How Coursera competes with Google and Facebook for the best talents (part 1)

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When John Ciancutti joined Netflix in 1999, the service team consisted of four engineers. A couple of years later, he became a technical manager, which he had never done before himself. With the new post came new duties - hiring new technical staff. It’s hard to imagine, but at the time Netflix was a small nameless company. John had to figure out how to attract world-class specialists. By 2012, he became vice president and hired hundreds of engineers who built a successful company.

He has since refined the Facebook recruitment formula and now works for Coursera as Chief Engineer (CPO, Chief Product Officer).

In Coursera, he performs a variety of tasks, including development and analytics. In all three companies, he not only engaged in hiring, but also taught dozens of other managers to perform similar tasks. Today, he is faced with the same problem of hiring prospective employees that he solved in Netflix. And this is not just competition with huge amounts of compensation packages and well-established Google and Facebook recruiting machines. Despite this, in less than two years, John managed to grow the Coursera’s engineering arsenal from 25 to more than 80 employees.

Thanks to his experience, he developed a recruitment tactic for staffing personnel. At the recent CTO Summit conference, he shared his principles for successfully hiring the desired candidates, and I suggest reading the first part of the translation about this article.
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One of the most important things that you need to think about before you begin, is the end of the conversation - the most important phase of the interview with each candidate. As a hiring manager, you are the most important factor influencing the decision of candidates. If they do not consider you a significant figure, then there is absolutely no difference how they relate to your company. They will not become your employees. Processing each candidate will help to gain the necessary experience.

Some people believe that the process of hiring is similar to the process of building relationships. All applicants will evaluate every interaction with you, your team and company. Only a hiring manager can establish a current trust relationship. You must not just want to hire an employee, but read the motives of the applicant. All candidates come for interviews for various reasons. It is not your task to sell, your task is to be the "organizer of the match" a kind of "pimp". You know what makes a company great and the people who succeed in it. It is necessary to present the search for each candidate as a search for an outstanding match. This approach will help make the best choice.

Phase One: Sources

Even if the company has recruiters, their role is always secondary. Engineering staff must be in a permanent search for candidates for their teams. Requires your own recruiting process. In this case, the recruiting network will have the required strength. Circumstances change people, and previously not a suitable applicant, may be fine at the moment. Each newly hired employee only expands your network and an inexhaustible source of talent is at your disposal.

Proximity to the source adds sensitivity to such a system. Hippos like Facebook scatter a huge network built on the basis of their own employees. A startup needs surgical precision. The approach does not work here: “Oh, great engineers are working at Google, and I'm going to lure someone out of there!” Be more thoughtful about the required job.

What skills are required?
What companies can serve as examples of such skills?
Who is better?

In the end, the list will not be exactly as you imagined it at first.

Unfortunately, the upper part of the “recruiting funnel” implies a maximum of contacts. It should not be forgotten that most engineers are introverts by nature. There's nothing you can do about it, you need to take it for granted. The mental makeup of an introvert is characterized by concentration on its inner world, isolation, contemplation. Introvert is not inclined to communicate and hardly makes contact with the outside world. In this regard, the primary contact must be initiated by the recruiter. Send mail. Chat at public events.

The more often a recruiter has to talk to people, the sooner the experience necessary for such work will appear. True, all this does not matter if the recruiter cannot attract the attention of people.

Usually, recruiters do not do this, but one of the ways to attract attention is to oppose themselves and the "big guys." There is nowhere without personal contact and concreteness. Let me know that the person you are interested in is interesting.

Hiring employees for a startup is required to be taken for the fact that the company is unknown. Instead of clarifications, it would be worthwhile to emphasize the common points of the future candidate and company. Maybe before you worked in the same company, mention it. You may be familiar with the members of the current candidate team. It is necessary to emphasize that you are a real person, specifically interested in this interlocutor. Briefly tell about yourself and the company. To link the current job of a candidate with a job, some effort is required.

To create the right association, try to unobtrusively recommend specific actions: “This is the next step you can climb. Do you want to go one step higher? ”

Start with something simple. “Listen, let's talk. You can call or drink coffee. ” Most often start with a phone call, no one chooses coffee first, and that's fine.

John Chankuti's example:


Success is the answer to the message. Even if in the end nothing happens, there will be some experience and the opportunity to expand the recruitment network. A candidate may refuse due to the fact that he is completely satisfied with the current situation, but nevertheless, he can recommend someone else. In reality, what you really do not need is silence. It is necessary to carefully monitor the reaction rate. If there is no response, you need to restructure and try a different approach.

If the candidate agrees to the meeting, it is time for a thorough selection. At this stage, it is perfectly normal to doubt whether the applicant is eligible. Although you should not make the most stringent requirements. It should just talk. The purpose of selection is the understanding of the motives of the candidate. The conversation usually begins with a brief introduction that includes thesis information about the recruiter and the company. The ideal would be a prepared pitch, the main advantage of which would be its brevity.

When a candidate talks about himself, you can get a ton of additional information from seemingly simple questions.

Why are you wasting time talking to me?
What do you like in the company now?
What is good about the job offer?

Here we need to pay attention not only to the content of the speeches, but also to the emotional context, therefore the place chosen for the conversation is very important. If the applicant feels ill at ease, it is unlikely that something will come out.

At the end of the telephone conversation you should have the answers to the following questions:

What and why is the person working at the moment?
What influence does the company have?
Why was the work on this project chosen?

The right candidate always has the full content of the project. If the conversation is about the current project, the interlocutor should be able to answer any question on it. Otherwise, this is already a bell, indicating a lack of employee involvement in the work of the company. When the applicant does not meet the requirements, it is best to limit yourself to a phone call. Honesty and the ability to explain the reasoning that guides refusal will save time and nerves.

If the candidate is suitable, go on to the next step with lightning speed. Need to be very fast. Speed ​​is another advantage over the “big guys”. They are slow because in a large company a similar process requires the participation of many people in it. In most cases, speed will be your most powerful weapon. So, a successful call entails a coffee rout, which is recommended to appoint the next day.