We are technologists and recruiters. This is core to the story of where we started, and of where we’re going.

Most recruiting technology companies are one or the other. They either start as recruiters who know they can get more done with great technology, or as technologists who felt the pain of recruiting, but don’t understand it as a recruiter would.

We have felt both pains, and felt them both deeply.

At our first startup, we hired over 200 people in a year and a half. We all learned a lot about team building, but our earliest days weren’t about writing code; they were as an outside recruiter. We signed up a few friends who were hiring, and they agreed to take any candidates we’d send their way.

“Good luck,” they said.

We quickly learned that sourcing great talent was the toughest problem, and by doing it by hand, we learned there was a lot that software could do to help: provide better data, create simple workflows and ease of use, jumpstart searches, etc. That helped us deeply understand the problem.

But just as importantly, we had felt firsthand the joy of helping people figure out what’s next in their career and making the perfect match. Those first stories are so memorable, and it turns out, every recruiter remembers the first few people they helped get hired — and everyone remembers their first recruiter.

Along the way, we wondered what it would take to build a company around what we learned so that others could experience that same joy. That’s why Teamable started, and it’s what guides us today.