What clients are saying

Jo Dennis

GBD stands out with their deep domain expertise, honed through hands-on experience with companies of all sizes. Unlike many consultants, they bring practical success to the table, truly understanding the challenges talent leaders face on an emotional, tactical, and strategic level.

Each GBD team member has complementary strengths which support diverse leadership styles and company stages/sizes. They do not just consult - they partner to build best-in-class talent functions, drawing from their proven track record.

Julieann Choi

Head of Recruiting
‍Anthropic

Service:
Advisory
Jo Dennis

Working with GBD has been a treasure. There's no silver bullet for the  ever changing challenges Recruiting orgs face, but GBD is the closest thing we've found. From building strategy, helping with org design, to partnering on foundational tools like capacity and dashboards we quickly learned they are a one stop shop - deeply networked in the Talent community and dialed in to all of the challenges Talent leaders are trying to solve.  

With their help and guidance,  we were able to make quick progress, setting the foundations for a successful Talent org, which resulted in increasing productivity and efficiency, building and executing on a high impact roadmap, and increasing employee engagement. We feel very fortunate to have gotten to work with, and learn from all of the folks at GBD!

Mindy Fineout

Head of Recruiting
Discord

Service:
Advisory
Jo Dennis

Thank you for your thoughtfulness and dedication through this process. I’ve been impressed by your thoughtful counsel, your passion and your commitment to high standards throughout the search. I’m grateful to you for running an excellent process, skillfully navigating a competitive market, and for making today’s result happen. You’ve set a benchmark for how searches ought to be conducted.

Sam Chaudhary

Co-Founder / CEO 
ClassDojo

Service:
Exec Search
Jo Dennis

Thank you for getting us access to some incredible candidates and actually closing on someone who was really perfect.  This hire is absolutely critical for our success this year and you have really positioned us so well.  I can't tell you how much this means to me (and the rest of the team) and the potential positive impact we hope this will have in the world!

You came recommended highly with high expectations and you exceeded even those.  I feel lucky we had the opportunity to work with you all.  Having worked with a variety of recruiters over the years I can say hands down this team is just in a different league.

Justin Barad

Founder / CEO 
Osso VR

Service:
Exec Search
Jo Dennis

I hired GBD with a high degree of confidence they would deliver, and the team exceeded my high expectations. We're absolutely thrilled with the hire we made, and the process GBD led was exceptional. There's simply no way we could have made such an outstanding hire in such a quick timeframe without GBD, and I would strongly recommend them to my peers without hesitation or reservations.

Ryan Weber

Chief Talent Officer
Marqeta

Service:
Exec Search
Jo Dennis

I can't speak more highly about the partnership with Growth by Design Talent. They consistently deliver quality work that goes beyond my expectations. No matter the request, they'll find a way to provide us with a solution of sorts - even if it might not having anything to do with the topic we're discussing. Once you work with them, you will no longer want to work with anyone else in this space. They are truly the best of the best.

Samara Crasilneck

Director, Recruiting Operations
Airtable

Service:
Advisory
Jo Dennis

The team helped us define what we should do (not just what we thought we should do), provide valuable insights and best practices, and helped to drive execution.  What I really appreciated was that they could 'see around the corner' and were able to clearly articulate how changes we were making would impact anything downstream and/or for future growth. We made a tremendous amount of updates and changes with their partnership and direction in a short period of time.  Everyone we worked with was prepared, professional, and had a bias for action.

Andrea Constantinides

Senior Director, Global Recruiting
Udacity

Service:
Advisory
Jo Dennis

I can't more strongly recommend Growth by Design Talent. As former operators themselves, they know the competing interests and demands on time that we as leaders face and create an experience that is high bandwidth and efficient based on their personal experience. Their thoughtful approach to the work focuses on creating alignment and clarity upfront allowing us to move quickly through the search process. They are so highly respected in their field and have such a strong collective network that it allows them access to talent that most others in their industry simply can't.

Jo Dennis

Chief People Officer, Consultant, HR Tech Investor & Advisor

Service:
Exec Search
Jo Dennis

Growth by Design are a true partner and the best recruiting team I have ever worked with. They take the time to understand your business and then through a combination of data, rigor, expertise, and focus help you build out a world-class team. I could not recommend them highly enough and look forward to working with them again in the future.

Michael Akkerman

Chief Product & Strategy Officer
Cardlytics

Jo Dennis

GBDTalent brings unique context and credibility to their work given their experience as former Talent Acquisition Executives at top companies. They not only facilitated our search, but helped influence our thinking around the role and our needs. This wasn't an easy role to fill, and the GBDTalent team did a great job of selling candidates and getting them interested in our organization. Beyond exec search, GBDTalent is a great thought partner on all things talent oriented, and I see them as true advisors and thought partners.

Omer Cohen

Advisor & Investor
Human Capital

Service:
Exec Search
Sarah Lovelace

Growth by Design Talent is hands down the best solution to super charge your hiring needs. At Plenty we needed to do a significant hiring burst quickly. Using traditional agencies wasn’t an option that fit our model. With GDT we found a solution that was fast, but more importantly the Recruiters who worked with us were all of the highest caliber (we would love to hire them all full time!). They partnered seamlessly with our Hiring Managers, folded into our process effortlessly, and helped make hiring decisions about candidates as if Plenty was their company. 

GDT also helped to identify and hire our VP of Recruiting. Not only was this the fastest executive search we have closed to date, but it was also the most effective and smooth hiring process. We were also lucky to have one of the partners of GDT stand in as interim Head of Recruiting while the search was happening. Not only did it give GDT more insight into what Plenty needed, but we also received support from the best team of Recruiting professionals in Silicon Valley.

Sarah Lovelace

Vice President, People
Airbase

Service:
Exec Search
Advisory
Interim Head of Recruiting
Stefan Young

They’re not only builders but true consultants; they’ll help dig into the problems with you and find the underlying issue you’re trying to solve, and will help guide you through it with their expertise (or if they don’t know, they’ll look into it). On a related note, I definitely appreciate their diligence!

Stefan Young

Head of People Analytics and Compensation
BREX

Service:
Advisory
Joel Baroody

Growth By Design understands recruiting and talent analytics, so they are able to approach building a reporting solution with the correct approach. They are also able to help steer the vision and course correct along the way.

Joel Baroody

Head of Recruiting
BREX

Service:
Advisory
Kanji Kawanabe

If you work with the Growth By Design Talent team, you'll have the good fortune to geek out with the industry's best and brightest. They've managed and extinguished the fires that you're probably walking through right now, and you'll benefit from their experience and intellect.

Kanji Kawanabe

People Partner
Valora

Service:
Advisory
Roselin Romney

I partnered with Growth by Design on a variety of initiatives but most importantly enhancing our candidate experience process. At the beginning of our partnership, the team looked under our "process hood" to identify areas of opportunity. This sometimes can be off-putting, it was actually the opposite. They showed areas we were excelling at and we started working together on areas we could strengthen, it was a reinvigorating and collaborative process with TA leaders and the entire team. Today we have implemented a process that our team believes and follows and are very thankful to have worked with the GBD team.

Roselin Romney

Senior Director, Talent Acquisition
Two Chairs

Service:
Advisory

Who we work with

We work with scaling companies, with a focus on private companies in the technology space.