Engaging Hiring Managers For Better Screening and a More Positive Candidate Experience

Summary

Operating internationally, with its research and development team distributed throughout the United States, Canada, and Israel, Semperis stands at the forefront of cybersecurity as a premier identity-driven cyber resilience and threat mitigation platform, catering to both cross-cloud and hybrid environments.

As a distributed people-driven organization with a learner talent acquisition team, Semperis places a significant emphasis on transparency and engagement between hiring managers, recruiters, and candidates, and maintaining a positive culture across its distributed teams.

In this episode of The Speed to Hire Show, Anna Taylor, the Director of Global Talent Acquisition and Recruiting at Semperis, delves into the nuances of building an effective hiring framework including involving stakeholders early and often, developing a more complete Ideal Candidate Profile before you begin the recruitment process, and focusing on authentic asynchronous connections.

Notes

As the Director of Global Talent Acquisition and Recruiting at Semperis, Anna Taylor leads Semperis’ efforts to attract top-tier talent in cybersecurity and Identity Access Management globally. Her approach is people-centric, which influences both her recruitment strategies and leadership philosophy.

Semperis and Taylor are committed to ensuring a seamless and positive experience for candidates throughout the hiring process, continuously adapting and improving as Semperis expands.

Josh Tolan: All right, Ana, well, thank you so much for joining me today. We’ll love to get started. And if you could just give the audience a little bit of background about yourself and how you got to where you’re at today.

Anna Taylor: Yeah, thank you so much. So I’m Anna Taylor. I am the director of global talent acquisition for Semperis. We’re a cybersecurity company. the leader in hybrid identity protection. And I think if someone were to look at my LinkedIn profile, they’d probably think to themselves, like, how did this person get that job? But basically, the way I got here is by a lot of startup work.

So right out of college, I worked for a really small organization that was owned by a couple actually. And I quickly got to do a little bit of everything. When you’re that small, you really get to get your hands dirty and get involved in absolutely everything, all aspects of the business. And recruiting has always been a piece of it. I then moved on from there to a family owned business and eventually found myself in tech, but always in these very small organizations where I would get to do everything and anything that you could imagine.

and wear many different hats working directly with the owners. you know, ultimately I ended up being introduced to Semperis by kind of a friend of a friend and recruiting has always been a piece of what I’ve done. So I thought, you know, that’s what I can contribute to this small business. At the time we were about 140 employees. So I thought, okay, great, my sweet spot again. And, you know, here I am. And I never imagined we would be as big as we are, but now we’re at 500.

And I’ve gotten to specialize in, you know, something that’s always been a part of my career anyway, so it’s been really fun.

Josh Tolan: Wow, that is an incredible amount of growth. How long have you been with the company?

Anna Taylor: I’ve been here since January of 2022, so I’m starting my fourth year.

Josh Tolan: Wow, so from 140 to 500 in just a few years. And when you started, were you strictly brought in for talent acquisition or were you focusing on broader HR as well?

Anna Taylor: That’s a great question. So typically in other experiences, I was brought in for broader HR or operations and recruiting ended up being kind of just a piece of it. But here at Sempris, we very consciously brought me on just for talent acquisition. So that was always gonna be my focus is just talent acquisition. And it has really remained that way as well, because we have a fairly robust, know, people operations team.

Josh Tolan: Yep. And when you were brought in, there plans to scale as much as you guys did?

Anna Taylor: Wow, no, not that I was aware of. Maybe somebody else knew we would. But when I was brought in, it was January that year. And I thought we were going to hire maybe 80 people throughout the year, which would have been a lot, right? That would have been like a still kind of a really big size of hiring. But then in May of 2022, we actually received our Series C $200 million funding round. And suddenly it was

Josh Tolan: haha

Anna Taylor: All right, Anna, go hire a few more recruiters. We’re going to really do this thing. And we doubled that number and just hit the ground running.

Josh Tolan: Wow. Well, yeah, a $200 million of series C will definitely be a catalyst for some hiring. So how did you, you know, that was in January. So first of all, you’re brand new to the role. And then in May, it’s like, here we go. We’ve got all this funding. We need to go hire people to hire people. How did that, obviously that changed probably what some of your priorities were at the time. What was your approach? I mean, that’s like a pretty big ask mid-year to somebody that’s, you know, five months in.

Anna Taylor: Yeah.

Anna Taylor: Yeah, I mean, I think all the roles I’ve had leading up to that kind of helped me because often the approach is just to tackle one thing at a time, right? It’s just slow it all down, everything that’s happening around you and tackle it just one time, one part at a time. And so while I’m trying to build my own team, I’m also holding a full rec load, right? And trying to help hiring managers and things like that. But I knew that we had to slow down and kind of pause before any of us would be able to be successful at that. So I decided to really…

take a step back and look at the company as a whole, get to know as many hiring managers as I could. In my first 30 days at Sempris, I think I booked myself one-on-ones with almost every single manager that we had at the company, including all the way up to CEO, right? And I just wanted to know everybody. I wanted to know everything about everything.

And then I created a process. And so I put together like a very quick kind of slide deck that showed, you know, these are the steps we’re going to try and follow so that we can all stay organized on the same page with the amount of volume that you all need. And I did a sort of a road show in a way you could call it with all the managers where I presented that to them. And I said, when you are ready to recruit and when it’s kind of your turn, you know, to work with my team, this is how it’s going to look. And this is what we’re going to do. And we were all sort of holding each other’s hands through it.

A lot of these managers were similar situation to me where they also didn’t expect to have grown to 10 on their team that year, but they did. And so we sort of had to help each other through it. But that’s the only way to go, right? Like take it one step at a time, set the framework so that then you can manage through the speed and chaos that you have to get through.

Josh Tolan: Yeah, I absolutely love that approach. think, first of all, the fact that in your first 30 days, you did all of those meetings with hiring managers just to get to know them and for them to get to know you is a great way of building trust. But I love the approach of building that standardized playbook for how we’re going to hire, because I think the challenges with hiring managers is they’re hiring intermittently throughout the year. Like you said, many of them probably didn’t expect to grow their team in the way that they had to grow their team after you guys raised the Series C.

So all of a sudden hiring managers are thrusted into a need where they have to hire for their team, whether it’s for growth or for a backfill or whatever. And since many of them may have not hired in so long, they need some like core hiring principles to fall back on. So you’re not starting from scratch with every single hiring manager when you’re going from, you know, 140 to 500 plus, you know, people in a matter of a few years, how

Over time, you know, that’s obviously things you did right when you started and you developed a really good framework. Over time though, how do you maintain that continuity with your hiring managers to make sure they don’t lose that muscle or that comprehension of how you guys hire? So when it is time for them to hire again, they can jump right back on the saddle and be a great partner for you.

Anna Taylor: Yeah, that’s a great question. So it has been difficult because not only have all the teams grown really big, but we’ve also gotten new managers. So every time a new manager comes on board, I take time to kind of introduce myself to them. Often I’m the one that hired them, so that’s kind of easy. And then I’ll tell them the framework. You know, I share a lot of things that we’ve refined throughout the years as to, you know, the different forms.

that I’ll need you to fill out so that we make sure we get everything right. And then every single role starts with a super personalized kickoff conversation. So if there’s anything that that person missed, maybe we haven’t hired for them in six months, they’re going to get it all refreshed again in that kickoff conversation, or some companies call it the intake call. Our intake call is not just a list of questions. We’re really understanding what that hiring manager needs.

really digging into the profile for the candidate, but then in turn educating them a little bit on our process and what we are going to offer throughout. Hopefully that answers your question.

Josh Tolan: Yeah, it does. So it sounds like your intake is a bit of you educating them or refreshing them on the type of process that you aim to run. And it’s also, you know, in reverse where they’re educating you on what they’re looking for, what they need in the role. How do you guys collaborate though, if it’s a brand new role, somebody, the hiring manager has never hired before somebody that you guys as a company haven’t recruited before. How do you figure out what that ideal candidate profile looks like together?

Anna Taylor: Yeah, that’s a great question. So we actually just recently went through this and we’ve gone through it a few times because as the company has grown, we’ve had to expand globally into some markets that I’ve personally never even recruited in before. So like very recently we started hiring in Brazil, for example. That’s a very, very recent position. And I have a recruiter that’s been with me for over three years, like almost the same amount of time that I’ve been here. And I super trusted her with that position. She just jumped right in.

learned the market, did some research, did a lot of sourcing, and just kind of had conversations. And that’s always what we do. I know it’s time consuming, but it’s all about having conversations with people who live in the market, getting to know the hiring managers a little bit better, and looking for expertise wherever you can. So there’s only so much research you can do online. I always think the best thing is to actually get on a call with someone, right? Open that Zoom.

Book a time, even if the candidate’s not the right fit, every single time you talk to someone, you’re gonna learn more and more about that new market, or you’re gonna learn more and more about that specific position. And then as a recruiter, the next time you need to recruit for that role, you’re gonna be super ready. So that’s kind of the method. Yes, it’s kind of time consuming, a lot of these things that we do, but it’s important time, it’s valuable time.

Josh Tolan: Yep, and that makes a lot of sense. And so you start having these conversations, you know, early on in the hiring process for these new roles, what’s the cadence then like with the hiring manager? So you guys are recalibrating and making sure you’re looking for, you know, that right type of profile, because I have to imagine that you start some hiring processes, you have your first five to 10 conversations or your source, your first five to 10 candidates.

And maybe sometimes you might run into some misalignment where we’re a little off base on what we’re looking for. So what’s that rhythm look like with your hiring managers?

Anna Taylor: Yeah, that’s also really good question. So I think part of what the struggle can be for some companies is that it is really hard to do what we do at a big scale. But because of the size we are, we’re still able to give a lot of attention to our hiring managers. So we use Teams here. We’re Microsoft everything at Semperius, right? So we’re on Teams all the time with them. They’re welcome to contact us anytime that they want. It’s not like, talk to me only once a week.

We talk all the time. And then there are other hiring managers that do want just a one weekly touch point, right? So we kind of customize based on the hiring manager style. Some hiring managers are very active in the hiring process here at Sempris. They want to review resumes with us. They want to read all of our notes. They want to review every single time a candidate goes through the interview process. And then other hiring managers are very happy to just kind of let us do our thing and then call them when we have the candidate for them, right?

we just go with the flow, whatever the hiring manager prefers.

Josh Tolan: Yeah, I imagine though that’s a challenge though, right? To balance the very active hiring manager and a very, I don’t want to say passive, but maybe more deferral based hiring manager where they want you to run more of the process. So how do you guys make sure that you balance that in a way where you still get to the right outcome? Because essentially you’re running, you know, two different playbooks, you know, at the same time, maybe across multiple hiring managers when you guys are scaling at the way you have.

Anna Taylor: Yes.

Anna Taylor: Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question, right? The only answer I have for that is really the customization. We have to do it. Every team demands something different, right? Like if I’m hiring for a sales engineer, that interview process is so different and so much lengthier than hiring for a customer success manager. So there has to be a different playbook for different teams. I really don’t think that talent acquisition has a one size fits all kind of process.

Again, I’ve really never worked for companies that are thousands of employees, right? So maybe at those size of companies, you have to have a very uniform approach, no matter the position. But I think at our size and for also the quality of candidate we’re looking for, it really does have to be customized per hiring manager, per team, per department. And we just kind of make it happen. I also do try to keep the recload low. So the sweet spot for my teams is going to be anywhere from six to 10 openings at a time.

If a role needs heavy heavy sourcing, obviously I want to be closer to that six number Whereas you have other companies that are having recruiters be I don’t know like at 40 recs per per time like that’s I can’t wrap my head around how they handle that successfully

Josh Tolan: Yeah, it’s just gotta be a copy and paste hiring process at that point. So it sounds like your playbook then is more of like what you’ve defined and what you train managers on are really like the principles, foundations, values you have in your hiring process. And that’s like the thing you need everybody to be aligned on. But then the reality is once you go into that intake and start collaborating with the hiring manager and learn more about the job, everything around that box of core principles is really has to be flexible and adaptable.

Anna Taylor: Yeah.

Josh Tolan: you know, for your team and for the hiring managers.

Anna Taylor: Definitely. have to be. It’s a startup, right? That’s kind of the definition of the game.

Josh Tolan: Got it. All right, so yeah, yeah, totally. Right, I guess, yeah, right. That’s just probably innately in the values of your organization. So I’m sure everybody’s down with that. And probably one of the reasons why they, you know, want to join a company like yours in the first place. All right, so let’s go back to the team. Cause you mentioned like some different roles and how the process varies. And you also mentioned your team and the capacity of them. Can you give me an idea of like what the makeup is of your team specifically?

Anna Taylor: Sure, so right now I have four recruiters that report to me. Two of them are in Israel, one in Canada, and one in the US based out of Dallas. And I’m really trying to have them each sort of specialize in a certain area. yes, technical talent acquisition partner is definitely a title that we have. Global talent acquisition partner is a title that we have. And so I’m trying to have them aligned to certain hiring managers so that they can really build that trust and build that relationship.

recruiters with me, she’s been working with the same hiring managers for three years now. So it’s pretty rare that she can’t guess what they want, you know, and that kind of what I’m trying to build here. Even when someone new comes on board, we did have, you know, two new recruiters join us just this last quarter of 2024. They jumped right in because I want them to get to know people immediately. I want people to know who they are. I want the hiring managers to trust them.

And that’s the type of recruiter that we also want on our team. No fear to talk to anybody and everyone and to ask all the right questions.

Josh Tolan: Yep, makes sense. And are you pairing them with hiring managers based on the function those hiring managers are in within the business or how do you come up with that matching?

Anna Taylor: Yeah, good question. So it’s definitely function and it also can sometimes be regional because time zones are really difficult, right? So I do have to look at that, but it’s mostly function. So in Israel, for example, one of the two recruiters that’s there, she focuses completely on the tech industry in Israel. So it’s a very competitive landscape. She’s hiring software engineers. She knows the market there.

And then the other one is very global. He’s working throughout Europe on more go-to-market function and things like that. So it can be really both functional and regional. There’s a lot of things to look at, but eventually you start to see a trend as to which positions they’re better at and which hiring managers they match with.

Josh Tolan: Yep, that makes sense. So you mentioned a couple different positions. You mentioned software engineers, you mentioned sales engineers, you mentioned customer success managers, and the hiring process for all of those is different. Is there like a baseline hiring? Like what is a typical, and I know the answer to this is there’s really no typical because it’s customized, but like what’s the baseline? What does it generally look like to hire for you guys?

Anna Taylor: Okay.

Anna Taylor: Yeah, so it is hard to say like a full interview cycle what that looks like. But I will say that every single cycle, unless it’s in Israel, starts out exactly the same. And that’s with a video chat. So that’s one thing that’s really important to me in our recruiting team. In Israel, they do prefer a phone call. So they’ll do a phone call as their first step and then a video call. But for all the rest of the world’s hiring, it always starts with a video chat. We want to see you. We want to know who we’re talking to. We want you to know who you’re talking to.

Right, it’s not like a call center that’s reaching out to you. It’s a recruiter from Sempris. So that personalized touch as your first touch point is really, really important to me and that’ll always be maintained across every department. Then the other calls could be virtual as well, always video. So no matter what the process is, the only time that you’re not actually speaking to a person is if you are a software engineer in North America, you take a coding.

test, right, which a lot of companies do, use codility. That’s the only time that you’re not actually talking to a person face to face.

Josh Tolan: Yep. And how much of that would you say is because you guys are a distributed company yourselves and you’re on video all the time, I imagine internally. So how much does that play a role into the desire to make sure you’re connecting with these candidates no matter where they’re at?

Anna Taylor: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it, right? So not just the fact that it’s just the culture and energy that we’re establishing, that we want to be connected and have FaceTime with each other. We are a distributed organization. I don’t live in the same city as any of my team, for example. So everything we do together is virtual. There’s a lot of people that still, even throughout all of COVID, didn’t really understand how to do that. And some people that don’t believe in this power of video.

but it’s really, really powerful. It really is totally worth it to just get on screen, talk, connect, act like you’re in the same room together, right? And that makes a huge difference in the interview process too. And it’s two ways, not just for us to get to know the candidate better, but for them to really see who they’re gonna be working with.

Josh Tolan: Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things I noticed in leading up to this call with you is you’re using video yourself on your own LinkedIn when you’re talking about open roles at the company. And we talked about this a little bit before, but I think it’s just a great way for people to see you, see a person from the talent acquisition team, hear you talk, how you talk about the open roles, how you talk about the company, but more importantly, just put a face to the name and, you know, make an authentic

asynchronous connection. When did you start doing that and what like drove you to start taking that initiative?

Anna Taylor: Yeah, so that’s a great question. Actually, I’ve always been a little bit active on LinkedIn. I don’t have a TikTok. I’m not super active on social media, just in my personal life in general. But I noticed, you know, if I’m going to be really going in all in on recruiting, I should figure out this LinkedIn thing. And so I really started posting, kind of sharing, making connections with people. And then because we use LinkedIn so heavily with Semperis, with our recruiting, I got invited to the LinkedIn Talent Connect conferences.

And each time I’ve gone, I’ve learned a few different things. the power of video is a consistent theme that comes up all the time. And I did start to think, we’re always doing video chats for every single interview. And video is really not that big of a deal. I’m sitting here in my home office, just doing it on my computer right now. It’s super easy. And so I started trying it out and giving people a taste of what it would be like to interview with us. I thought that that’s kind of what I was doing.

That’s the point. I’m not trying to be everybody’s recruiter or be like this big thought leader or something. My job is to recruit for Sempris. And so I thought, you know, I’ll tell people what it’s like to work at Sempris. It was really that simple. And that’s kind of like why I started.

Josh Tolan: Yeah, I think it’s great. look, like you, obviously you’re putting new roles out there and you’re trying to reach new candidates, but also there’s an effect of there’s previous candidates that you guys have connected with during previous hiring processes. There’s previous candidates that are following you or following your company just by the nature of connecting with you guys on LinkedIn at some point, you know, historically. And so by you putting this content out there in such an authentic way, you’re

you know, in essence, pulling some of these, you know, candidates back in because they’ll see those impressions on their feed just by the nature of being connected or following you. so I imagine there’s not only some poll effect of new candidates and a great way, you know, to send a video to somebody that’s applying her role so they can get to know you maybe before they talk to you or a member of your team, but also there’s an effect of pulling back in people that you guys had previously engaged with just because you’re putting yourself out there. And I think really that’s like a lesson for everybody is

to your point, hey, if we’re gonna do this recruiting thing, if we’re gonna be all in on hiring, if we have to grow the way that we’re expected to grow by the business, then we have to be all in as a recruiting team. And we have to be putting ourselves out there and doing everything we can to be making these authentic connections with candidates so we can position ourselves as an employer of choice, but also just make sure people know about who we are and what we have to offer because there’s just so much noise in the job market.

Anna Taylor: There really is. And I think that that’s one thing that I’m seeing from a lot of candidates too. There’s all these AI tools right now in the market, right? That are asking you to kind of videotape yourself answering questions. And then that video goes to a recruiter and then that recruiter watches your video and decides if you should move forward. know, there’s all these kind of very, inauthentic isn’t the right word, but like lack of connection, right? These very like disconnected kind of steps to create more efficiency in the recruiting process, which are being put out on the market for us being sold as like,

this is gonna make you so much faster to find the right person. Like this filtering tool is gonna make you faster. Everything’s about being faster. None of the tools are really focusing on being better, just being better recruiters, right? And just being better people and focusing on quality. It’s all focused on speed. So, you know, we do have a focus on speed. Obviously I don’t want fills to take months, but the quality is so much more important.

Josh Tolan: Yeah, totally. I mean, that’s the battle that every recruiting team faces is speed and quality and the trade-offs that you’re making between when you’re pursuing one versus the other. And to your point, like there just has to be a balance. Like the reality is the business needs the hire. It needs it when it needs it in order to hit the goals of the business. But the recruiting team.

Anna Taylor: Yeah.

Josh Tolan: and the hiring team, including the hiring manager need the necessary time to make sure that we find the right person because what’s the point of speed if we bring on the wrong person and they just turn over six months from now. That’s an even bigger drain on the business than taking a few extra days to run the hiring process. But there’s a balance like you can’t take too long either. You’re just never going to find the right person because the good talent is just going to be off the market. If your hiring process drags out too much. That’s like the classic thing I think every

Anna Taylor: I that was, yeah.

Josh Tolan: you company has to deal with. But I also think that’s why your approach to hiring in the methodical way that you approach hiring and think in the thought you put into how you make authentic connections with candidates at every step of the hiring process is so important. Because I think the reality is you can build a hiring process that is both efficient and moves really, really fast. And a lot of that comes from

like you mentioned in the beginning, slowing down earlier, slow, smooth, smooth as fast, and building a process to make sure that you have all the touch points and you can build in all the authenticity you want into those touch points, while at the same time, even using some of the tools that you mentioned that are maybe positioned more for efficiency, but if you figure out a way to blend those with some of the things you’re doing as well with your customer or your candidate touch points, I think it’s just a really good way to…

to move the hiring process along fast while still being able to maintain those Canada relationships and a really good experience.

Anna Taylor: Yeah, very true. I think one of the examples that you mentioned too is it is bringing in past candidates as well, because we do connect with them and the videos and they follow and they kind of see what’s happening. They’ve seen our growth. There’s multiple people that I just recently brought on board who I had met in 2022 when we were first going through our big like hiring blitz, right? And they were kind of watching and waiting for the right position to come up. Or maybe they were waiting for us to be more mature because they weren’t really brave enough to take the risk, you know, when we were that early. So

There’s always a time that is right for some candidates. And if you kind of stay top of mind in that way and you make that initial connection really strong, when they’re coming back and they are ready, they’re gonna come to you first, right? They’re gonna remember, wow, that was a really great experience. And I wanna check out what Sempris is doing.

Josh Tolan: Yep, absolutely. So I want to go back to the hiring process that we were talking about and the fact there are different stages and those stages vary depending on the position. you know, thinking about speed of the hiring process, how do you, during the intake process with hiring managers, determine what’s actually needed from an interview stage standpoint and to properly evaluate our candidates so we can make a thoughtful, smart decision about who we end up making an offer to?

Anna Taylor: So one of the things that has really, I think helped me over the last few years was I, again, I knew I was gonna be focusing on recruiting or talent acquisition only in this role. And so I got to really kind of focus myself and my learning a little bit more too. And I actually really loved learning about performance-based hiring, which is, know, most often people hear Lou Adler’s name associated with performance-based hiring, right? And so I even did some sessions with my team about it and…

In our intake conversations, we try to focus the hiring manager on that as well. So I know we’re hiring right now for a need. I understand that tomorrow a project is starting and you need this person yesterday. But if this person is hired, that’s a hire. That’s a long-term permanent full-time person. So more than just the project that’s starting tomorrow, what are they going to do for you in six months? What is this person going to be expected to do in one year? What is your performance review going to look like for them? So we’re really trying to encourage them to look at it that way.

and then work our way backwards. And when you work your way backwards, you start to recognize which members of the teams, for lack of a better way, like opinion or evaluation is gonna be most impactful to knowing if that person is the right fit, right? So we actually don’t do peer interviews here at Sempris. We prefer that leaders lean on each other to really select kind of the hiring team.

And so when we’re talking to that one hiring manager, we’ll say, okay, does your leader need to interview? Do we need to have an extra technical step with maybe somebody in a cross-departmental function that works with you a lot? And we’ll flush that all out in the beginning. But it’s all with a longer term thought in mind.

Josh Tolan: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. First of all, shout out to Luke, great guy, great thought leader in the space. So first of all, I love that approach. I think that’s a great way of setting expectations and really getting to, you know, knowing what success will look like for this person when they are a long-term hire and you kind of back your way into, okay, how do we evaluate for the skills and behavioral competencies that are needed in order to get them to that point?

Anna Taylor: That’s great.

Josh Tolan: To your point, bringing in other leaders, I’m sure, and growing the business the way that you have, it’s a highly cross-functional business. So that’s why it’s important to have other stakeholders involved in the process. So all that makes sense. I’m curious from a hiring manager standpoint, if we go back to the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about how you guys scaled so quickly and a lot of it came out of nowhere when you got, mean, you were obviously planning to hire a lot of people going from 140. I think you said you wanted to hire 80 people in that first year, but you get the funding in May and now it’s like, all right.

it’s on, we gotta hire a ton more people than we thought. So now you have hiring managers that are thrusted into a process hiring more than they expected to or hiring just in general when they maybe didn’t expect to hire. And so you have these, all these different hiring managers that are thrusted in the process, all these different hiring managers have varying levels of hiring experience and therefore probably varying levels of confidence. So as you work through,

Process with them you define these interview stages you have candidates moving through How do you prevent that? Let’s call it hiring manager creep where? They you know the the thoughts creep in that they need to know more about this candidate. It’s like they’ve already gone through their interviews They’ve already done everything you guys said you needed to do to properly evaluate candidates But those thoughts start to creep in for the hiring manager of like I don’t want to make the wrong decision Can I talk to this person again?

Maybe we should do this again. Maybe we should have this person in the company, talk to them. I’m sure that happens for you guys all the time. How do you manage that?

Anna Taylor: It does. There are definitely some hiring managers. We love to call it FOMO, right? They want to see like anybody and everybody that’s on the market. I still very much push with my team that I prefer quality over quantity. So I’d much prefer that they’re bringing five super strong candidates that are hitting the mark, then have the hiring manager meet 10 people just because he or she wants to meet 10 people. Right. But I will say based on what you’re describing, I like to kind of call it like the magical debrief. So

at the end of the process, you’ve had maybe three candidates that made it all the way through to the final stage. And everybody loved them in the same way. I actually literally just had this happen like last week with one of my recruiters when we were kind of coaching through it. She had four candidates who all scored fours. That’s the top of like what we score. And she’s like, we have to hire somebody. What’s going on here? And so I told her, I said, get the debrief going. You put a debrief together, you all get into one room or one Zoom room, right? And you just say,

what you feel or what you think about each candidate’s evaluation. You look very objectively at all of the feedback and come to that decision together. And that kind of takes the pressure off of the hiring manager from feeling like they’re gonna make a terrible decision and everything’s on their shoulders. It’s not, it’s a hiring team. There were three other people in the process with you. It’s not just your decision. So in the debrief, sharing your feedback.

openly and verbally rather than just reading it on paper makes a huge difference. And often we’ve done that, right? Like you have some candidates who are really very, very equal and you have to pick one, get the debrief going, right? The magical debrief. There’s always going to be a decision. You don’t leave that debrief without a decision.

Josh Tolan: That was my next question is how do you make sure you don’t leave that meeting with no decision?

Anna Taylor: You don’t leave that debrief without an action item at least. So I shouldn’t say without a decision. So there are times where even in that debrief, you kind of still debate and might not agree, in which case you should have an action item at the end of the debrief. So maybe the action item is like, OK, we do need one more person to talk to this. Or maybe there was a flag that came up, know, Ana, hey, can your recruiting team just talk to them one more time, kind of ask a few questions. Maybe we’ll do a reference check and we’ll kind of dig into XYZ and that’ll help me make my choice, right?

Either way, there has to be an action item that’s going to lead to the decision. Otherwise, you’re dragging it out for no reason.

Josh Tolan: Totally. Yeah, I agree with that. You need to walk out of there with some action item that has some clear owner and clear deadline for when we need to actually get this done by, because to your point, you just can’t let it drag out. But I think the most important thing, as you mentioned, is ultimately you want to get to the best decision. So if you get into that debrief and ultimately you’re still in a tie and you need to go gather this very specific data point in order to get you over the hump to make that decision, then you go do it. But

Anna Taylor: Yes.

Josh Tolan: You got to walk out of there at least with an owner that knows how quickly they need to get said thing done. So you don’t have candidates just like waiting around for the next step and you potentially lose the people that are the tiebreaker in the first place. Yes.

Anna Taylor: Right. And then start all over again. That has definitely happened before as well, I will be honest. know, candidates are interviewing in multiple places and it’s just inevitable. It can definitely happen that you come down to two, but it’s two really strong, really impressive people that other companies also think are very strong and impressive. And if you wait too long, you could potentially lose them.

Josh Tolan: Yep. Yeah, I mean, that happens all the time at companies. That’s like the, you know, the hiring manager’s waffling on the decision, but that’s, that’s why you need things in place for when that scenario arises. Like if we go back again, like I think one of the things that you mentioned, and I think one of the things that’s led to a lot of your success in your recruiting career is your experience working in all these companies specifically in all areas of their operations and learning how to put together really methodical

Anna Taylor: Yeah, I’m

Josh Tolan: processes and part of building a methodical process is thinking about all the points of failure so we can address those before they become a point of failure. So oftentimes the tiebreaker scenario can become a point of failure because we end up waffling on decision. And the next thing you know, both candidates that we were trying to decide upon have taken other offers and to your point, you’re back at square one. So having a process, you call it the magical debrief by which you go and break those ties is really important.

How also though, at the beginning of the process, when you’re doing the intake, are you aligning with the hiring manager on the criteria, right? So I think it’s very easy to post a job and say, here are all the requirements and you Googled it, or maybe the hiring manager wrote the list and you haven’t gone through it with a lot of rigor. And then you get to the end of the process and you’re like, well, the candidates all match these requirements and varying levels. One candidate is better at this, whereas the other candidate is better at that.

And then it’s really hard to make an objective decision. So how do you align them? Like what are the true must haves? What are the nice to haves? And then the order of which you would prioritize those nice to haves to make a decision in a tie break.

Anna Taylor: Yeah, that’s a good question. So often that will come down to the hiring manager, but the recruiter kind of has to guide them in that thought process because we’ll present what’s available. We’re going to show you what’s in the market. We’re going to bring you a bunch of different options there, but they might have to decide what they’re willing to compromise on. And I think that kind of goes also back to performance based hiring and just looking at hiring as a big picture in general as to what pieces of the puzzle we’re adding in. So even when I’ve been hiring for my own team, which not

I don’t like the word weakness, but like which area of weakness am I trying to fulfill here and which area of strength can I kind of like give on a little bit that I don’t need in this next person that I hire, right? So you kind of have to think of it as a puzzle. You’re sticking a piece into the puzzle. You’re not trying to find clones of each other when you’re finding candidates for a particular position, right? So hopefully that answers your question a little, but that’s kind of the point.

Josh Tolan: Yeah, totally. I mean, I think, you know, what happens all the time is recruiters collaborate with the hiring manager on the requirements and the hiring manager wants to tell you all these things that they absolutely need. But then the reality is you start hiring, you send over some candidate profiles to them and they’re like, yeah, that wouldn’t be good. And you’re like, wait a second, but they don’t have X, Y, and Z that you said were a must have. They’re like, yeah, well they have the comparable thing. It’s like, okay, well, you know, now we’re not really aligned on what is truly needed for somebody to be successful in this role and what we can give on and what we can’t give on. And so I think making that

really clear early on is super important.

Anna Taylor: Making it clear early on, also having touch points throughout the process is really important. So like what you just mentioned, right? So you kind of have to have that touch point throughout the process. Like, hey, I know that when we first set out our intake call, this is what we thought the profile would be, but I’m finding, you know, XYZ in the market. Is this okay with you? Maybe we want to find someone that has more of this. And it is kind of a dance you do together, right? To find the right, the right mix.

Josh Tolan: Yep. Makes a lot of sense. So talk to me a little bit about the importance of culture fit for you guys, because going from 140 people to 500 plus things naturally will just change in the culture when you scale at that type of level and you just go from one size to the next. So how have you guys integrated assessing for culture fit into your hiring process and got an alignment on what’s actually important to assess for?

Anna Taylor: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. know, honestly, the video connections contribute very heavily, I think, to our success in culture fit hiring, because it’s not always like culture fit, right? It’s kind of culture add and, you know, just bringing different flavors and different quirks and different energies to the team that also fit. So that’s really what we’re looking for when we’re doing a video chat. We’re not just immediately asking you about your

skills, how many years have you done this? How many, you know, have you used C sharp? Like that’s not a great question, you know? So what we’re really asking in our screenings is, you know, what are you looking for from a company? And you can tell so much about a person from that response, right? From the way that they respond to that question. What do you need from your manager? These very like open-ended questions that show you a little bit of the person, not just the employee.

And that’s really what we look for kind of during our HR steps. And then also the hiring managers are seeking it as well. So there are a lot of different ways that you can ask certain questions when you’re doing an interview process that can kind of give you a peek into the person. And at Sempris, we’re really just looking for genuinely good people. Like that’s it. Just be yourself, be a good person, and you’ll pass the culture test. It’s really not that hard or not that complicated. But I think a lot of times candidates think they have to put on this like persona.

and be like super buttoned up and professional and everything like that’s not this company.

Josh Tolan: Yeah, and I think you bring up a really good point too. think not only are you guys trying to learn that about the candidate, the candidate is also trying to learn that about you. And I think often companies will focus so much on assessing the candidate without offering up much to allow the candidate to assess them. And that probably is where downstream, most things actually fail, where it doesn’t work out. It’s because the company wasn’t a good fit for the candidate.

And we didn’t do a good enough job as a company in giving the candidate the right information to make that decision themselves. And so I find that there’s more of the misalignment that actually happens with that versus the other way around, because there’s so much emphasis on just assessing the candidate with those cultural behavioral questions. And so it’s like the hiring team gets a really good feel for that, but did the candidate really get a good feel for if your environment, if the way you guys manage, if the way you guys collaborate is really a good dynamic for them.

And so I think that’s something that’s super important to convey during the hiring process. How are you guys messaging that to candidates early and off?

Anna Taylor: Yeah, so I think it’s just in all the questions that we ask too, all the conversations, always making sure that you’re paying attention to the time and leaving a few minutes for them to ask us questions. You know, if ever I run out of time on a scheduled screening, I’ll say like, let’s schedule more time. I’m sure that you have some questions for me. I’m so sorry that we ran over, you know, stuff like that. Just showing them that you also care about their time and effort and want to give them the opportunity to get to know you is super important. And that’s really easy. That’s really easy. Taking 10 more minutes to answer some questions for somebody.

And so that’s really important to me and I always try to reflect that to the hiring managers, know, make sure that you leave time for questions and then have the interview be conversational. It’s a two-way street, right? Don’t make it feel like it’s this rapid-fire interrogation. There’s always opportunity for people to insert, you know, their opinion or their thoughts too into a conversation if you set the tone from the beginning. So I think that’s really, really important. Just the way that you start the conversation is so essential.

Josh Tolan: Totally. I think it’s often misunderstood that all the power lies with the employer in the experience, right? It’s like, they’re the ones making the decision. The reality is the candidates making the decision too. So I think the earlier you can make an authentic connection to your point and level set with the candidate that, Hey, I want this to be a mutual fit if we get to the end of the line here. And so power is with both of us. And so I want to give you the information that you need in order to make the best decision for you.

And vice versa, that’s why we’re asking questions and going through the interview process. So we get the information to make a good decision for us. And if at the end of this process, there’s a good alignment and we’ve all asked the questions we need to ask that probably bodes well for that person being with the company for a long period of time.

Anna Taylor: Yes. Yeah, that’s very accurate.

Josh Tolan: Awesome. Well, this has been great. I’ve learned so much. You have a lot of stuff going on. Obviously you’ve accomplished a lot over the last few years. And I’m just so impressed by the way that you guys run your hiring process, the way you guys build relationships with your candidates and your hiring managers. You guys are truly doing what every talent acquisition team can be doing. And I think you guys are…

Anna Taylor: Thank you.

Josh Tolan: really good stewards of the hiring process and nurturing all those relationships, giving people the information they need, making sure hiring managers feel prepared. And at the end of the day, there are all those stakeholders to manage and that’s just what’s required if you want to run a good hiring process now and for years into the future. So thanks so much for sharing all of your insights today.

Anna Taylor: Yeah, thank you for having me. It was really fun.