Scaling Startups? Master Strategic Hiring & AI for Sustainable Team Success

Welcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce.

Awesome. Well, hey everyone, I'm excited to welcome Wendy Moore from Elevate Talent to the Built by People podcast today. Wendy, thanks so much for joining us. As a starting question, I always love to ask if you can share a little bit about your career journey.

Absolutely. And thanks so much for having me. So, my career has always been centered around helping people build. So, I started out building entrepreneurial ecosystems, global companies, and then moved into startup teams, which is what I do now. I spent most of my career on the operations and finance side of the house before moving fully into the people team side. But for me, the through line has always been where tech and people intersect. So, I started out my career in economic development in Charleston, South Carolina. And there I got to work on everything across the business industry from multinational corporations setting up their first OEMs in the US to grassroots startups and entrepreneurship and that whole ecosystem of how funding and talent and resources all mix together for the entrepreneurial ecosystem to thrive. And so that's really where I fell in love with startups and growth stage companies, but it did take me a while to make that leap. And so before I made the full leap into joining an early-stage startup, I joined a change management team at a large global tech company called Blackbaud. And there I was one of two change management practitioners across a large global company, completely distributed team. And we had the opportunity to lead large-scale change initiatives across a really distributed and unique team structure. And so that taught me a lot. About how to bring people through change, how to lead through that, how to drive transformation, specifically leveraging technology, but also keeping people at the center of everything. But eventually that pull toward the early stage building brought me to a health tech startup, and I joined there as employee number 4. So I ultimately rose to becoming the COO of that company, and we went through years of pre-seed and seed raise. Scaling the team, we built out all the operational foundations. And what I learned through that process is the very extreme hiring challenges, but also the opportunities that very early teams face during rapid growth and expansion. And so ultimately, I wanted to create the partner that I wish I'd had in that seat, and that's what led me to launch Elevate Talent. So now I'm a partner to early-stage founders, and I serve as a fractional head of people. So, my clients look like seed to Series B tech startups, and they're building out those core foundational teams, and then also scaling up their teams. And so, in that, I get to help them make confident, strategic hiring decisions, build out their processes, build out that foundation, and make sure that we're staying really values-aligned while also scaling up both through technology decisions and team decisions. I get to work with clients all across the US, many of them also touch globally, and I really get to be down in the weeds with the founders and early teams during those really messy high-growth moments where every single team member really matters and really makes an impact.

What would you say now is the biggest challenge you're facing in HR?

You know, I focus very much on who to hire when and how, because the biggest challenge right now, both for me, my internal team, and then also every client we serve is hiring strategically in a highly competitive market, but being very resource conscious. That is the stretch that every team is navigating right now. Every hire has to count. So both their impact that they ultimately make on the team and also their cost. And there's a lot of pressure to move fast. There's a lot of pressure to compete for top talent and what that means to each team. And in this season of extreme uncertainty, the funding landscape on every level, there's a lot of uncertainty across the board. We're seeing founders wrestling with, can we stretch the team a little bit further? Can we stretch this one role a little bit further? Should it be a full-time or is it part-time or is it fractional? Is now even the right time to hire? And we really have to focus on cutting through the noise, getting really clear on those priorities, and building very lean but high-performing teams.

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense. It sounds also like it's trying to work through the noise of maybe some less-than-strategic items as well. So, if I were to shadow you for a week or, you know, one of your clients or things like that, where would I see you spending the most of your time? On things that maybe don't feel strategic?

Yeah, you'd inevitably catch me spending way too much time down in the weeds, you know, tweaking all the things, fixing clunky workflows, rewriting everything about all of those little, little pieces that make all of the special sauce count when you're, when you're doing these strategic decisions. So classic founder trap, because I am both a founder and then also a strategic partner to my clients. So when you're both the builder and the editor, it's hard to get out of the weeds.

What's keeping you up at night? And, you know, what's a recent situation where maybe things broke down and how did you fix that? And how did you, you know, overcome that?

Yeah. And, you know, the same thing that keeps my clients up at night is what keeps me up at night. And what I'm constantly trying to solve for alongside them is making the right decision for your team in a very high-stakes season. And so they are under pressure to move fast, stay lean and build teams that can still deliver. And I care very deeply about helping them get that right. So, the place where things break down, this question kind of makes me chuckle because when startups scale, pretty much everything breaks. And, but just thinking about just the HR things, the top 2 I see are role clarity and then the compliance infrastructure. So, a little bit of the softer and then the hard side of it. Role clarity, everyone wears multiple hats. We overstate that, but they are figuring things out as they go, but that really stops working once the team grows. So if you don't have clear definitions, clear ownership, responsibilities are blur, accountability is really messy, and you see that duplication of efforts, dropping balls, and it's not because the team's not capable, it's because that structure hasn't caught up to scale. And then on the compliance side, we see scrappy HR setups that work when you're under 10 employees break with complexity. We're seeing teams who expand across states or countries, and these founders don't know that they're exposed until something goes wrong. And so, both of these issues stem from the same root. You're trying to scale without actually updating the foundation that supports the people.

Okay. That's great. You know, and you mentioned a little bit about the foundation, right? And so there's obviously the people, there's the communication, right? There's all this deep-rooted kind of foundational layer. But also, I'd say that tools are kind of a foundational layer too. So what tools or partners are kind of most critical to you today, or even maybe the clients that you serve?

Yeah, absolutely. So for, for our internal team, we leverage a significant amount of technology that helps us move fast without sacrificing quality, but also the human element, which is very critical, especially when you're talking about recruitment and people expansion. We personally love Loxo ATS. It works really well for our structure, manages our clients' pipelines, automate outreach. I have a whole suite of AI tools that we leverage. Quill is one that helps with all the touchpoints in the recruitment process. And when we're choosing tech for our own team, it's all about the high-touch, high-impact. That helps us move quickly at startup speed, but still keep that human in the loop, which is very critical. For me though, it's all about partners. I love all of our strategic partners, really trusted legal HR compliance advisors is really key. And I'm part of a fractional people, people community, which is such an amazing group of people experts that helps serve as a brain trust. I mean, you have an expert in every area you can imagine across the people spectrum. And it's also a peer community that adds a lot of value to both my internal team and each one of the organizations that we serve.

That's great. And I mean, I would assume there's probably a recurring theme within this community, right? Like there's a breadth of knowledge there, right? So if you could wave a magic wand or fix one system or a process maybe that you see consistently, from your perspective, what would that be?

Yeah, if I could just wave that magic wand, I would zero in on role clarity, the org design, and how that evolves as a company grows. It's the thing that's so complex. And when teams grow fast without revisiting that structure, that to me is where you start to see all that confusion, the friction, and ultimately burnout, which is what we care a lot about. Preventing. And so just providing clear structure, intentional planning, you could actually move faster and actually set your teams up to thrive, not just survive through the growth phase.

It sounds like in the next, you know, 12 months or so, if I came back, this would probably be something that you would hope has changed within the, you know, the orgs that you're currently working with. Is there anything else that you would add to that?

Yeah, you know, I'm always hoping that we see the orgs running smoothly in a way that's not reactive, but it's deeply strategic. So everything is aligned to the company, both appropriate to the stage and then long-term goals. So seeing that whole hiring, onboarding, performance, and culture process streamlined and see scalable systems in place and ultimately see leaders feeling really confident in their team decisions. Because they know that they have the right people at the right time in the right seats to actually grow sustainably.

That's great. Well, you made it kind of through the wringer here, Wendy. I have one last question for you. What parting advice would you like to share with our HR community?

So, I don't believe we can overstate the impact of AI. So my advice would be don't ignore AI. It is already reshaping how we build and scale teams. And my encouragement to my fellow people leaders is that it is not about replacing humans. It's about removing friction and creating the space for what only people can do. So the connection, the leadership, that is all going to stay relevant. And the teams that win will be the ones who adopt early and adapt wisely to when and how to leverage it. And I think as people leaders, we have the responsibility to lean into these tools and smooth the path out for our teams. And make sure that we're using technology to enhance the human experience, not replace it.

I love that. That's great. Well, Wendy, thanks so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure having you involved.

It was my pleasure. Thank you. Thanks.