If you ask any startup founder about their biggest challenges, hiring technical talent is almost always one of them. Three experts who built products to help solve this problem sat down at Collision Conference panel to unpack the difficult challenge of how to hire great people. The expert panel included:
- Vivek Ravisankar, HackerRank CEO & Cofounder
- Christina Sass, Founder & CEO of Andela
- Kristen Garcia Dumont, COO of MZ
Key learnings from the panel
Watch the full segment above to learn how to discover diamonds in the rough and hire the right people. For now, here are a few key points the panelists shared:
- If you look at recruiting trends, back when there were job boards (like Indeed and Monster). Then, there’s LinkedIn (huge network) and now what we’re seeing is that customers need a better way to identify skills. We’re in a fundamental shift now toward skills-based hiring rather than pedigree. – Vivek Ravisankar
- The old indicators, like education background, are not as effective as we once thought they were. Founders should, instead, understand who you are, your vision and people that align to your vision. – Kristen Garcia Dumont
- Right now, we count 1.8M open developer jobs in the U.S. today alone. The senior VP at Indeed.com said we’re going to create 1.3M new jobs and only about 400,000 people to fill them. So, if you take CS grads and masters grad and boot camp grads, you still won’t fill that gap. So, we find people with a great foundation, and then the first 6-months is a simulated environment in business soft skills and technical skills. – Christina Sass, Andela
NEXT: Learn 3 reasons you’re not recruiting your ideal candidates here.