Aug-2020 as the world was going through the peak of pandemic, I decided to switch jobs and take up a new assignment. One major part of the new assignment was to recruit and build an Engineering team in India (Hyderabad). I had some stiff targets in terms of hiring, building teams and setting the bar high in terms of quality.
I would be honest here, I was jittery at the beginning with doubts roiling my mind — being pandemic times will people be ready to change jobs? The company is pretty new, not a well known brand, who is going to risk moving out of a cushy job and try out untested waters? Will I be able to hire top quality 40–50 engineers? I had built multiple teams in my previous job. Acting on my desperate survival instincts my first resort was to make a list of people in network whom I can approach and bring them on board, whom I felt will most probably may join.
As I was settling into the new role, I started reaching out to my potential dream-list of super stars and hoping to sell the brand and on-board them quickly. But almost 90% of people I reached out were cold, either the fear of uncertainty due to the tough times or losing out of vesting RSUs or unknown brand or some other reason held them back. So was it the end of world? Where am I going to get the talent?
But I did not lose hope. The next thing I did was to bring in two Talent acquisition (TA) partners whom I had worked with previously. That was a great move, as I was grappling with my new job, learning new tech-stack, domain, writing requisitions, setting up interview panels, conducting interviews sourcing talent was an equally important job and I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do.
With my TA team in place, we started creating projects in LinkedIn recruiter and the TA team started adding candidates into those projects. We went with multi-pronged strategy like looking for hiring from specific companies or targeting by technology or looking for high-flyers who had something to show-case outside the job in terms of a strong stackoverflow or github profile or a blog of their own etc.
The TA team was given a de-brief on how to sell the technology and kind of work we are doing in their first call with the candidate. Then for really potential candidates fitting our roles, I personally scheduled a 30 minutes call detailing our tech stack, our scaling problems, our architecture and kind of stuff they can do if they join. This worked to a great extent and we got a good pipeline of people who were willing to give interviews. Our awesome interview panelists were our great brand ambassadors too selling our vision and work at every stage.
As I complete my seven month stint I am more than happy with the kind of people we got on-board, more importantly sitting remote we could create a buzz in job market and people have started noticing us. In terms of building the brand still we have a long way to go and we are working towards that.
As I reflect on how this journey of tech-hiring for a unknown/new brand took off by making baby steps here are few closing thoughts to share
- Imagination — Making up plans & imagining them to work out to the precision is not going to happen always. But this doesn’t have to be a deterrent for your imagination, there are unlimited opportunities outside and I have no business to constrain myself or my imagination for attracting anyone from anywhere.
- Fear — When the plans you imagined don’t work to the tee, it is not the time to panic. Fear is quite unfounded, it is just a by-product of your mind projecting a future based on the data which it already has. But outside reality is far bigger than the data in your mind and there are tons of good talent all over the country and we just need to strive genuinely to attract and hire them instead of losing hope.
- Brand — A reputed brand name definitely helps, but that is not the end of it. Quality of work matters, future potential of company matters, work culture matters. What problems you solve? Is your company potent for an IPO? Will your technology/problem space be fillip to the career of new person joining? All these questions weigh in too along with the brand.
So is everything hunky-dory and is it just a cake walk to on-board a 100 member Engineering org in India. Hell no, it is definitely not a bed of roses there are unique challenges and learnings which comes along, more about it next time.
