Evan Walden is the Founder in Residence at Findem, where he takes new AI recruiting products from zero to one for venture capital and private equity portfolios. Before this, he spent nine years building Getro, the talent network behind roughly 1,000 job boards for the world's top VC and PE funds, which Findem acquired in November 2025. Earlier, he cofounded ReWork (acquired by Koya Partners) and started his career running a recruiting agency in the social impact space. In this episode, Evan breaks down the exact outreach script that turns passive candidates into advocates, the IQ vs EQ framework for using AI in recruiting, and why "we treat everyone well" is a terrible company value.
What you'll learn:
- The 15-minute feedback outreach script that turns passive candidates into advocates for your search
- Why the "savage" reference-check tactic can quietly become your best senior-hire pipeline
- The IQ vs EQ rule for deciding which recruiting tasks to hand to AI and which to keep human
- Why hybrid teams (part remote, part in-office) break down and what to do instead
- How to know if someone is actually built for remote work before you hire them
- Why your company values should be a polarity ("we do this instead of that") not a platitude
- The "go up the mountain" cadence for making values a living document instead of wall art
- Why one misaligned early hire creates outsized cultural damage in a sub-10-person team
Chapters:
00:00 The 15-minute outreach script that creates advocates
00:51 Meet Evan Walden, Founder in Residence at Findem
01:20 From recruiting agency to Getro: the accidental origin story
06:00 What VCs actually taught him about hiring networks
08:00 The "savage" reference-check hiring move
10:50 Building a global remote team since day one
12:35 Why hybrid work quietly breaks your context
14:08 Should new grads take remote jobs?
16:10 IQ vs EQ: where AI belongs in recruiting
18:06 Replacing LinkedIn Recruiter with Claude and MCP
21:17 What acquisition taught him about culture
29:00 Why founders skip values (until it's too late)
32:23 Making values a living document, not wall art
34:43 The "polarity test" for real company values
35:53 Where to find Evan and Findem
Where to find the guest:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evanwalden/
Findem: https://www.findem.ai/
Where to find Luiz Cent:
Website: https://latamcent.com/
Who We Hire: https://whowehire.org/
