Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:24:32 · Adam Ward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:24:32] S1: Yeah, and there are tools and there's LinkedIn, there's all these things too. But I think the most valuable one is the most time-intensive one, which is spending time and digging into people's networks. We've shared this before, but people on my team whose entire job is to dig into our current employees networks. You could automate that. You could use an AI tool and walk them through a facilitation of it, but nothing beats you and I sitting down every other week for six weeks and diving into people. You're like, "Hey, last session you gave me these three names. I tracked down and then... But what about this person?" You're like, "Oh yeah, they were great too." I'm like, "Oh, what was good?" So you go back to back. "By the way, I'm also holding you accountable for you sending out notes. And what did they say?" "Oh, they didn't reply. You're going to send another note?" And so kind of this one-to-one, hand-to-hand cultivating of signal I think is really important. Of course, those signals go into a system and a database, but the extraction I think is a hugely personal and effective approach. [00:25:43] S0: This all sounds very time-intensive and slow and lots of work. There's a reason companies don't hire this way, treat everyone as an exec because they're not execs. They're IC engineers, PMs. How do you talk about that trade-off of taking this approach knowing that it's going to take a lot more time and effort?
00:25:43 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:25:43] S0: This all sounds very time-intensive and slow and lots of work. There's a reason companies don't hire this way, treat everyone as an exec because they're not execs. They're IC engineers, PMs. How do you talk about that trade-off of taking this approach knowing that it's going to take a lot more time and effort? [00:26:03] S1: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I usually will ask a question, "So founder, in all the things are important to you, where does talent fall into that list?" And like, "Ah, it's number one. Talent is the most important thing." So if talent is the number one thing, it's not about time or this is where the focus should be. And so if talent is number one, then there should be no obstacles in terms of effort or resourcing or time put in to get there because that is paramount to your success. You just said that objectively. And so if both can't be true, you can't say, "Hey, it's the most important thing and I'm going to outsource it," or, "I'm going to hand it over to a recruiting organization to do." If it's the number one thing, that is your focus. [00:26:57] S0: Hearing that, obviously correct. Why would you not do that? And then there's like, "Holy shit, everything's on fire all the time. I have to make time for all this stuff, all these meetings." And it's just like, is there anything you do to help keep a founder and a team on track and just sticking to this plan knowing it's so much work and time?
00:26:57 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:26:57] S0: Hearing that, obviously correct. Why would you not do that? And then there's like, "Holy shit, everything's on fire all the time. I have to make time for all this stuff, all these meetings." And it's just like, is there anything you do to help keep a founder and a team on track and just sticking to this plan knowing it's so much work and time? [00:27:13] S1: Yeah. I mean, typically the founder's keeping the company on track around that, the very best companies. And part of it, keeping on track means keeping top of mind. There's also the adage of what gets measured gets done. So if it's an important thing, we measure it just like we might measure uptime or we might measure customer satisfaction or we might measure revenue and we hold those teams accountable. We also hold hiring managers and leaders and organizations accountable to hiring. And so keeping it top of mind, but putting in the right systems around rewards and recognition and all those things around it will help people keep it as a priority. But if you aren't measuring it, they will hand that over. They will shirk that responsibility to somewhere else. [00:28:00] S0: Yeah. One of your big pet peeves is having the recruiters... not basically empowering the recruiters and hiring managers not being deeply involved in the process.
00:28:00 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:28:00] S0: Yeah. One of your big pet peeves is having the recruiters... not basically empowering the recruiters and hiring managers not being deeply involved in the process. [00:28:10] S1: Yeah. I think a lot of companies, recruiting owns the hiring goal. And I've yet to be in a company where recruiters are making hiring decisions. So these things are in conflict. Hiring managers or leaders or committees are making hiring decisions. And I feel like the recruiter's goal is really about helping provide confidence to that hiring manager to make the right decision. They're a confidence engine. They're not a decision-making engine. And so I see a lot of companies where they lose the thread is when they essentially hand over the function of recruiting, the act of recruiting to a function of recruiting. And so no one should care more about a hire. No one gets the joy or the pain of a good and bad hire than that hiring manager and that team. So why then is a recruiter or recruiting organization holding that accountability when they don't have the decision-making, let alone the benefits or pain or cost of a good or bad hire? [00:29:18] S0: I want to come back to this. It's like a different funnel, but I'll call it a funnel. Would you still describe it as a funnel, but the funnel of non-doom? Is there another term? Because it's still a funnel. [00:29:26] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Not all funnels are bad, so yeah. [00:29:29] S0: Funnel of talent density. [00:29:31] S1: Yeah.
00:29:31 · Adam Ward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:29:31] S1: Yeah. [00:29:32] S0: So coming back to the how to discover the best people. Luckily, there's this incredible post out there about how Cursor approaches hiring by Brie Wolfson that was very helpful in helping me prep for this talk. And another tactic that she shared of how Cursor finds the best people is there's a Slack channel called Hiring Ideas. And people on the team just share, "Here's someone we might want to hire." [00:29:54] S1: It's super active. We could pull it up right now. [00:29:58] S0: Let's check it out. Let's see if people are recommending.
00:29:58 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:29:58] S0: Let's check it out. Let's see if people are recommending. [00:30:01] S1: Yeah, maybe we can get some audience input on it. So the general gist is someone will come across something impressive, a product, a post, overheard at a barbecue, and they'll drop that person's profile or that X post in hiring channel and it becomes a rallying effect around, "Ooh, I've heard of them. Here's what I think is compelling to them." You almost create this quick strategy of how we might engage this person. And imagine working at a place where the company just is wired that way, where people are excited and enthusiastic and love the thrill, the hunt, and to go want to work with great people. And so we're just very fortunate to have that as a ongoing tailwind. But that was an early expectation, if you will. An early, almost like, how do I say? It's almost like social credibility in the company to be able to surface someone here is great, and then people come in and help out and try to get them into the process. So as recruiting, that's such a... Like, "We are not initiating that. We're not dropping in a profile. Does anyone know this person? This is non-recruiting folks in the company dropping in ideas and then the company rallying behind it."