Mastering The Art Of Recruiting
From the 2019 SFELC Summit, Aditya Agarwal on the role of engineering leaders in recruiting.
Recruiting and hiring great employees is a priority for every company at any stage of their growth. Yet, without question, recruiting is difficult to master. In this episode of Greymatter, we share a fireside discussion from the 2019 SFELC Summit on recruiting and hiring. In conversation with Dan Portillo, Dropbox’s former CTO Aditya Agarwal shares his thoughts on how to recruit without having an established brand, advice to effectively sell your company to candidates and guidance for closing hires.
At Dropbox, Aditya oversaw the various engineering teams including new product development and infrastructure. Earlier in his career, Aditya was hired as one of the first engineers at Facebook where he oversaw the development of core products such as News Feed, Search, and Photos as Director of Product Engineering.
SFELC is a curated community of 2500+ engineering leaders evolving the way leadership is implemented in the tech industry. Greylock Partners is the VC partner for SFELC, and sponsored the annual SFELC Summit which hosted top industry leaders to share management best practices and leadership advice.
Below is an edited transcript of key points from Dan and Aditya’s fireside discussion.
Recruiting Without A Brand
“Even if your company does not have a brand, you can still attract candidates looking to solve interesting problems. You have to start with the basics though. You can be good leaders and have good company culture. It’s not even really about the brand. If a candidate cares about the work you’re doing, they might work with you. If a candidate doesn’t care about the work you’re doing, probably a good thing that they don’t work with you.”- Aditya Agarwal
Do Right By The Candidate
“Whenever I meet a candidate at the top of the funnel, my only goal in that conversation is to do right by the candidate. I take this to an extreme. During our conversation, if I know that my company is not right for this candidate I let them know of another company who is better fit and I make the necessary introductions. My take is that if you have discovered that with Dropbox for example, productivity software is not what the candidate really wants to work on, why would you want them in the company? Instead, do right by the candidate and pay it forward. You’ll be surprised by the network you end up building. Every one of the candidates I’ve referred to a different company, has sent me someone else in their network that is a better fit for my company.” — Aditya Agarwal
How To Effectively Sell Your Company To Candidates
“If you’re at the process of closing or selling a candidate, be super transparent about all of the things that you are not happy with in your professional life right now. Both yourself individually and potentially the company as well, because candidates are perceptive. If you provide too much rosy information and don’t provide them with ‘real talk’, candidates will discount everything else you say.” — Aditya Agarwal
The Role Of Engineering Leaders In The Recruiting Process
“I wish I had not promoted people who did not know how to recruit. I think this might be a slightly controversial take on it, but I believe that too many engineering leaders don’t fundamentally own the fact that whether or not your company hits your engineering recruiting number is your responsibility. I’ve been surprised as to the lack of ownership in Silicon Valley, about the fact that recruiting is such a core part of what the role is of an early stage engineering leader. You need to really own and internalize that recruiting is a key part of your job.” — Aditya Agarwal
Greymatter shares perspectives and stories from some of the world’s top technology entrepreneurs and business leaders. If you want to learn even more about hiring and recruiting, listen to Increasing Your Team’s Capacity To Win and The Art of Interviewing 10x Engineers with Grand Round’s CTO and SVP of Engineering, Wade Chambers.
