Arra · Recruiting
Arra is a recruiting firm for teams who are done with spray-and-pray agencies. Starcatcher is a sourcing agent we build for your team, and she searches alongside our recruiters. You see everything both of them do on one live dashboard.
Start with Spike Finder, a free three-minute questionnaire about the role you're hiring for. Already sitting on applicants? We read those too.
How we're different
The usual playbook: take the job description, search the title, message everyone who matches. We've watched an agency pitch a founder's own engineers for the founder's own role.
Arra learns your team before anyone sends a single message. Tap any row to see how.
Before we search, we map your company. Everyone you've hired, the paths they took, the schools, side projects and public work behind them. It becomes your company star map, and it's in your dashboard before the search even starts.
Spike Finder pins down the few things this person must be exceptional at, and the noise to ignore. Starcatcher and our recruiters search for the spikes, whatever the job title says.
These are calibration slates. Real people Starcatcher found, shown to you before anyone reaches out, so you can say yes, maybe or no and why. Your reasons sharpen the search. Anyone you say yes to hears from a senior recruiter within 24 hours.
Your brand kit shows exactly how we pitch you: the selling points, the outreach messages, the questions we ask on screens. Change anything you like.
Every conversation feeds your candidate insights. What excites people about you, what worries them, and what we're changing in the pitch because of it.
Searches drag when nobody agrees on what good looks like. We settle that before the search starts and keep tuning it every day, so there are fewer wrong turns and fewer dead-end interviews.
Your dashboard logs the work as it happens. Who we reached out to, screens booked, what candidates said back. You never have to wonder whether your role is being worked.
How it works
Free · every client starts here
Ten questions about one role and the team it joins. Your answers teach Starcatcher what a strong yes looks like for you, and you keep the results. Start Spike Finder
Your first meeting
Courtney walks through your Spike Finder results and brings a calibrated first slate. You also get your company star map, a constellation of everyone who has thrived on your team and how they got there, plus a read on what competitors pay and pitch for the same role.
Every day
She searches the public web for people with your spikes and sends you a calibration slate of five a day to rate.
Senior recruiters run all outreach, screens and conversations. Every message is written and approved by a person.
Say yes, and a senior recruiter reaches out within 24 hours. Starcatcher never contacts candidates.
When it clicks
You pay 20% of base salary when your hire starts, minus every retainer payment you've already made. If it doesn't work out in the first 90 days, we run the search again.
Speed
Most searches drag because nobody agreed on what good looks like. We settle that first, then keep calibrating every day, so the search gets sharper while it runs.
At a consumer IoT camera company, Courtney built team after team from scratch in under a year, including an R&D engineering team. Her average time to fill on those hires was 19 days.
Average time to fill while building an R&D engineering team for a consumer IoT camera company
To build a camera company's teams from zero, across the whole company
From your yes to a senior recruiter's first message
Every search is different, and niche roles take longer. You'll get an honest timeline for yours on our first call.
What you see
Most companies have no idea what their recruiting agency is actually doing. You do the intake, it goes quiet for weeks, and you hope someone's working.
With Arra you log in and see everything: calibration slates, every outreach, every screen and what candidates said back, updated live. Fully transparent, and built on data.
Starcatcher's calibration slate on the left. The recruiting team's work on the right.
Calibration slate3 of 5 to rateFound by Starcatcher. Nobody has been contacted yet.
"Hardware-to-software path is exactly what we keep saying yes to."
Two more below. The next five arrive once you've rated these.
Say yes to anyone on either side and a senior recruiter reaches out within 24 hours.
Everyone who has thrived on your team, grouped by the path that brought them to you. Hover a star.
Hover a star to see who it is.
What the map says
Built from your team's public professional profiles and your ATS
What candidates say when we tell them about you. 31 conversations this month.
How they react to the pitch
"The mission is the reason I took the call. Nobody else is doing this in agriculture."
Raised in 6 conversations
"I wasn't sure whether the role is in office. The posting doesn't say."
Raised in 4 conversations · Fixed in the pitch
A theme appears once three separate candidates raise it. Names and employers are removed, and no transcripts are shared.
The shape of the search, and what your ratings are teaching us.
What your yeses have in common
Exactly how we represent you to candidates. Edit anything. Updated by your recruiter Tuesday.
How we pitch you
Northfield puts perception models on machines that work in mud, dust and rain. The founding ML engineer owns that stack end to end, from data to device, and ships to real farms every quarter.
Key selling points
Outreach we're sending
"Saw your segmentation work on the drone platform. The team I'm recruiting for puts models on tractors, and they need someone to own perception. Open to a 15-minute call?"
"One detail I left out: everything ships within a quarter. Worth a look?"
Screening questions
Technical questions
Concerns and how we answer
Insights
Every search teaches us something about your team, your market and how candidates see you. We write it down and put it in your dashboard, so you can act on it.
Company star map
ExamplePaths into your team, from the people you've kept and promoted
So what: your job post asks for big tech experience. Your best people mostly came from hardware. Starcatcher searches there first.
From your team's public professional profiles and your ATS
Competitor read
ExampleBase salary for Founding ML Engineer, from public postings
So what: two competitors pay more and pitch remote work. Your edge is that models ship to customers within a quarter, so that leads every pitch.
From public job postings and pay transparency data
Candidate insights
ExampleThemes from our conversations this month
So what: four people asked about office days. We added it to the pitch and the question stopped coming up.
A theme appears once three separate candidates raise it. No names, no transcripts.
Meet Starcatcher
Starcatcher is a sourcing agent we build and calibrate for each client. Spike Finder teaches her what a strong yes looks like for your team. Then she and our recruiters hunt at the same time, and everything either one finds lands on your dashboard.
She searches every corner. Public code, papers, patents, conference talks, alumni networks, the team that scattered after an acquisition. Places a title search never reaches.
Built on your star map and your spikes. She starts from who thrives on your team and what this hire must be great at, then finds people who fit the pattern, odd titles and career switches included.
Upfront about what she's unsure of. Every profile shows why she picked that person and what she's still unsure about.She finds. People talk. Starcatcher never contacts candidates. Every message, screen and conversation comes from a senior recruiter.
Pricing
Spike Finder
Free
Ten questions, about three minutes
The Arra team
$3,000/month
Three-month minimum. Every payment is credited toward your placement fee.
The retainer is how we know you're serious about hiring, and it's why we can go this deep on every role. It isn't extra. Every payment comes off your fee when you hire.
Already have applicants?
Your ATS sorts résumés by titles and keywords, so strong people get buried. We read the people who already chose you.
$1/application
We read every application, new or backlog, for any role. If you hire someone we surfaced, there's no fee.
10% of base salary
A custom search of everyone who has ever applied to you, then we re-engage the ones who fit. Half our standard fee, paid only on a hire.
From a real review · Solutions Architect, computer vision
Arra readApplicant B went to the hiring manager.
Most clients run all three at once. We search outside, read new applications as they arrive, and mine everyone who has applied before, all connected to your ATS.
Who runs Arra
Founder · two-time founding recruiter
I've spent eight years recruiting the hires that are hardest to make: first engineers, niche technical roles, and job titles that didn't exist yet. Strong recruiters have run on gut for years. I started Arra because gut was never the whole story. The right hire comes from data: your team, your competitors, your gaps, your business goals, the spikes, and all the small signals in between. Put together, they make the formula for the hire you need. That's what I'm good at, and it's what Arra is built to do.
Every Arra client starts with me. I review your Spike Finder results, bring your first slate, and oversee every search our senior recruiters run.
Start here
Ten questions now. Then Courtney, Arra's founder, walks you through what they show.
courtney@arratalent.com