About the channel
The channel is called The Startup Hire. I’m a recruiter and I run my own firm, and the channel is about how hiring actually works: how I screen, how I run a process, how applicant tracking systems work from the inside, how candidates get filtered out before anyone reads their CV, and how founders can fix their own hiring process.
Short form and long form, both at volume. A Substack runs alongside it.
I’m not looking for an agency showreel. I’m looking for someone who makes me sound sharper without making the video look produced.
The three types of video you’d be working on
1. Solo videos, long and short. Me talking, often sharing my screen, walking through a system or a process or a bad job ad. This is where most of the cutting, pacing and cut-in work lives.
2. Founder interviews. This is the format I care about most. Live and online conversations with very early stage founders. Light touch: intro, outro, a few cut-ins, and that’s mostly it. The important part is attention while you edit. If a founder mentions a product, a company, a link, a milestone, I want that pulled on screen at the right moment: their logo, a screenshot, a photo from their story. You’d need to catch those while watching, not wait for me to list them.
3. Event recordings. I record at events. I’ll send you the raw footage with instructions on how it needs to be reformatted, usually for shorts.
The style I want
Invisible editing. Cut the dead air, the filler, the false starts, the moments where I lose my train of thought. Tight pacing that still breathes. Clean stitching, simple transitions, nothing flashy.
Natural and down to earth, but good quality. Reference channels:
(mostly like this)
Also a bit toward:
. Watch how little is actually happening on screen and how well it still holds attention. That’s the bar.
Screen recordings
I’ll be sharing my screen a lot. I need light treatment on those: zoom into the relevant area, highlight or circle the element I’m talking about, small callouts, and most importantly timed correctly to what I’m saying. Subtle. Not a motion graphics demo.
Cut-ins (this is the important part)
Most of my cut-ins will be GIFs or short moments from movies, shows and cartoons. Sometimes a small overlay in the corner, sometimes full screen for a beat.
What I need is someone who gets the reference from a sentence. I want to be able to say “put something here where the guy realises he messed up” and get back three good options, without me sending you a movie title and a timestamp. If you’ve watched all of Netflix and have a genuine sense of humour and finesse, this job is for you. If you need a detailed brief per cut, it won’t work.
Shorts
Previous shorts experience matters. Hook in the first second, caption and text styling, vertical framing, pacing. Tell me what you know about what works there.
AI
I’m completely fine with AI, I encourage it. Use it wherever it buys speed or lowers cost, especially for generating motion graphics. Just tell me what you use and for which part of the process.
Workflow
I want you to help me build the workflow, not just receive files. The target: I record once, give you a short loom or voice brief explaining what I want where, and you take it from there. Folder structure, naming, revision rounds, turnaround times. Propose how you’d run it.
Nice to have
Experience with VidIQ or similar for title and thumbnail ideas.
Terms
Starting part time, priced per deliverable, with separate rates by type since an interview edit and a heavily cut solo video are not the same amount of work. Give me your numbers for: one long form solo video, one interview, one short, and a batch of five shorts.
Be upfront: this is a paid trial period. I’m launching soon and the volume is going to be significant, and my intention is to take the right person full time.
To apply
Don’t send me your portfolio. I’m not going through a reel of wedding videos and corporate explainers to find the one clip that’s relevant. Send me your best, and only what’s close to what I described above.
If your application doesn’t show me you actually read this, that’s it. That’s the whole first filter.
Best option: here is a link to one of my raw videos Take five minutes of it, anywhere you like, and edit it how you think it should be edited. Not your masterpiece, just something decent, your own call on the cuts, the timing, the cut-ins. If you send me that, I’m reviewing it first and above everyone else.
If you don’t want to do that, fine. Then send me the two or three pieces from your own work that are closest to this style and tell me what was yours in each.
Either way, also answer these:
Which AI tools you use and for which part of the edit.
When you watch an interview, how do you track the things that need to be pulled on screen later?
Name one scene, GIF or clip you’d use for “person says something completely wrong with total confidence”.
Question 3 is the one I’m reading first.
