in an AI-saturated world, it matters more than ever.
It’s why the best recruiters won’t be the most automated. They’ll be the most trusted. The ones who show up sharp, listen well, and make people feel something a screen can’t.
Because AI can give you the shortlist. But it won’t earn the yes.
7. Bet on the top talent you already have.
Most hiring problems actually aren’t solved by hiring. Teams often rush to open a new req when the answer might be sitting two desks away.
“Hiring should always be your last resort,” says Rhys Hughes of GV (ex-Adobe and Rubrik). “I’ve talked founders out of hiring multiple times.”
We know how important culture fit and mindset are. So it makes perfect sense to look for promising performers already demonstrating their value to the business. “I’m a big fan of mobility. I love giving up-and-comers a stretch opportunity. They’re not getting the job, but they can sit in the seat for 90, 120, 180 days and we can see the outcomes.”
The benefits of internal mobility aren’t limited to the occasional, highly-selective senior hire. At Personio, it became a major growth lever, despite having been neglected for years. “We were consistently hiring external talent without considering internal talent,” says VP of Talent Fritz Singer. But external talent was proving harder to find; Personio had already scoured the SaaS market in Munich.
Acknowledging this, the team placed a new emphasis on investing in current employees and giving them the opportunity to develop into new roles, or as leaders.
- Fritz Singer, VP of Talent @ Personio
Fritz gives AI skills as a key example. “If they don’t have the knowledge yet, let’s not hold that against them. But how can we make sure they are curious and proactive around this topic? It’s all about the mental curiosity, the agility and the behavioral aptitude that we want in the organization.”
Certain talent markets feel like they’re drying up, and landing great hires is a mammoth task. So refocus those same skills and insight that help you hire great external talent internally instead.
8. Earn your seat at the table.
With AI now handling more repetitive work, recruiters have latitude to operate at a strategic level. “We’ve always talked about how the best recruiters are business partners,” says Matt Stephenson, Head of Tech Talent at Bain Capital Ventures. “When we have these autonomous agents working for us, it actually creates a bigger opportunity to do this.”
So what does great partnership look like? “The ones that I've seen doing this well are in lockstep. The founder and the recruiter are both on the same page with these wacky wild ideas, growing a social presence, starting the next profile, getting out there.”
This is also where senior recruiting leaders need to step up. “It's on me as a leader to build and cultivate a team that has a seat at the table,” says Evan Connor, VP of Talent at Ambience. “Does each role have the right scope and responsibility that actually ties back to the business objectives?
“Are my recruiters sitting in on the product meetings to understand where the roadmap is going, and how that translates into more revenue for the business? It means giving them the opportunity and holding them accountable for embedding themselves into the business.”
Both experts emphasize the need for real action to make this happen. Plenty of recruiting teams talk about business partnering and strategic objectives. But you won’t get there by default.
9. Know where to find the killer instinct.
We heard a lot of talk this year about where the next great recruiters will come from.
Coinbase VP of Talent Greg Garrison believes great recruiters are forged in environments that develop resilience, competitiveness, and an almost stubborn will to win.
Key example: Greg emphasizes how powerful an agency background is for developing recruiting instincts.
- Greg Garrison, VP of Talent @ Coinbase
Agency recruiting is often a crucible where only the hungry survive. The pressure is real because the pay is directly tied to performance. “A lot of agency recruiters start on 100% commission. You only make your money if you’re making hires.”
“If I see people that are at agencies for just a few months, the signal to me is maybe they didn’t have as much success as others.”
Beyond the agency foundation, Greg looks for a trait that isn’t on any résumé: the will to win. When Coinbase scaled its recruiting team, he noticed a consistent pattern among top performers.
“I love to hire recruiters who grew up in some sort of competitive environment. What I’m after is the will to win.” He looks for athletes, people from competitive families, former sales reps—anyone who has internalized the feeling of pushing through adversity.
For Greg, recruiting excellence starts long before you send your first outreach. The best recruiters are shaped by environments that demand grit, and bring that mentality with them into high-performance organizations.
“It’s stamina; it’s resiliency. If you don’t have that, you’re just flapping in the wind.”
10. Fight harder. Close better. Win top talent.
Top talent doesn’t just accept your offer because you run a smooth process. The difference between good and great recruiting comes down to intent, urgency, and how hard you’re willing to fight.
Swing Search Senior Partner Annie Wenzel brings this mindset to every executive search process.
- Annie Wenzel, Senior Partner @ Swing Search
It’s not just about volume or hustle. It’s about showing up prepared, persuasive, and real. “Tell those real stories of why you're working with the company, or the people that you placed there in the past. That's the kind of stuff that will get you the top 10%.”
Audacious Ventures’ Sam Price sums it up best:
The best candidates have options, and “good process” isn’t enough. Winning teams treat hiring like a competitive sport: they move fast, sell hard, and keep showing up until the yes is real.
Stay ahead in 2026
In 2025, AI changed everything, but not in the way people thought. It made speed a commodity. It made information easy. But judgment, persuasion, and emotional intelligence? That’s still the real edge.
Every operator we spoke with this year proved the same thing: recruiting isn’t getting easier, but the best are getting smarter. They move faster, sell harder, and bring more strategic firepower to the table.
The tools matter, but how you use them matters more. The recruiters winning today aren’t the ones chasing trends. They’re the ones earning trust, closing top talent, and showing up where others won’t.
To stay ahead in 2026, check out the 10X Recruiting catalogue and learn from the operators defining what top-tier recruiting looks like today.
