Hiring for Customer Empathy When You're Not the User

Stephanie Cleverly operates as a one-person people team at Because, a 30-person remote e-commerce startup selling bladder incontinence products to older adults. The unique challenge: building a passionate, engaged culture when your entire workforce is decades younger than your customer base. As the company's first formal HR hire, Stephanie has navigated everything from processing 14,000 applications for a single role to achieving 97% employee satisfaction and Great Place to Work certification—all while managing recruitment, engagement, compliance, and culture solo. Her approach centers on systematic employee feedback, responsible growth planning, and leveraging AI to scale a team of one into an efficient people operations function. Topics Discussed Operating as a solo HR leader in a remote startup environment and prioritizing competing demands Building candidate screening processes that assess passion and customer empathy when employees don't use the products Managing massive applicant volumes (14,000+ applications) as a remote company using only LinkedIn for recruiting Implementing quarterly engagement surveys to drive decision-making and achieve Great Place to Work certification Creating scalable cultural rituals like weekly all-hands meetings that may need evolution at 100+ employees Establishing weekly AI learning sessions to democratize tool adoption across a remote team Planning responsible headcount growth while avoiding the mass layoff trap of overhiring Deciding when startups should invest in people operations versus fractional HR support