Takeaway 1

Doesn't Matter Who You Want if They Don't Want You 💎

Most companies build their candidate profile entirely around what they want. Skills, experience, credentials, pedigree. Jordan's first pillar flips that. The biggest missed opportunity in building an ICP is never asking the other question: Do the people you are trying to hire actually want your job? A funnel built without that answer is harder to close and easier to lose.

Why It Matters:
When you hire someone to do the exact same job they have done for the last five years, you are not offering them growth, you are offering them a repeat of their previous role. Taptap Send deliberately looks for people motivated by challenge over familiarity, parachuting them into problems that have not been fully scoped yet. That is a more exciting sell and it is also what keeps people around. As Jordan puts it, people stay because of the challenge. The offer acceptance rate and the 8% churn rate are both downstream of getting this right.

Quick Tips

• When scoping a role with your hiring manager, ask two questions. Do we have a clear picture of what this person will be hired to do and is the profile of the person we are targeting actually going to be excited about that scope? If the answer to the second question is unclear, the ICP is not finished.
• When a hiring manager describes a profile that simply does not exist in the market, push back before the search begins rather than after it stalls. The purple unicorn problem is almost always a profile problem, not a sourcing problem.
• Use early candidate conversations to test genuine energy around the role. Ask what they are hoping to tackle next in their career and listen for whether what you are describing actually connects to that. Candidates who are not energized by it early will not be energized by the offer later.

Takeaway 2

Compensation is one of the most avoidable reasons offers get declined 💰

Compensation surprises at the offer stage are largely a symptom of not having the right conversations early and often enough. Taptap Send builds in multiple benchmarking touchpoints across every search rather than treating compensation as a final-stage conversation. 

Over his time at Taptap Send, Jordan has seen candidates accept Taptap Send's offer over a higher competing offer because the profile clarity and culture fit were that strong. You do not have to be the highest number in the room, but you do have to have done the work across the other pillars to earn that outcome.

Why It Matters:
While finance teams are experts in finance, recruiters are the true experts in the market. Jordan is candid that there has been a lot of internal lobbying to build alignment at Taptap Send between the caliber of the talent bar and what the budgeting team is willing to pay. It is worth asking whether your own finance and budget stakeholders have a true understanding of your talent bar, and whether you are bringing enough data to that conversation to make the case.

Quick Tips

• Benchmark at three stages. First when setting annual budgets, then when kicking off a search, and again at the time of the offer. Each stage gives you a different view and together they ensure no one in the room is surprised when the number lands.
• Use compensation data that is specific to your company stage, size, and industry. Taptap Send uses platforms that pull from comparable companies and refresh quarterly so they can triangulate with real confidence. Generic salary surveys will not give you the accuracy you need to have a credible conversation internally or with your candidate.
• Run a pre-close conversation before the offer goes out. Get on a call with the candidate and spend time genuinely understanding what it will take to get them across the line. Compensation is part of that conversation, but the goal is to walk away confident the offer will land before it is ever formally extended.

Takeaway 3

Be the Candidate's Partner, Not the Company's Representative 🤝

Most recruiters are optimized to sell. There is pressure to push candidates through the funnel and get to a signature, and that pressure shifts a recruiter's posture from partner to closer. Jordan's fourth pillar is built on a different premise entirely. When you are genuinely invested in whether this is the right move for the candidate, not just whether they accept, the entire dynamic of the conversation changes. That shift is felt immediately and it is what makes candidates trust you enough to be honest with you.

Why It Matters:
When candidates feel genuinely partnered with through the process, the offer lands differently. They have already worked through their own decision. The candidate is not being closed, they are confirming something they have already gotten excited about on their own terms. That trust also extends beyond the hire itself. Candidates who did not get the role but felt respected and cared for become part of your long term network in ways that compound over time.

Quick Tips

• Hunt for the bad news on every interaction. Ask specific questions designed to surface concerns early and do not try to sell a candidate through something that is real. If a concern cannot be mitigated, name it honestly. The recruiter who surfaces the hard stuff earns more trust than the one who promises everything is perfect.
• Get genuinely personal. Jordan's team makes a point of knowing what matters to candidates beyond the job itself. Their next holiday, their dog's name, what they are hoping this role does for their career. That level of attention signals to candidates that you are invested in them as people, not just as a pipeline.
• If the other offer is genuinely better, say so. Telling a candidate to take a competing offer when it is clearly the right move for them is one of the most trust-building things a recruiter can do. That person will remember it and they will come back.

What Hiring Excellence Means to Jordan

For Jordan, Hiring Excellence  is predictable, repeatable hiring of high-caliber people who stay and build the company. Excellence is not just getting the signature. It is the full cycle: finding someone, getting them genuinely interested, closing the offer, and then watching them grow and have real impact. As he puts it, recruiters do not build public products or design billboard ads, but when you see someone you helped hire get promoted or launch something meaningful, that is where the reward lives. Getting someone into the right role is a catalyst for their career, and that is something to be genuinely proud of.

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Jordan's Recruiting Hot Take 🔥

Most companies over-engineer their recruiting processes to compensate for unclear decision making. Taptap Send deliberately stays as process-light and procedure-light as possible, and Jordan believes that is a meaningful part of why they move faster and stay more flexible. The irony is that adding more steps rarely creates more clarity. It usually just creates more drop-off and a worse candidate experience. If you are building in extra stages to feel safer about a decision, that is probably a signal to get clearer on your talent bar, not to add another round.

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Timestamps

(00:00) Introduction

(01:44) Meet Jordan Trott

(02:12) Why offer acceptance rate is a high-signal recruiting metric

(03:44) The four levers behind a 93% offer acceptance rate

(04:54) Building a candidate profile that answers “do they want this job”

(07:59) Interviewing for culture over content and why it changes the sell

(10:49) Benchmarking compensation at three moments in the hiring cycle

(12:31) The pre-close conversation that prevents late-stage surprises

(15:08) Treating candidate experience like a partnership, not a transaction

(20:03) Hunting for bad news early and using an “anti-sell” to build trust

(23:23) How this approach improves retention and reduces churn

(26:15) Hiring excellence: repeatable hiring of high-talent individuals

(29:11) Recruiting hot take: most teams over-engineer process to feel safe

(30:48) Career advice: credibility comes from judgment and ownership

(34:03) Where to connect with Jordan