Advisor to small recruitment firms looking to scale to 7 figures | Check out my website to see about working together

Two years ago, I started working with a boutique recruiting agency that had hit a wall.

The founder was stuck. No consistent pipeline. Sales were reactive. Everything depended on him — and when he focused on delivery, growth stalled.

Over 18 months, we rebuilt his outbound engine from the ground up. Account targeting, messaging, automation, KPIs — all designed to operate without him. Today, that firm has scaled to $5.6M, and their pipeline runs with consistency and control.

That story isn’t unique. Since then, I’ve helped dozens of founder-led recruiting firms move from ad hoc sales to structured, scalable growth.

I do this through The Systematic Recruiter — a proven 90-day method to build outbound systems that generate pipeline even when the founder is focused on running the business, not stuck inside it.

This isn’t coaching theory. I work hands-on inside my clients’ CRMs — writing sequences, mapping targeting frameworks, and building processes they can rely on.

The outcome? A fully operational sales system designed to run without the founder.

Most of my clients come to me when they’re ready to move beyond survival mode and scale with intention.

If you're still relying on referrals, sporadic outreach, or bursts of activity during slow months — it’s time for a system.

Book a call and I’ll walk you through it. No pitch unless it’s a fit.

Keely Flood

Digital Marketing and Technology Recruiter @ Knak Digital | Fractional Talent Acquisition | Hitting Hiring Roadblocks? I can help 🙋🏻‍♀️ Job Search Advisor & Myth Debunker | Baltimore & D.C. 🔊 (Riv-Knack)

Are you struggling to hire tech and marketing talent to keep up with your organization’s growth?

Maybe your internal applications are jammed with tons of inbound resumes, but very few that are actually on target. Meanwhile, your team is buried, deliverables are slipping, and the right roles stay open way too long.

That’s where I come in.

I’m Kelli Hrivnak, a Marketing & Tech Recruiter, who helps hypergrowth companies fill critical roles faster than traditional methods.  For nearly two decades, I've been a trusted ally to small to midmarket businesses in DC, Virginia, and Maryland, building teams that boost revenue, innovation, and collaborative success.  

My background in hospitality and outside sales taught me the art of relationship building and high-pressure, often intense, decision-making skills that translated to the recruiting world.  That experience shaped how I recruit.

Hiring Hurdles Impacting my Clients:

✔️ Speed to hire.   A vacant position is slowing down your project deliverables and product development.
✔️ Hiring surge and internal recruitment/TA team is swamped.
✔️ Burned by past mis-hires and unsuccessful track record of hiring
✔️ No time to review resumes or screen candidates thoroughly.
✔️ Job Postings that result in 100's of applicants with no time to review
✔️ Underlying need to replace underperformers, confidentially
✔️ Skills gap and the relentless competition for the same pool of talent

Knak Digital Solutions:

Placement & Sourcing:
✔️ 30,000+ vetted tech and marketing contacts in our proprietary database
✔️ 100% dedication to networking, sourcing, and interviewing for faster fill times
✔️ Tailored recruiting approach that fits your team’s culture
✔️ Project-based consultants when you don't need full-time specialists

Embedded Recruiting Support:
✔️ On-demand, flexible recruiting help that scales with your needs
✔️ Extra capacity during hiring spikes so your team doesn’t get overloaded
✔️ Alternative model to project-based searches, especially when hiring 3 or more roles.

Talent Consulting:
✔️ Discreet searches for underperformers, leadership changes, and succession planning
✔️ Employer brand support to improve candidate attraction
✔️ Market intel on competitors, salary trends, and talent movement

Ready to break through your hiring bottlenecks?  Let's start a conversation. 

📧 Email: kelli@Knakdigital.com

Search job listings here ▶ https://jobs.crelate.com/portal/knakdigital

Kelli Hrivnak

A few resume tips I keep repeating lately, so I’m just going to put them here. 

1️⃣ Add a company descriptor if the brand isn’t widely known.

Example:   Strategist, XYZ Company (MarTech Series B startup, ~$15M ARR, ~75 employees)

2️⃣ AI. Yes, I know. Barf.   But modern resumes should be showing how you are integrating AI into your day-to-day workflows, research, productivity, etc.  This can also include ethical guardrails, workshops, and training.

 3️⃣Don’t be humble if you’re not under an NDA.   Name the product you built, the campaigns you supported.  If you are a consultant, can you list client/customer work specifically?  These fine details show scope and depth, plus some logos can trigger that industry alignment/appeal.

Any resume questions?  I'm stuck on a flight for the next three hours.  Let it rip.

Feels relevant on this Friday the 13th.

Looking at the handful of people who just landed job offers, I can say they earned those roles because they were the best candidates in the pool.  They crushed their assignments in the interview, prepped for those calls, and asked the right questions when it came to an offer.

No doubt, luck comes into play here and there.  Referrals being one.  But luck can only get you so far.

When you outreach to a Yahoo address thinking it’s inactive…and it delivers.

And they actually write back.  #recruiterwin

IYKYK.

Sunday job search tips.....

1️⃣ If the role is hybrid, your location matters.

If you’re applying from out of state and the resume says nothing about relocation, that's going to be a rejection from me. I will not be reaching out to everyone individually to clarify that they understand the in-office requirements. 

If you are relocating, define this in the resume. If you’re self-funding the move, even better. In high-supply roles, companies are not stretching on geography unless they have to.

2️⃣ All this "reverse recruiting" talk.  Take a tip out of what should be their playbook and track your search.  A simple spreadsheet with company, role, date applied, and traction.

PS. You know what signals organized? When a candidate immediately references their job search data during a screen.

3️⃣ Get clear on your positioning.  I hear people considering a few job tracks.
 “I could do Customer Success or Account Executive.”

Okay. But can you back that up? Revenue growth. Sales targets. Expansion metrics. Implementation ownership. Relationship management.  Audit your tasks and outcomes first, then engineer if those can be proof to your target job tracks.

Would you pay someone to find you a job?

I’ve been approached numerous times in the past by job seekers in my networking, offering that they would pay me a fee to find them a job . Aka,  the recently coined “reverse recruiting” services.

For the record, I do NOT offer this.  I'll get into why...

But the WSJ article caught my eye this week, covering job seekers paying to be “recruited” because the market feels brutal right now.

One platform mentioned claims access to students from 20 “top-ranked” universities along with partnerships with 2,000+ companies. I have not personally seen this platform show up in real hiring workflows, and I have to wonder how engaged those hiring teams actually are in reviewing these "referrals."

If you are considering any reverse recruiting or apply-on-your-behalf service, ask these questions first:

🔹 What exact actions are they taking on my behalf?
 🔹Am I reviewing and approving every submission, or am I trusting them blindly?
 🔹 How are they answering open-ended questions about my background, gaps, or career moves?
 🔹Do they understand my experience well enough to actually market me?
🔹 Will I get a full report of where they applied, when, and the status of each role?

The core reason I would never take this on is that I would never want to guarantee that I could lock down a job for anyone, as market demand and how one interviews is beyond my control.  I encourage anyone to understand the mechanics and KPI's behind any service representing you to employers.

Scammers will come out of the woodwork, especially when the job market pendulum has swung in their favor.

Curious to hear of anyone's experience with these type of services?

Open article: Job Hunters Are So Desperate That They’re Paying to Get Recruited by wsj.com

Job Hunters Are So Desperate That They’re Paying to Get Recruited

Toggling from tech to GTM recruiting, there is one interesting difference.

In some tech searches, fraud is an issue.  As in bait and switch, deepfakes, or just fraudulent profiles in general.

In GTM, I haven't come across this (yet).   The only deception is the interpretation of results.

Quota numbers.  Millions worth of business.  Strong pipelines.  But the nuance of not knowing team dynamic, support, and strength of territory can change things.

A few weeks ago, I was talking through this exact problem with a sales leader, specifically how to sniff out BS.  So how to get past the actual numbers and understand what a candidate actually did to drive them. 

Because any outcome is only meaningful with context around strategy and process.

Anyone can put those important numbers in a resume.  It's the story behind the numbers that is a differentiator.

What questions are you asking to gain clarity around metrics in a resume?

Attention to my lady community interested in building apps!  

In honor of International Women's Day, Lovable is offering free usage of its platform for 24 hours on March 8th.   Anthropic is throwing in $100 worth of API credits, too.

If you have time next Sunday, this could be a good opportunity to bring an idea to prototype.

Open article: SheBuilds on Lovable for International Women's Day by shebuilds.lovable.app

SheBuilds on Lovable for International Women's Day

Mark Cuban says SAAS is dead.  

Instead, hello "service as a software."

I get the take.  On every social platform I am on, I read about people spinning up apps with Claude Code, Replit, or Lovable.  Sometimes, within a matter of hours.  

In theory, everyone can be their own product managers now.  Problem solvers are everywhere.

But I'm just not convinced we are all problem understanders.  Let me give an example near and dear to my little recruiter heart:  The ATS.

There are dozens and dozens of applicant tracking systems. All have their nuances, with different audiences like Enterprise, SMB. Internal TA or Agency.  What's rarer is finding a recruiter who uses one and adores one platform.

🔸Business development workflows are clunky
🔸Tagging and rediscovering talent is complicated
🔸Reporting dashboards aren't tracking the data you want.
🔸The UX is terrible.

And yet, new ATS tools continue to ship and recruitment teams continue to demo them, hoping to discover the one that understands how *that* team moves through their day.

The barrier to building software has crumbled.  The barrier to diagnosing and recognizing the legitimate pain point has not.  

Duplicating an existing product may decrease subscription services for some businesses, but for new custom software--there isn't a guarantee for a product-market fit. 

I'm also not even addressing the maintenance and scaling piece of it... 

Curious to hear everyone else's thoughts here.  Is accessibility really the game changer here?

Some hiring managers don't see what goes into a search.  Here is what is happening in my day when leaders are focused on scaling business:

🔹Researching the landscape first, before a single outreach goes out. This is mapping competitors, understanding the skill sets, and finding those gems that are adjacent and could be overlooked.  (Yes, there are AI tools that can help, but they don't always pick up nuance.)

🔹Fielding and engaging in emails, texts, calls, and video conversations with prospects.  This can consume hours on end per day.

🔹Creating and maintaining a running list of these targets. In an ATS or even a simple spreadsheet.  Tracking who's a miss and why (comp misaligned, timing off with a growing family, skill set not quite there)

🔹Gathering real-time comp data, not what's published on Level.Fyi.

🔹Learning WHY talent is passing.  This is the intel to bring back to hiring teams when time-to-fill exceeds the usual TTF.

🔹Hearing where your brand resonates and where it doesn't.

Every prospect who passes is still giving data.  Hesitations on equity, comp, benefits, team structure, title inflation, or off-leveling.

Some of those things just can't be changed, period. Budget or onsite needs. But bringing those market realities back to a hiring team, with legit intel instead of gut or opinion, is where that advisory piece comes in.   

 At the end of the day, a search is the outbound strategy. Inbound is dandy, especially when it attracts solid talent, but it's not JUST the plan.

Are you validating your hiring strategy with real candidate feedback?

"You have a great read on people and the experience we look for.”

A client recently gave this feedback after we wrapped up a successful search.

Just another reminder that a talent advisor is not just a keyword-matching, 7-second resume scanning, doesn't know what experience they are screening for gatekeepers.

Sourcing and recruiting is not JUST pattern recognition.

It's understanding context and nuance behind the words on a resume or LinkedIn profile.  Because a job title at one company does not automatically translate to the same scope or influence at another.

Different team structures.  Different resources.  Different technical expectations.

Can a tech tool pick up those reads and find full alignment?  #nah

I'm up for the debate.  Change my mind.

Returning from a week semi off the grid.

Watched a Super Bowl with targeted ads for Alka-Seltzer and Meneparol Plus as opposed to the Levi's, Google, and Lays ads here in the States.  A different experience to say the least....

The only AI conversation I overheard was a man saying he just discovered ChatGPT last month and saying “what a game changer it is.” 

Huge thank you to a client partner who gave me grace to take a beach bum video call.

Playing catch up now--please hit me up if I missed your DM or email.

(Good news is that it looks like it may reach over 50+ degrees this weekend and finally melt the snow away).

Attrition.  There tends to be two waves.

The first wave could be a single employee departure on a team or a mass RIF.  

The second wave is one I think most should anticipate but often don't:  the people who stayed.

The disruption of the team dynamic can stir up a feeling of instability and uncertainty.  And some can power through.  In some cases, a toxic employee peaced out, which can improve the dynamic among the standing soldiers.

The adverse?  Workloads are reshuffled and reporting lines are changed.  Teams could be understaffed and overworked.    Just the catalyst for those still on the team to start thinking and planning for options outside the company.   Typical in M&As.

If you're hiring right now for a replacement role or just leading a team through it, pay attention to who's still standing and check in on them.

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Keely Flood

Kelli Hrivnak

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The Battle

Keely Flood

Kelli Hrivnak

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Kelli Hrivnak's LinkedIn Performance

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