This week, we’re joined by Shensi Ding, CEO and co-founder of Merge. Merge offers unified APIs that allow developers to integrate once to offer a full category of integrations.

Many companies have returned to the office recently or offer hybrid arrangements, but Shensi has always been a big believer in 100% in-person work. The Merge team is based in New York… and most of them were invited to be there.

In this episode, Shensi shares how sourcing remains critical to Merge’s recruiting strategy (even amidst an influx of applications) and why hiring managers own it rather than recruiters.

It’s pretty evident that Shensi is passionate about the culture at Merge. She ensures that junior team members feel comfortable to bring up ideas and everyone’s a joy to work with. There’s a “no asshole policy” — and it starts with hiring really good people.

How?

She gives us the breakdown on the Merge interview process and how they’ve approached hiring for skills AND culture fit, when the bar for both is pretty dang high.

Learn more about Merge at merge.dev.

Follow Shensi on LinkedIn to get connected: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shensiding/.

This week, we’re joined by Tigran Sloyan, CEO and co-founder of CodeSignal, for a unique conversation about skills. Tigran identifies that talent is the biggest problem humanity has to solve — and how we identify and assess skills today is broken.

He founded CodeSignal, a leading technical interview and assessment platform to help companies go “Beyond the Noise” with early-stage assessments, technical screens, and live coding interviews.

He shares how to mitigate bias in assessments, balancing hiring for demonstrated skills vs. ability to learn and grow, and the importance of anchoring to hard skills.

Tigran is also a frequent industry keynote, a TED speaker, and a thought leader in the technical hiring industry, commenting on trends in talent acquisition, diversity, and innovation. Follow Tigran on LinkedIn to follow along: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tigransloyan.

Learn more about CodeSignal at codesignal.com.

In this week’s episode, we talked to Dave Carhart. He’s a fractional HR executive and HR tech advisor who is currently the VP of People Strategy at Lattice.

He previously led the People teams at Lattice as they scaled 5x and at Branch Metrics as they scaled 3x. He led Mulesoft’s team through their IPO and acquisition by salesforce for 20x ARR. And before moving into startups, he spent several years at HP, which was over 300,000 employees at the time.

Dave has essentially seen it all. And he’s been focused on people the entire time.

We dive into the weeds of Dave’s experience across these different stages of company growth — and in the process, unlock his advice for how to build a people strategy that supports your business strategy at all stages of growth.

Whether you’re hiring your first 100 employees or preparing for an IPO, this is an episode you won’t want to skip.

Find Dave on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/davecarhart/ or reach out via email at dave@lattice.com to connect!

In this episode, we talked to Vivian Wang, CEO and solo founder of Landed, an end-to-end recruiting platform that transforms how companies hire hourly candidates. They’ve helped hundreds of thousands of workers get jobs at companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s.

With a big mission, Vivian shares how Landed hires top talent based on both aptitude and experience. They’ve designed an interview process that filters for their 5 operating principles and ensures late stage candidates are fully bought in.

Vivian’s tips are helpful to any founder or hiring leader designing interview loops to hire in line with their values and driving a transparent process for candidates. Vivian breaks down all of Landed’s key interview steps and ‘counter-sell’ offer strategy as well as the guidelines she uses to govern a hyper fast-moving early startup team.

You can find Vivian on LinkedIn here or reach out via email at vivian@gotlanded.com. She’d love to get in touch!

In this episode, we sat down with Noah Wisnia, a relationship-driven recruiter with successful hires at over 550 startups. He shares the scoop on where most startups go wrong with hiring and how to avoid those common pitfalls.

He shares tangible tips to help you build a more effective recruiting process that actually drives results. He also talked us through how he uses tech-enabled hiring tools to spend more time on what matters — building relationships.

Key Takeaways:

• The job description — what most people get wrong, why it matters, and what to do instead
• The importance of clear communication when defining roles
• Trusting experts and hiring the right people for the job
• How to treat hiring as a team sport involving recruiters, hiring managers, and founders
• Strategies for re-engaging candidates who may be a good fit in the future
• Using tech to streamline hiring and create the best experiences for everyone involved

Noah Wisnia spent the first half of his career in Product Management before becoming a relationship-first recruiter. He’s grown startup teams 300%+ YoY through seamless tech-enabled hiring with hires at over 550 startups.

You can find Noah Wisnia on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahwisnia/. Don’t hesitate to reach out!

This week, we got the scoop from Melissa Kargiannakis, an executive coach to world-class founders and former founder herself, on how to build effective remote teams in less than 4 hours of meetings per week. In this episode, she shared insights for founders on building a remote team, creating company values, leading by example, and creating a candidate-centered hiring process.

In this episode, we chat about:

• Intentionally building remote teams by setting expectations, building personal connections, and ensuring transparency to enable autonomy
• How to develop company values where the founder & CEO is a participant, not a facilitator
• Tips for founders on on building resilience and surrounding yourself with people who balance out your weaknesses
• Emphasis on the value of niceness and empathy in leadership

In addition to coaching founders, Melissa is currently the Head of Business Operations at Cloudfare and was formerly founder and CEO of Skritswap. Read about how she builds remote teams here.

Connect with Melissa Kargiannakis on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kargiannakis/.

With recent hiring freezes and layoffs, startups need to be more selective and strategic in their hiring approaches to attract and evaluate qualified, motivated candidates. In this episode, we get tips for startup founders on effectively communicating their needs, creating friction to find the best fit, and taking chances on career changers.

Key Takeaways:

- How to clearly communicate roles you are hiring for right now to attract qualified candidates

- Tips for avoiding "ghost roles" that waste candidates' time and breed distrust

- How to articulate your startup's values and required skills to help candidates self-select for fit

- Ways to add friction to your application process to surface the most interested and relevant applicants

- The benefits of project or contract-to-hire arrangements for evaluating career changers

- Why taking chances on career changers can build loyalty on your team

Learn more at nextcareers.co.

You can find Anthony on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonynardini/.

Dani Grant started Jam to solve an age-old problem: how to improve software development, which hadn't progressed in 30 years. As CEO of Jam, Dani aims to build company success through focusing on meaningful impact, shared wins, and authentic connections between teams and users.

In this episode, we chat about:

• How to pick co-founders, investors and customers you want to work with long-term, and a problem space you can discuss daily for years.
• Standardizing compensation and equity early to align your team around shared success.
• How to remain resilient in a tough market
• Building remote team culture and fostering innovation with rigor
• and more!