The "Savage" Reference-Check Hiring Tactic Most Recruiters Are Missing

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...