the interview: Amanda Bell

Amanda only meant to stop over in recruiting when she joined Microsoft, but about a decade later, she’s still building teams. After spending about five years in engineering university recruiting, Amanda joined and scaled Lever from 40 employees in one office to 250 in two offices. At Lever, her team focused on building an inclusive and diverse company, providing exceptional candidate experience, and adding exceptional employees to the team. Since joining Retool, Amanda and her team’s focus has been hiring across the business, bringing process to hiring practices to limit bias, and hunting for highly motivated team members to push Retool the product and business forward. She’s extremely lucky to work with a team of talented, funny, and whip-smart people at Retool and is excited to continue growing the team with her recruiting partners.

What made you want to join Retool?

Two things told me Retool was the best company to join. The first was obvious — the people at Retool (we call ourselves Retools) are ambitious, razor-smart, internally motivated, and kind. I think it’s rare for all four of these things to exist in the same environment, and I was extremely excited to meet the team and see these traits echoed throughout the interview process.

The second thing that drew me to Retool was the product. I started my recruiting career as a technical recruiter (and still occasionally pinch-hit as one) and I heard first-hand how often my software engineering friends struggled to quickly build effective internal tools. I learned early on how challenging it was to build effective internal tools quickly the more I worked with my software engineering friends. As I learned more about Retool, I understood just how much of cornerstone internal tools are to a healthy, efficient, and productive business. Finally, as I was closing in on my decision to join Retool, I was talking with one of my engineering friends and telling her about Retool. My decision was made when she said, “This product would’ve been so helpful at literally every company I’ve ever worked for.”

Retool helps developers build internal tools more easily. What impact do you see internal tooling (or lack of internal tooling) having on our daily lives at work?

This is one of my favorite things to talk about when it comes to Retool! It’s easy to say that Retool helps developers build internal tools quickly, but Retool does more than that — it changes the way people relate to and do their work. Having the right tooling in the hands of the right people changes the trajectories of teams, work, and, ultimately, companies. I can think of many times I kludged together recruiting tools because I needed to do something urgently and our engineering teams were (understandably) too busy. I know if I’d had the internal tooling my teams and I needed, we would’ve been a much more efficient team and the business would’ve seen those dividends.

Currently, Retool caters mostly to developers. Do you see Retool moving into the low-code or no-code space to appeal to the business user, or is that user best served by others?

Business teams create and manage their own tools all the time. But, more often than not, solving 100% of the problem requires a lot of technical expertise — reading and writing to the right data sources, automating tasks, and integrating into other tools in a very specific way.

There are business teams with the technical skills to do this, but most teams benefit tremendously from working with developers. Our core focus is helping these developers solve 100% of the business problem without having to reinvent the wheel or spend countless hours to make it happen. We believe this is the best and most efficient way to fully address the problem head on.

For the time being, our focus is on developers and folks with a bit of technical know-how. But we do see a world in which Retool is friendly to non-developers at some point in the future

You have extensive recruiting experience from your time at Yelp and at Lever. What differences have you seen in recruiting for smaller companies (Retool / Lever) vs. larger, more established players?

I’m very grateful for my time at Microsoft, where I started recruiting. It helped me build a strong recruiting foundation and understand why recruiters do what they do. That said, by the time I got to Lever, I’d noticed some patterns from past companies: candidate experience is often on the back-burner, if it’s even present at all. It’s harder to put a personal touch on recruiting practices 100% of the time when you manage 30 candidates a day, but it’s so important.

I also noticed that larger companies can let their processes lead them as opposed to the other way around. Sometimes we build processes and follow them to a fault as opposed to really internalizing that processes should serve you, your business, and your candidates.

At Retool, we focus on finding the right balance. We have an enduring and successful company to build, so it’s important we move quickly and with purpose. At the same time, our company is small and it’s made up of people — it’s important to focus on the experience your candidate has as she makes her way through your process. It should feel human, and there should be room to break process and “rules” when needed. Some of the best people we’ve hired have come through breaking our process when the situation warranted. But it’s a balance — too much deviation from your process can also negatively impact diversity and inclusion efforts (more on this below), speed, and ultimately, outcomes.

Companies are beginning to more actively consider diversity and inclusion as part of their hiring efforts. What processes and / or technologies have you put in place at Retool to ensure that you build a diverse team?

It’s been so exciting to see companies intentionally build diversity, equity, and inclusion into their hiring practices as opposed to going through the motions. There’s still a very, very long way to go, but I’m heartened by some of the progress. I hesitate to rely on technology or tools to evaluate for diversity, for example, so I can’t speak much to this. I think if we rely too much on technology, it can take away the human part of diversity and the very broad definitions that should accompany the concept of diversity. A lot of companies stop after gender and racial diversity, but socio-economic status, sexual identity, educational background, and others are equally important.

At Retool, we focus on building a diverse company, though we have more work to do. We’re very excited our leadership team is almost 40% women. We also focus just as much on inclusion. This ranges from bringing consistency to the vast majority of our hiring processes (candidates are asked the same interview questions, for example), ensuring there’s room for all voices to contribute, and making sure our offers are fair and equitable.

We’ve talked about internal tools and recruiting, but the future of work is obviously a much broader category that can span everything from benefits to solutions serving deskless workers. What trends are you most excited about in the future of work right now?

2020 was such a hard year for everyone: we saw a pandemic take off, rounds and rounds of layoffs, a challenging political climate, among other things. One of the positive things I’ve seen come out of this past year is how companies are responding to what’s happening in the world. It’s much more common and acceptable to talk about mental health now, and more and more companies are working to support their employees. Companies and employees alike are also working to become both more flexible and resilient. I’ve seen this effort help teams band together, companies lend as much support as they can to parents on their teams, and far more “take the time you need” messaging from leaders and HR alike.

I’m hoping this symbiotic trend will continue and will strengthen the relationship between employees and companies. I’m a big believer that we’re all on the same team, and at Retool, our goal is to serve our customers and build the best business we can. Strong relationships help companies like ours get there.

What is your favorite company in / around the future of work (besides Retool)?

Descript is doing some amazing things to help new media creators record, transcribe, edit, and mix. It gives people the access to the tools they need to do their work faster and easier….and they happen to be a Retool customer.

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Know someone building an exciting new company in future of work? Get in touch @ brittany@crv.com.

Thanks to Shawn Xu for the connections to women of the Anchor List.