“You can’t do referrals without employees”
Interview with ex-Coinbase tech recruiter, Ruby B.
She’s done everything regarding tech recruiting, but always in high-growth startups. Ruby is a Technical Recruiter focused on Diversity and Inclusion that has worked for companies like Coinbase, Lyft and 3Cubed, and has been a recruiting mentor at 500 startups. Now she’s Career Coach at Springboard and is working on bringing her own podcast to life.
After a few emails, we finally managed to schedule a convenient time to chat about Employee Referrals –she drinking her morning coffee from San Francisco, us enjoying a cold after-office aperitif from Tbilisi.
Sourcing & Employee referrals
What is your sourcing M.O.?
There are a few general guidelines that all recruiters have, but it normally depends on what the company needs and what I’m asked to do. At some places they need Senior Engineering positions, at others, they need Research Scientists. The process is very different depending on the case, I have to consider not only the positions I’m asked to fill but also what their goals turn out to be and the stage the company is at (Series B, pre-seed, etc.).
Do you use employee referrals?
I think employee referrals are super important, they’re the first source I would think of when hiring. Still, they can’t be the only source of recruiting, because at some point you’ll end up replicating the same structure and the same team that you started with originally. There’s no diversity in that, there’s no variety. This is why I believe that employee referrals are as important as recruiting candidates from other sources.
What does your Employee Referral scheme look like?
For employee referrals, what I normally do is to sit with employees and ask them to give me 2 names, or ask them to open their LinkedIn profile, see what connections might be useful as referrals and put them on a spreadsheet. And I take it from there.
I normally do this like once a month, because if I do it more often, people get annoyed. But if I don’t continue doing it, they can forget about referrals. So it’s like building a relationship, building trust. And I need to be super careful because if I’m not responsive with the candidates they referred or if I screw up with someone, they won’t give me any more referrals. You have to be careful about that, and consistent.
Mostly, people have no problem giving you referrals, but if they do have a problem, well… that’s a big red flag because it means that there’s something going on, something is not right.
What do you do in that kind of situation? When people don’t want to give you referrals?
Well, I go to the CEO and I say “hey the engineering team doesn’t want to give me referrals. What’s going on? You have a problem here”.
And what happens after that?
They go and try to figure out what’s the problem. Maybe it’s just an annoying manager or maybe it’s an entire team. But if this happens, then you have to address this first thing because if not is like… what? Do I have to convince candidates into taking a job? That’s not a great start. That’s not going to be a successful hire whatsoever.
What are the pain-points and challenges of employee referrals? How do you think they can be addressed or fixed?
The most time-consuming task I do normally is scheduling. It’s always a burden and it takes a lot of my time, but it’s also an important part of my work. So I would say scheduling meetings.
Recruiting in the ‘new normal’
In what way has your job changed due to the corona crisis?
I think it remains pretty much the same, the only thing that has changed is that we replaced face-to-face interviews with Zoom meetings. But other than that, it remains pretty much the same.
But if you ask me about recruiting in general, I think it won’t be the same, because for some jobs, for example, technical ones, you just need a whiteboard and solve a problem with another person. The connection is just impossible to replicate with a Zoom meeting or a Miro board, so I don’t know how that’s going to work out but it sure won’t be the same.
As for referrals, I haven’t done anything yet, but I guess that I’ll just do what I’d do in person: schedule Zoom meetings to ask for referrals, or put people together in a large group Zoom meeting and do my thing.
Podcasting for inclusion
Tell me more about your non-profit initiative, the podcast you’re working on. What’s it about?
Haha, yeah. This is my way of, you know, giving back and helping people that come from a non-tech environment to apply and succeed for tech positions. For example, I’ll tell you how Google hires, how Lyft hires, any company that you want to apply for, I want to help people achieve that. Because a lot of people are not lucky enough to have gone to uni or to have connections, or a network, so I want to help those people get a shot at it.
So yeah, you know, I like podcasts, I’ve been listening to podcasts a lot and… I like to talk a lot, hah! And I haven’t discovered a lot of podcasts that are run by women, I think there should be more. I’ve recorded 5 of them already but I’m still figuring out the editing because I want the sound to be perfect, so I think I’ll launch anytime soon.
That sounds just amazing! I’d love to listen to it, you have your first fan here. And do you have a name already?
No, not yet. That’s an issue. I need to come up with something and just yeah, launch. I’ve been having fun, I really want to continue doing it. I really like it!
Sure you do! Let us know when you have it, can’t wait to listen to it. Good for you!
Will do. And how is Intrro doing? What are your new updates?
Our last big update was a completely renewed search engine with diversity filters, as our last user research interviewees suggested this is something of great interest for them. And after that, we’ll be moving forward to improve the employee’s experience with Intrro.
It’s not enough to ask employees to connect their networks for recruiters to look for referrals, but it’s important to recognise employees that do the referrals, and for them to understand the great help they’re doing when referring, not only for themselves with the monetary compensation, but also for the people they refer, for their company, and ultimately, for their teams.
Everybody is happier when they work in a healthy environment, and that’s what we’re trying to achieve.
Definitely, yes. Employees matter, referrals are a 50/50, you can’t do referrals without employees, so it’s a shared effort between recruiters and employees, for sure.
How do you leverage from Employee Referrals? Are you struggling to get some from your employees?
At Intrro we’re always looking for new stories from tech recruiters to improve our platform, so if you’d like to be featured on our blog, please leave a comment and we’ll contact you right away.
If you’d like to experience a new way of hiring powered by employee referrals and fueled by automation and data science, get your free trial here. Learn more about us at Intrro.com
