#18 – Recruiting Primer – Part 1

Tech Deciphered

In episode 18, the first of our trilogy on recruiting, we start by sharing our core principles in this space. We delve into high-level principles, recruiting organization and compensation. In episodes 19 and 20, we will share detailed advice for recruiters and candidates, respectively. On the recruiter side, we share core principles that have worked for us, as well as hacks: anything from good and difficult interview questions to some of our “pet peeves”. On the candidate side, we will share ideas and processes from how to best be visible to recruiters, to how to get the job of your dreams. Navigation: Introduction (01:24) Section 1 - Core principles (04:59) Section 2 - Recruiting organization (18:34) Section 3 - Compensation (26:13) Conclusion (31:05) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, co-founder and Chairman at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strive Capital, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:24) Nuno: So in this episode, 18, we focus on recruiting. We will discuss on the recruiter side, our core principles that have worked for us along the years, as well as some hacks and some advice for recruiters. On the candidate side, we share ideas and processes from how to best be visible to recruiters, all the way to how to get the job of your dreams. Looking forward to this episode. Bertrand: Yes, and actually we have so much content on Recruiting, that we will have 3 episodes focused on this topic: this episode 18, as well as episode 19 and 20. Bertrand: I'm very excited that we talk about recruiting, probably not much is more important than recruiting when you're starting a company, running a business, running a startup. And it's recruiting of everyone from your co-founders, to your execs, to your developers, to your sales people. So recruiting is literally the lifeblood of your organization and obviously not just recruiting but keeping people and having people happy and successful at your organization. But it starts at the end of the day with recruiting. So it's exciting to talk about this topic in this episode. Nuno: Indeed. And let's start with framing our experience as recruiters, to give a little bit of credibility to whatever advice we give during this episode. I'll start with my side, I've recruited or help recruit hundreds of people, all the way from recruiting for my own teams as either a line manager, CEO, managing partner, helping recruit peers to myself in different organizations. Helping some of my clients as a consultant recruit their own people. That was also a lot of fun. And I participated in everything from, one-on-one interviews to panel interviews, to group interviews and everything under the sun. I would also add as a candidate, that my experience is still relatively fresh. A lot of people would look at my background and say, you haven't been a candidate for a long time. You did your own venture firm, et cetera. But in all honesty, I've joined boards of directors, both for profit companies and nonprofit companies. And that goes through its own recruiting process. I've tried to be recruited by a bunch of companies in the industry along the years. And funnily enough, because I'm a bit of a nerd. I actually sometimes go into these processes, even though I'm not necessarily thinking of moving on. And I've had some really interesting processes with some of the best known companies in the industry. And hopefully we'll also share some of my lessons learned around it. Last but not the least, I've been very close to the recruiting space, through a bunch of people in my own network that are very close to me.