Recruiting Flashcards
(41 cards)
How many candidates have you hired, and for what positions?
What is your org structure? Seniority and Diversity.
How do you filter candidate resumes?
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.
Did you ever change your process for filtering resumes? What & Why? What did you learn from it?
- Being more flexible with YoE requirements
- Focusing more on soft skills and achievements
- Relying less on Schools
What’s your strategy to build a diverse team? What have and what haven’t worked so far?
- 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.
Have you ever done sourcing? How do you do it?
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
How do you activate candidates? What strategy worked?
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.
If a candidate you reached out to says they aren’t interested, what do you do?
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.
What’s your strategy for closing a candidate?
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.
Tell me a situation where you closed a tough candidate.
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.
Tell me a situation where you failed to close a candidate. What would you do differently?
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.
How do you partner with recruiting?
- 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.
What recruiting metrics do you observe? Why?
- Response rate.
- Pass-Through Rate
- Dropout Rate
- Offer Acceptance Rate
- Candidate experience (post interview feedback)
- Diversity metrics
- Quality of hire.
What challenges have you faced in recruiting? How do you solve them?
Response Rate: EM sourcing helped.
D&I ration: Changed sourcing strategy.
PTR rate: Standardized our hiring bars and questions we ask.
Tell some creative approaches to recruiting you have taken.
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.
Tell some approaches to recruiting that didn’t work for you. What did you learn?
Sourcing with generic templates didn’t work.
Parties post-conference (like GDC) did almost nothing.
Recruiting partner asking technical questions for screening.
Have you had difficulty in closing a particular position? What did you do?
- 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.
How do you gain an edge on your competition for closing candidates?
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.
How do you retain engineers in your team?
- 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.
How do you anticipate if someone is at risk of quitting? What would you do?
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.
Were you ever able to retain anyone after they shared their intent to quit?
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.
Can you provide an overview of the current and past teams you’ve managed, including their size and growth trajectories?
How many external hires have you overseen in the past year? How does this compare to internal promotions or transfers?
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.
What are the primary strategies you’ve employed for recruiting top talent, and how have they evolved over time?
- Sourcing: EM receives higher response.
- Sales Call:
- Role-based Hiring: Staff+
