Recruiting

Question 1

How many candidates have you hired, and for what positions?

Question 2

What is your org structure? Seniority and Diversity.

Question 3

How do you filter candidate resumes?

Answer 3

I have evolved my strategies over time:
- Identify the minimum criteria such as YoE, experiences etc
- Identify the relevant experiences and skill-sets. (such as backend vs frontend vs graphics etc).
- Look for soft skills and achievements, specially for higher-level candidates.
- What I don’t filter on: Schools & Degrees.

Question 4

Did you ever change your process for filtering resumes? What & Why? What did you learn from it?

Answer 4

• Being more flexible with YoE requirements
• Focusing more on soft skills and achievements
• Relying less on Schools

Question 5

What’s your strategy to build a diverse team? What have and what haven’t worked so far?

Answer 5

• Identify what diversity means & mark a target for the entire group. It’s hard to target all kinds of URGs.
• Focus on sourcing to meet the diversity needs but keep the interview fair & same for everyone.
• Push for more representation of D&I in interview panels. We made it mandatory for all engineers.

What hasn’t worked so far
- I found it harder to meet D&I targets for teams with lower D&I. Internal transfers were required with a lot of focus.

Question 6

Have you ever done sourcing? How do you do it?

Answer 6

I have been involved in sourcing in various capacities.
- Resume sourcing via Linkedin. During my time as the head of eng recruiting, I trained all the EM to do regular sourcing.
- Reach-outs from EMs had a significantly higher response rate.
- follow ups
- Branding

Question 7

How do you activate candidates? What strategy worked?

Answer 7

Tailored Outreach: I have a template that I modify before sending to candidates to make it feel more personal.
Also, make sure the right level of leadership contacts the candidate. For a Sr Staff engineer, it’s better for a Director+ to contact.

Sourcing Correctly: I also reach out to candidates who aren’t yet looking but have completed 2-3 years in their current company. This aligns with bonus/grants etc.

Follow-up: Many candidates replies that they aren’t immediately looking so I put a reminder on my calendar to reach out after some span of time.

Branding Outreach: I have led our company wide initiative for eng blog post and sending our engineers to conferences like Pycon, GDC etc. This have also led more awareness and helped us explain to potential candidates what it is like to work at PG.

What didn’t work: Initially, we used the same template and pushed for mass contact. We soon realized that quality over quantity made more sense.

Question 8

If a candidate you reached out to says they aren’t interested, what do you do?

Answer 8

Gather Information: First, I like to thank them that they even cared to respond. I would then try to chat with them and see if I can find the reason for their disinterest and a later time to reconnect.

Update Database and follow up: I will make sure our internal system is updated to not reach out in the short term.
I do want to setup a reminder to reach out back to them slightly earlier than they asked to reconnect.

Question 9

What’s your strategy for closing a candidate?

Answer 9

Closing a candidate begins as soon we reach out to a candidate.

Job clarification: Make sure the candidate is aligned with the role description and is interested in it.

Interview Panel: Identify the right set of people for the role - ensure the folks they will work with regularly and in the panel but also have the skill sets to evaluate and represent the team/company well.

Sell Call: For higher-level candidates, someone from leadership will reach out to the candidate before extending an official offer. We reviewed all the interviewer notes.

Understand what the candidate is looking for - future growth prospects they might be interested.

Competitive offer - we don’t negotiate so we spend good effort to make sure we level the candidate appropriately.

Discuss specific needs - remote work.

Question 10

Tell me a situation where you closed a tough candidate.

Answer 10

Microsoft v PG.

• Focused on the end-to-end opportunity
• Full remote first hire from SEA.
• Worked with finance team to make exception and add joining bonus as a gesture.

Question 11

Tell me a situation where you failed to close a candidate. What would you do differently?

Answer 11

New MoM
What I did
- Invited for a lunch
- Discussed opportunities
- Salary not negotiable

What I learned
- Better sales call would have been from my manager aka skip. Better gesture.
- Discuss less of what to offer and focus more on what they want.

Question 12

How do you partner with recruiting?

Answer 12

• Create the JD and align with the recruiting partner.
• Create the sourcing strategy: Do we need D&I effort
• Create the hiring panel - representative of the team/role.
• Review metrics weekly for first few weeks and iterate as needed. Later bi-weekly.
• Follow up post HC panel for quick retrospect.

Question 13

What recruiting metrics do you observe? Why?

Answer 13

• Response rate.
• Pass-Through Rate
• Dropout Rate
• Offer Acceptance Rate
• Candidate experience (post interview feedback)
• Diversity metrics
• Quality of hire.

Question 14

What challenges have you faced in recruiting? How do you solve them?

Answer 14

Response Rate: EM sourcing helped.
D&I ration: Changed sourcing strategy.
PTR rate: Standardized our hiring bars and questions we ask.

Question 15

Tell some creative approaches to recruiting you have taken.

Answer 15

Focus on branding: Eng blog + Conferences. A few inbound candidates but the bigger win was response rate for sourcing.

EM sourcing + Send mail as a different person.

Create a study guide for the interview - focus more on type of algorithm, what we look for in system design, etc.

Question 16

Tell some approaches to recruiting that didn’t work for you. What did you learn?

Answer 16

Sourcing with generic templates didn’t work.

Parties post-conference (like GDC) did almost nothing.

Recruiting partner asking technical questions for screening.

Question 17

Have you had difficulty in closing a particular position? What did you do?

Answer 17

• Focused sourcing on smaller-sized companies.
• Changed interview panel: Standardized coding interviews and SD interviews. Increased SD while reducing coding to find the right fit.

Question 18

How do you gain an edge on your competition for closing candidates?

Answer 18

Few things that have worked great for us
- Showcase our culture via a hiring panel. Our interviewer training is extremely thorough.
- Discuss the potential impact a single engineer can make + the end-to-end learning opportunity we offer.
- Flexible RTO policies.

Question 19

How do you retain engineers in your team?

Answer 19

• Align individual’s career goals and interests with the team.
• Find the right opportunities for everyone on the team. Things that are interesting and can stretch engineers are useful.
• Build a culture of trust and healthy conflict. Make sure everyone feels respected, included, and valued.
• Regular & transparent communication.
• Care for employee well-being and WLB.

Question 20

How do you anticipate if someone is at risk of quitting? What would you do?

Answer 20

Anticipate
- Not engaging in team discussions.
- Not that excited about long term projects or visions.
- Not engaging in career discussions.

Fixes that have worked
- Identify work/systems they like and figure out if any work can be prioritized on that field.
- Identify opportunities elsewhere in the company.

Question 21

Were you ever able to retain anyone after they shared their intent to quit?

Answer 21

Adin
- We were discussing IAC but couldn’t yet prioritize due to other projects. However, this was a big enough catalyst for me to escalate to my manager and prioritize this sooner.
- I then worked with him to discuss the challenges, roadmap and staffing required. We also discussed the scope of tech leadership he wants to do in this project.
- They were also facing issue with immigration. I pushed really hard and made sure HR team handles this with urgency and committed to personally oversee the process with our immigration attorney.

Question 22

Can you provide an overview of the current and past teams you’ve managed, including their size and growth trajectories?

Question 23

How many external hires have you overseen in the past year? How does this compare to internal promotions or transfers?

Answer 23

As the head of eng hiring at PG, I oversaw 20+ hires in 2022.
As HM, I closed ~6/7 positions myself.

Internal promotion – IIRC, there were ~30% promotions in 2022.

Question 24

What are the primary strategies you’ve employed for recruiting top talent, and how have they evolved over time?

Answer 24

• Sourcing: EM receives higher response.
• Sales Call:
• Role-based Hiring: Staff+

Question 25

Can you describe a creative or unconventional approach you’ve used in recruiting that yielded positive results?

Answer 25

• Branding initiative.
• Reachout as someone else.
• Study guide.

Question 26

How do you ensure diversity and inclusivity in your hiring practices? Can you share specific initiatives or strategies you’ve used?

Answer 26

• Identify URG & align on goals.
• Focused sourcing strategy.
• Representative hiring panel.

Question 27

Describe a situation where you successfully engaged a passive candidate or someone not actively looking for a new opportunity.

Answer 27

(fake Zhendong)
- Worked on a startup. Initial reach out they said aren’t interested.
- I shared blog post from my team and that excited them to reply back, and mention that they are busy for this quarter but might be interested the next one.
- I re-engaged a quarter later and we had a unofficial ph call and then I forwarded the candidate to recruiting.
- Accepted an offer as Sr Eng and is now a Staff eng.

Question 28

How do you approach the final stages of the hiring process to ensure a candidate chooses your offer over others?

Answer 28

• Select the right interview panel : Seniority and trained.
• Sales call with the right leadership.
• Identify their interest and special need/request that can give us the edge. (RTO / TLM / Specific product).
• Make sure offers are competitive.

Question 29

When competing with other top tech companies for talent, what strategies or practices have you employed to stand out?

Answer 29

• Focus on the culture & impact + opportunities the engineer can have with us.
• Add a personalized touch to the process. Identify special requirements of the candidate (like RTO / TLM / Interests in gaming, etc).

Question 30

Can you talk about a particularly challenging role you had to fill, the strategies you used, and the outcome?

Answer 30

DI E4 role. 2 quarters and we weren’t making progress.
- Worked with HR, legal to expand this role to remote. First position to officially start this in PG.
- Revisited our interview panel. Dropped hard algo question and focused on System Design + Leadership round more.
- Made myself compulsory in 1 interview for the loop. This worked as interview + sales call. I used to do either SD / Leadership round.

Question 31

How do you work to retain top-performing engineers, especially in a competitive market?

Answer 31

• Align engineer’s goal & interests to team.
• Find the right opportunity that’s interesting and challenging for the person.
• Build an inclusive culture of trust & safety.
• Focus on the well-being of the team.

Question 32

Describe a situation where a valuable team member considered leaving. How did you address their concerns and retain them?

Answer 32

Adin
- Prioritized IAC by talking to my manager.
- Laid out a plan for him to experience being a TL. We discussed architecture and staffing plans for the project.
- They also shared frustration with immigration. I escalated that and asked HR director to personally get me involved with the attorneys. This later became a policy where manager’s were notified of progress/delays.

Question 33

How do you partner with HR or in-house recruiting teams to optimize the hiring process?

Answer 33

• Build the JD and align with the recruiting partner.
• Build a sourcing strategy. Who, where, D&I etc.
• Build the hiring panel.
• Review metrics periodically & iterate.
• Post every HC meetup, do a post-mortem.

Question 34

How do you structure your teams to optimize for productivity and growth? Can you give examples of when you’ve had to restructure or redesign?

Answer 34

How do you structure?
- Pyramid structure: Higher level is less in number.
- Make sure projects and staffing is appropriately aligned.

Any re-org:
- Juan moved to WD: Infra team had too many staff eng and was causing a lot of conflict and project assignment issues. Identified a good team; discussed with EM in the team and made the switch.

• DI -> Todea: Sr engineers in DI didn’t have enough opportunities. Moved sr engineers to Todea, and transferred jr folks to DI to balance it out.

Question 35

Once you’ve hired new talent, how do you ensure they’re successfully integrated into the team?

Answer 35

• Identify and assign a mentor.
• Create onboarding plan. We have templates but need to be revisited to make sure it’s updated.
• Discuss with new hires on what a successful onboarding looks like. I make sure things aren’t left guessing.
• Check in periodically to see how the engineer is doing: understand their concerns, gather feedback, check in on progress.

Question 36

What metrics or KPIs do you track in your recruiting and hiring efforts? How do you use this data to refine your strategies?

Answer 36

• Response rate (sourcing strategy)
• PTR (Interview difficulty + sourcing quality)
• Dropoff (Interviewer quality)
• Candidate feedback (interviewer quality)
• D&I
• Offer acceptance (Closing quality)
• Time to close (overall process).

Question 37

How do you involve other team members or stakeholders in the hiring process?

Answer 37

Opening Req: My manager (VPE) + Finance
Recruiting: Alignment + Strategy + Execution
Interview Panel: Mostly engineers from the team + a few outside folks.
Offer: Finance + VPE for level and comp.

Question 38

How do you ensure a positive experience for candidates throughout the recruitment process, regardless of the hiring decision?

Answer 38

• Choose a representative panel: They should be able to answer questions related to team, and company.
• Align with interviewers. Make sure they are clear on the level we are hiring.
• Make sure the questions picked are standard and have a scoring rubric. I avoid questions that have very high or very low PTR.

Question 39

How do you keep up with the latest trends and best practices in tech recruiting?

Answer 39

• Primarily based on candidate feedback.
• Via direct/indirect network.

Question 40

Describe a time you had to hire for a leadership position within your team. What qualities were you looking for, and how did you assess them?

Answer 40

Technical:
- OO Design
- System Design

Non-Technical
- Coaching
- Project management
- Roadmap planning
- Conflict resolution.

Question 41

How do you assess cultural fit without compromising on the importance of diversity and varied perspectives?

Answer 41

• Identify the key areas to assess and define the question set for all candidates.
• Keep the questions open-ended so candidates can share stories in different ways.
• Interview training: Leadership rounds are done by staff+ folks and highly trained.
• Detailed feedback: Interviewers must write detailed feedback for leadership round. These can be reviewed later by HM and others in the panel to reduce bias.