How We Built Our Team

EPISODE #17: Winning with Sourcing: Shensi Ding, CEO and Co-founder of Merge, Shares Their Secret Sauce to Hiring A Skills and Culture Fit Every Time

This week, we’re joined by Shensi Ding, CEO and co-founder of Merge. Merge offers unified APIs that allow developers to integrate once to offer a full category of integrations. Many companies have returned to the office recently or offer hybrid arrangements, but Shensi has always been a big believer in 100% in-person work. The Merge team is based in New York… and most of them were invited to be there. In this episode, Shensi shares how sourcing remains critical to Merge’s recruiting strategy (even amidst an influx of applications) and why hiring managers own it rather than recruiters. It’s pretty evident that Shensi is passionate about the culture at Merge. She ensures that junior team members feel comfortable to bring up ideas and everyone’s a joy to work with. There’s a “no asshole policy” — and it starts with hiring really good people. How? She gives us the breakdown on the Merge interview process and how they’ve approached hiring for skills AND culture fit, when the bar for both is pretty dang high. Learn more about Merge at merge.dev. Follow Shensi on LinkedIn to get connected: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shensiding/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/shensiding/].

EPISODE #16: Addressing Humanity’s Talent Problem: Tigran Sloyan, CEO and Co-founder of CodeSignal, Shares How We Can Better Evaluate Talent

This week, we’re joined by Tigran Sloyan, CEO and co-founder of CodeSignal, for a unique conversation about skills. Tigran identifies that talent is the biggest problem humanity has to solve — and how we identify and assess skills today is broken. He founded CodeSignal, a leading technical interview and assessment platform to help companies go “Beyond the Noise” with early-stage assessments, technical screens, and live coding interviews. He shares how to mitigate bias in assessments, balancing hiring for demonstrated skills vs. ability to learn and grow, and the importance of anchoring to hard skills.   Tigran is also a frequent industry keynote, a TED speaker, and a thought leader in the technical hiring industry, commenting on trends in talent acquisition, diversity, and innovation. Follow Tigran on LinkedIn to follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tigransloyan [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tigransloyan]. Learn more about CodeSignal at codesignal.com [http://codesignal.com].

EPISODE #15: People Strategy Through The Stages: Dave Carhart of Lattice Shares How to Build a Proactive People Strategy From Early Co Through IPO

In this week’s episode, we talked to Dave Carhart. He’s a fractional HR executive and HR tech advisor who is currently the VP of People Strategy at Lattice. He previously led the People teams at Lattice as they scaled 5x and at Branch Metrics as they scaled 3x. He led Mulesoft’s team through their IPO and acquisition by salesforce for 20x ARR. And before moving into startups, he spent several years at HP, which was over 300,000 employees at the time. Dave has essentially seen it all. And he’s been focused on people the entire time. We dive into the weeds of Dave’s experience across these different stages of company growth — and in the process, unlock his advice for how to build a people strategy that supports your business strategy at all stages of growth. Whether you’re hiring your first 100 employees or preparing for an IPO, this is an episode you won’t want to skip. Find Dave on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davecarhart/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/davecarhart/] or reach out via email at dave@lattice.com [dave@lattice.com] to connect!

EPISODE #14: Breaking Down the Interview Process: How Vivian Wang, CEO and Founder of Landed, Hires for Aptitude and Experience in a 100% Remote Environment

In this episode, we talked to Vivian Wang, CEO and solo founder of Landed, an end-to-end recruiting platform that transforms how companies hire hourly candidates. They’ve helped hundreds of thousands of workers get jobs at companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s. With a big mission, Vivian shares how Landed hires top talent based on both aptitude and experience. They’ve designed an interview process that filters for their 5 operating principles and ensures late stage candidates are fully bought in. Vivian’s tips are helpful to any founder or hiring leader designing interview loops to hire in line with their values and driving a transparent process for candidates. Vivian breaks down all of Landed’s key interview steps and ‘counter-sell’ offer strategy as well as the guidelines she uses to govern a hyper fast-moving early startup team. You can find Vivian on LinkedIn here [https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivian-wang-b0a67a43/] or reach out via email at vivian@gotlanded.com [vivian@gotlanded.com]. She’d love to get in touch!

EPISODE #13: Startup Hiring Done Right: The Winning Strategies Talent Advisor Noah Wisnia Has Used to Help Over 500 Startups Hire

In this episode, we sat down with Noah Wisnia, a relationship-driven recruiter with successful hires at over 550 startups. He shares the scoop on where most startups go wrong with hiring and how to avoid those common pitfalls. He shares tangible tips to help you build a more effective recruiting process that actually drives results. He also talked us through how he uses tech-enabled hiring tools to spend more time on what matters — building relationships. Key Takeaways: * The job description — what most people get wrong, why it matters, and what to do instead * The importance of clear communication when defining roles * Trusting experts and hiring the right people for the job * How to treat hiring as a team sport involving recruiters, hiring managers, and founders * Strategies for re-engaging candidates who may be a good fit in the future * Using tech to streamline hiring and create the best experiences for everyone involved Noah Wisnia spent the first half of his career in Product Management before becoming a relationship-first recruiter. He’s grown startup teams 300%+ YoY through seamless tech-enabled hiring with hires at over 550 startups. You can find Noah Wisnia on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahwisnia/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahwisnia/]. Don’t hesitate to reach out!