Josh built his career around bringing logic, and a bit of humor, to the often ritualistic and emotionally driven recruiting world. He applies decision training to all of his candidate-facing work, with the goal of helping people embrace risk and discover the best opportunity for them. As Josh puts it—it’s all about finding a gem and helping them shine.
Highlights
The recruiting jumpstart
Josh got his jumpstart in recruiting at his alma mater, managing the undergraduate recruiting team. He moved into the tech space shortly after, managing a university program for a small startup that was recently acquired by Checkr, the HR tech platform.
Robinhood
Josh joined Robinhood as the company’s first recruiter, where he helped build out the company from 30 people to 4,000 people. While at Robinhood, Josh had a “tag me in” mentality—he experienced most flavors of recruitment by doing whatever was required to get the job done. Ultimately, Josh ended up specializing in executive hiring and placed Robinhoods first independent board member, former SEC Commissioner Dan Gallagher, who ultimately became the company’s Chief Legal Officer. To close out his tenure at Robinhood, Josh led and managed a 40-person product recruitment team.
For Josh, the work he enjoys most as a builder is when he’s helping people swing for the fences and bet on themselves.
Superpowers
The challenger sale conversation.
Robinhood was an underdog for a long time, and Josh loved talking through the validity of the product with candidates as he was growing the team. Josh applies that experience to all of his work today; he thrives at showing people a product’s differentiated perspective in the market, which he finds naturally aligns with folks across design, product, user research, and content.
Thinking through the larger ecosystem.
Josh excels at sussing out how a product is going to fit and be different in the market. He enjoys working with founders who are self-aware enough to make the right decisions, and who are willing to co-design a recruitment process that’s mutually beneficial for both the company and employees.
