The Breakthrough Hiring Show: Recruiting and Talent Acquisition Conversations

EP 176: Running TA While Scaling From 4 to 150+ Employees

• James Mackey: Recruiting, Talent Acquisition, Hiring, SaaS, Tech, Startups, growth-stage, RPO, James Mackey, Diversity and Inclusion, HR, Human Resources, business, Retention Strategies, Onboarding Process, Recruitment Metrics, Job Boards, Social Media Re

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Beatriz Lourenco, Head of People at Poolside.ai, joins host James Mackey to discuss her journey scaling from 4 to 150+ employees. She shares how she approached early hires and is building a TA motion that keeps up with rapid growth. 


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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Breakthrough Hiring Show. I'm your host, James Mackey. We have Beatrice Lorenzo, head of people at Poolside, with us today. Beatrice, thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for welcome me. I'm very happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we're really happy to have you here as well. Really excited for today's conversation to learn more about you and your journey in Poolside. Before we jump into all the exciting details, could you please share a little bit about your background with our audience?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, cool. Happy to. Thanks again for having me. I'm Beatrice, I'm head with Poolside, as James said. I have been with Pulside since the beginning for two and a half years as employee for. But before that, I have been, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second, but I have been always in startups my whole career. I actually didn't study anything related to HR. I actually went to art school, which is quite of a surprising to a lot of people. Then I changed from a master's for to business and economics. But then I ended up in recruitment a little bit by accident. And I have been focused in building startups from zero to 200 people mostly. And then poolside at some point came along, and it was definitely an amazing opportunity. So yeah, that's who I am.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and you're from Portugal, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm Portuguese. I'm specifically from the islands. I don't know if a lot of uh listeners know where it is, but it's the Azores, it's the middle of the Atlantic. I was born and raised there. I lived in Lisbon afterwards to go to uni. I also lived in London. Nowadays I live in Zurich, so doing a little bit of a European tour here.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's awesome. And you said you really like Zurich, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love Zurich. It's amazing for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

How long have you been there?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh only for three, four months at this point. I moved the recently, so this summer and before I came directly from London.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I think you said um that bullside, they have multiple offices, right? So is there is there an office in Zurich for Bullside or uh great question.

SPEAKER_00:

We are actually a remote first company. We started as a fully remote company. We have though, we started having though a small office in Paris. And I'll I'll talk a little bit more about this today. But we gather there once a month, and so we had an office with that purpose, but we have now started investing more in offices. We have now an office in London. We don't have an office yet in Zurich, at least for now. But yeah, we are starting to expand on that front. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. Well, hopefully that'd be pretty cool. You know, convince the team to put office there too. Yeah. Nice, nice. I'm really excited to dive into your experience. I mean, again, we have a lot of operators tuning in to learn as much as they can about how to operate and build scalable TA motions for startup and growth stage technology companies. And of course, uh it's challenging. It's really difficult to get all the right pieces in place to hit the gross of growth objectives that align with the CEO and the CO team and the VC team and the board and everything to get aligned. So really, we would love to learn more about your journey of Pulseide, if you wouldn't mind sharing with us um how you started out at the company and maybe what some of those initial goals were, and we can just kind of dissect exactly how you were able to accomplish that and help the company scale to where it is today.

SPEAKER_00:

Cool. Very, very happy to. So, for context, bullside, we are a startup, we are a Series B company, we are a foundational model company, we are training our own models in-house. We are in this race for AGI. Um, we started a company two and a half years old years ago, sorry. Uh, and so it's quite a very recent company. We were founded by both ISO and and Jason. Uh, I am actually a long-term friend with ISO, one of our founders. We have been wanting to work together for a very long time. Actually, I met ISO very early in my career, has been a very an important mentor for me. And we have been wanting to work together for many years, but it was not really ever the right time for uh either side until the year of 2023 when it actually made sense. Uh, and then both sides kind of came across, and I felt like it was one in a lifetime opportunity to work together and for many other reasons as well. And so I jumped in. So that's actually how I how we started. So I joined as employee four, which is very unusual for a startup to hire ahead of people so early. Uh, that was really a testament to our founders, in a sense that they wanted to do things well from the very beginning. They are experienced founders, um, and they really wanted to make sure that one, we focus on hiring the right people, because we all understand that hiring the right people, especially in a very early stage company, is one of the biggest keys to success. Um, and in order to attract those right people, we want to do things very well from the beginning. So, for example, we have salary brackets since month three at Pulside. We have benefits since month two. There is a lot of things that we did unusually early that really allowed us to scale a lot, a lot easier now that we are almost 150 today. So it made it a hundred times easier to scale because we made those steps in the beginning. Definitely the biggest challenge when I joined was to build a team from scratch, right? We were literally four people. It was Isa, Jason, Marida, our COO, and myself. Uh, then we hired our first two engineers in within the first month, but we were a very small team. Also, back in 2023, like the hype around AI was not the same as it is right now. And so there was a little bit of like, we actually need to pitch ourselves a little bit. We need to educate people on what we are doing versus today, which is becoming a lot more obvious to a lot of us, even if we don't work in machine learning. So there was a lot of an educational piece that we had to give to the market and to to talent. Uh, but the biggest challenge, it was definitely just hiring the first key people that would build the foundations of the company.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, yeah. So so you were literally there essentially since day one as play number four to now you have over 150 employees, I think you said, right? Yeah, right. Okay, so roughly 150. And that's been over a little over two years was for that growth. Yeah, correct. Okay. Wow. Okay. So that's really exciting experience for us to talk through because you started so early with the company, right? Um, so we we can really talk about the entire transition from hiring the first handful of people to hiring the first 50 to 100 to 150, right? We could talk about the first milestone you needed to achieve when you hire when you were employee number four. I don't know if that goal was to get to 10 or to 20 or 30, or maybe just some like earlier stage bucket we can dial in on, and then we could talk about like the second chapter or something a little bit more once you enter kind of scale phase, right? But what was when you were initially hired, what were you really brought on to do from a down-the-pipe talent acquisition perspective?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say there's a few things. One of them is, and before we started building the hiring machine, there was a lot to our identity. Like, who are we? What are the values that we want to embody? But what are the things that we really want in every single person that comes to pool side and the things that we want to stay away from? And we spent quite some time iterating on this in the beginning. We spent time together in person in the beginning exactly to tackle this. And in my opinion, like in any stage, you need to keep doing this actually. You need to start, you need to keep doing this as you grow. The company will have, we all, just like people, we all have different identities through our lifetime, right? And so you need to keep iterating on that and keep sitting together to keep like realizing are we still hiring for the same thing? Are we still looking for the same things? Do we still share the same values? Are we still the same company per se? But, anyways, and so that was definitely a really important part uh of our work in the beginning and the most important milestone that we we had to start with. But then it was definitely hiring the first personalities. And I like that you asked about numbers. Uh, this is something that's been quite a big point for us from the very beginning, which is we never wanted to focus on a number. Of course, there is numbers in terms of targets. We need to have we have strategic goals to accomplish, we need to have a workforce that is capable of achieving that. But at the same time, we never wanted the target to be an amount of people. So we always wanted to focus on quality, we wanted to focus on seniority. This was a big commitment we made from the beginning. Would always rather stay as lean as possible and as small as possible and hire the most senior, talented builder type of profile people right at the beginning of the company. Uh and in my opinion, that helped us a lot being set up for success. And also because the organization is a lot lighter, it's easier to manage, we make decisions faster. Um, and in the beginning, those are things you absolutely need uh in order to ramp up, right? So if I had to pick two biggest milestones, was those were the two first ones.

SPEAKER_01:

So, how did you I mean, I always like talking about the first 10 to 15 hires at a company are really going to be to a large extent what determines the organization's success, right? I mean, everybody should be a massive force multiplier. Everybody should be creating at least seven, if not eight figures in value for the organization. And the cost of getting hires wrong can be absolutely catastrophic. And it's not always apparent at surface level because it goes beyond the investment in their salaries, the opportunity costs, and the uh which so much factors into that, as you know, in terms of even just the hiring team's time, the executive team's time, training, onboarding, you know, essentially doing double the amount of work if they can't rely on the other person if it's not working out. Uh there's just a I mean, it could be a seven to eight figure problem very quickly, uh getting the wrong tires in. So in those early days, working alongside the founders, how did your team ensure that you were bringing on the right people? What did that process look like?

SPEAKER_00:

It's yeah, it's it's a big question, you know. Like one of the one of the things we established from the beginning was our motto when it comes to hiring. And if it's not a strong yes, it's a no. This is something we have defined from the beginning. It's not a strong yes, it's a no. And this is really would rather sometimes have passed on someone that could have been good, but we were entirely sure, would rather not risk it in the beginning and be absolutely sure that the person is right for the role. I think as you grow, you then start shifting your mindset a little bit more to potential, which is normal and it should come at some point for the first hires. I at least in my opinion, you need to completely go on the other side. So that's a big one. Um, the other one was the investment of our founders. For you to have an idea, like especially Izo, one of our co-founders, he was doing eight intro calls a day in the beginning of Pullside. He was he helped me massively with the hiring. Of course, no one knew Pullside at this stage. We had the seed of 26 million, which is an absolute privilege to have, but no one knew Pullside, right? And so we really needed to get ourselves out there. And having me or like HR recruiter actually introducing poolside to people would not make the cut. And so Isa spent endless hours of his days doing inter calls. I would schedule him back to backs to vex to vex. And I will say that's really paid off. Um he's an amazing speaker, he's extremely charismatic, but most importantly, he's one of the founders of the company, right? And he he had like he's a visionary, he had a strong vision for poolside from the very beginning. Of course, he still has it today. And having this presence with candidates from the beginning really helped teaching Pulside, but also it helped people understanding that we're really fully committed to do this, and our founders really cared about people. So this was a big one. And also, besides the fact that he's also a good interviewer, not all founders are great interviewers, some of them need a bit more training than others. I was in a privileged position that he is, and so that helped a lot, but it helped us calibrating the talent very well. And so we spent so much time calibrating. So this is the third point I wanted to talk about, which is the calibrations. Since, like in the beginning, you are going to interview a lot of different people, you need to do a big market like study, right? And you really need to understand what's out there. You need to see different options, understand what you like, what you don't like, what fits and what doesn't fit. And we spent a lot of time iterating, calibrating together. This is a good fit because X, Y, and Z, and this is not a good fit because of this, and making those hard decisions and commits to them afterwards. So those three things helped us massively in the beginning. Now we have other systems in place. We are no longer having throws with ISO. Um, but it definitely helped in the beginning.

SPEAKER_01:

So also, you know, one of the things at the earliest stage, too, that's really important, is being able to uncover very quickly if somebody actually isn't working out. And I'm just curious, you know, as at the earlier stages, were there any mistakes uh in terms of hires at any point? And how did your team learn about it? What did you do about it? How did it change your process? Was there any learning curve along the way?

SPEAKER_00:

Good, good question. Yes, we definitely made mistakes. I would not believe a company that told me that they never made a mistake.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

So yeah, it definitely happens. We we did some mishires in the beginning. Um, I would say the biggest thing that we also committed to from the beginning, we still do it today, is that you act on it as quickly as you can. Of course, that you want to be fair, you want to speak with the person honestly, you want to make sure that you are making the right call, first of all, because it might be perception, might be an adaptation phase, whatever, that might be the reason. But once you are absolutely sure that that person is not the right fit, you act on it. We have been, even if people were in probation, which happened in the beginning, were extremely respectful, we're very generous with people to make sure that they were well off. They still change their lives to join pool side at the end of the day, right? So I think that respect and cooperation is very important. But you act on it quickly. I would say it's the biggest advice I can give. Act on it quickly. Having people that are not the right fit does not do a favor to the company, neither to them, because they are probably not happy in the role. And I feel like a lot of companies are sometimes a bit scared of that, but they would be surprised with the good that they do in making those decisions faster than or earlier than later. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, 100%. So did you I suppose my question is the follow-up on that is did you were you able to identify any types of blind spots based on mishires?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01:

I would say because everybody, as you said, everybody has the same challenges. So I think people would love to hear your learning curves. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

I think the biggest one that happened maybe twice was there is um when you are hiring the first people, you need to hire builders. You need to hire people that really want to build something from scratch and are extremely comfortable with ambiguity. They don't come to a place expecting structure because they need to one drive with that ambiguity slash chaos, but they also need to build a structure themselves. And we in the beginning we have brought people from, you know, and I'm not saying people from bigger companies cannot adjust, but people had never been exposed to that. And we quickly realized that they didn't have either the inclination to adjust or simply didn't want to, or were not good at it, for example. But there was different reasons why it happened. But I would say that sometimes you meet people that are extremely bright, extremely intelligent, and actually super competent in their jobs in whatever context that they're in. But then you completely change to being in a place where there is no structure, and then those people don't drive in those environments, and vice versa, right? So it's it can happen the other way around as well. So that's that's a big one. And you really wanted we started digging a lot more on that. Okay, so you're amazing at your job. What if I take you this in this support system? What do you do? Um, and so this is when we we made a little bit of the shift. It was already there from the beginning, but it's when we went full force on the first principles thinking way of interviewing. So it's not so much about what's your of course, for certain roles you need specific expertise, but for a lot of roles is how smart you are, how you can solve problems, and how in this situation where all of the options are taken away from you, can you find a path forward? Um, and so this is this was a big inflection point for us, I would say.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's uh a learning curve that I went through as well, working with a lot of tech companies. And I've been in tech now for a little over a decade, and um, I do own a RPO embedded recruiting agency. We've worked with hundreds of tech companies, and we've just learned that lesson over and over. Like we've seen it so many times. So it's something that we actually advise on too. So when I'm working, and same for my company as well, right? Um it's really it's really challenging to be able to evaluate somebody in an interview process for a startup if they only have like big company, you know, upper mid-market enterprise experience. It's really, really hard. And and so then, of course, like you know, I I got asked, I was actually on one podcast, like uh like a sales podcast, and the host asked me, it's like, well, okay, but you know, obviously some people can do it, so how do you interview them for an early stage startup? And I guess it's sort of a hot take, but what I said is I wouldn't. Like it's not that they couldn't do it. Of course, we we can find somebody who can make the transition. The issue is that when you're a recruiter or a talent leader at a startup or a stage company, you're essentially an investment manager. Like you are given a bucket of money to hire incredibly high quality people, and it's your job to ensure that you're maximizing the ROI and to eliminate as much risk as possible. Right? And it's like it adds the likelihood of them being able to make that kind of conversion or transition from big company to startup. Not saying that it can't be done, it's just that I've seen it fail so often that I look at it as a risk aversion thing. I just need to stay away from it from our customers because I want to ensure we're getting the right person. And that's is it fair enough to be able to do that?

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm gonna play devil's advocate for you here, actually. Okay. Uh so I would say that can be a bias of yours as well, that because you have seen that happen multiple times, now you have also created this bias for yourself that it might, more often than not, is not a good fit. I have seen it go incredibly well for poolside, actually, and I have seen it going wrong. I have seen both. Um, we have put a couple things in place in the process to help mitigating for this. I definitely agree it's tricky and it's sometimes hard, but we still interview them, mostly because we have found really good talent that came from big tech.

SPEAKER_01:

And a lot of them for which for which um department though? That might be there might be some new ones there, too.

SPEAKER_00:

I think I'll agree for both engineering and for go-to-market, um, mostly. Uh not so much GNA, maybe, but I think like it has served us in both. I definitely agree with you that I mean it's it's I as I said, it's been a learning curve for us for sure. We have learned from that as well. But we basically tweak the hiring process to address for this. Um we do touch, especially in the beginning, a lot on the drive, the motivation on the person trying to understand why do you actually want to move into an earlier stage and try to understand if they understand what they are getting themselves into. This is the biggest one. And like a good question that I like to ask often is um like I start with like what's been your biggest challenge over the past whatever years? How did you tackle? Then, okay, then if you had to anticipate what you think would be your biggest challenge in the context of full size, what do you think that will be? And then start cracking the ice from there. And some people will actually be surprisingly, okay, you are very well aware of the challenges of this stage. You know what you're getting yourself into. Other people are completely unaware, and it's like, okay, this might be a Bit of a yellow flag, and this is when then you deep dive into the first principles thinking, and then it's when a lot of people fail. We have a really low conversion rate in some of the technicals because of that.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

A lot of people really, it's it's hard, they fail there, but we have been really trying to still interview them, of course, if they have a great profile, but really press on those things, and then we are unforgiving. If you are not ready, then it's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that that's um, you know, I think for like a lot of recruiters when they're starting out to a lot of people become a recruiter, they want to help people get jobs, and it's like about you know, setting people up, and it really is. I mean, that is part of it, but it's also like you are like the first line of defense essentially to make sure that only the absolute right people are getting through. And of course, you're right, there's more nuance to um you know, some folks who can make it. Uh yeah, I I like with earlier stage, I I usually I'm just like, don't even just let's try to find somebody very hyper-similar environment, startup growth stage. I think too, though, as you have a little bit more systems and sophistication in place, probably when you cross like 100% threshold, or maybe as you become a little bit more established, too, it becomes you know more about your process and interview process and what works and what doesn't to dial in on that even more, right? Um, then I guess maybe some startups too. But yeah, that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00:

And then like within the process, you like in the very beginning, the very few people, like the first few people, of course, it's more on you to be thinking, like looking at those CV and thinking, is this a yes or no? And you can really spend more time on that. And then as you are scaling, you need to build a process that can a machine that is oiled and it kind of works on itself in a way. And so in this, you need to start thinking about biases, different stages. Can we start bringing people from different backgrounds and how that plays out into the process? So it's also a maturity of the process and how you start opening other doors, you know, like maybe in the beginning you wouldn't open.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And then you yeah, you start to, as you scale, you can and you have a little more systems and a little bit more process in place, right? Which also helps. Uh well, so look, this is great. I mean, this has been really cool to learn more about your story starting at the company's for uh for employees, and then that initial playbook for building out the team. Now you're in a different place. And I would love to get a sense for what your goals currently are at the company, maybe over the next six to twelve months, uh, whatever it might be, and your strategy to get there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So you might be aware that our space is extremely competitive right now. So the biggest challenge is definitely keep getting that top talent from the market. I think there is two challenges. There is a challenge of the shortage of talent, like the speed of what AI companies are hiring right now versus the amount of talent that is suitable for this role that is in the market that has the right experience that companies ideally want to hire for. There is a shortage of it. So that's the first one. And the second one is the massive competition. There is so many new labs out there, so many cool companies building stuff now. And we're all targeting more or less the same type of profiles. And so I would say the biggest challenge is definitely keep targeting and keep the bar very high when it comes to the quality of the talent, especially when you come to a 150 number of people, is when a lot of companies do this shift and they start lowering the bar in order to be able to keep scaling. And this is something that we actually had a conversation recently about. This is like we don't want to do it. If our roadmap, and it's not defined yet, but just to give a number as an example, if our roadmap was to hire 100 more people and I hire 50 and they're absolute amazing, incredible people, I'll be more happy than if we had hired 90 and 20 of them didn't make it, right? Not just because of the cost to the company, or even if maybe they made it, but they were average performers, I would be less happy than if we hired less and exceptional more senior people. And so there'll be uh there is scale that is coming at us and that challenge with the competition, but we are really focusing on how we can do the best work of our lives with less people that are more talented, uh more senior, and can really have bring that autonomy and high agency into the workplace versus in org. Um of course, we have now opened the doors like to more junior people that are extremely bright and bring kind of uh some fresh air into the company. It's been lovely. But those junior people are also high agency and high autonomy, right? And so they don't need a lot of hand holding. So, in anyways, I'm digressing a little bit, but that's definitely one. Um and well, full side, we are on this race, right? And so the next uh two years, we we just have to be completely hands down, head down, and and focus in that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And so you're gonna be scaling out the team. You're thinking about the different talent that you're bringing on. Um, it's gonna be to some extent, you said you're able to bring on some more junior talent. I suppose is that because in some of the departments you have more process and systems built out? Is that like sales talent or engineering talent? Where do you think you're gonna be focused on?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I would say it's more engineering. We'll focus more on engineering hiring. I would say it's the biggest portion of the company and it will continue to be at least for the next uh six to 12 months, and I hope for a long time, given the nature of our business. Um but I would say it's one we have a bit more structure now that we are able to give a little bit more support to people, but also because there is, you know, the concept of seniority, in my opinion, is well it's not as straightforward as I think a few years ago was in talent acquisition that you specifically looked for years of experience. I have seen more and more the industry like drifting away from that, which I personally also believe on. I have seen people with three years of experience that have kicked ass a lot more than someone with 15 years of experience, and vice versa as well. Um, but more and more I feel like those years of experience matter a bit less. And it's more about the people that actually want to bring the right impact and want to write the right things, are super intelligent, are talented, uh are passionate about what they do. And so it's a specific type of junior, though. It's those juniors that really want to kind of bring the world.

SPEAKER_01:

The incredible behavioral fits, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

That makes such a big difference. I that's one thing that I've learned is you can never at a startup and growth change company, you can never compromise on behavioral fits.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

You can't. Like that strong yes that you were talking about earlier. Yeah, every time it's because of the behavioral element. I mean, I like skill set at the end of the day, it's like even when I look at my must-haves, it's like I'm, you know, really at the end of the day, it's to me, it's if they're a strong behavioral fit, as long as they have the the majority of the skills that we need, I'm okay with them not having certain aspects of it of what's on the JD or hiring folks that are a little bit more junior. Because you know, if somebody's the right behavioral fit, they're just gonna bulldoze through any any potential problem. They're gonna figure it out.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And hard skills, like depending on the role and what are your needs, of course, in what context you are in, but they are more cultureable, right? You can always learn, you can always get there. But the behavioral piece, your inner drive, it's not something I believe can be coached. So you either are a fit or you're not a fit. And this is something that we we really from the beginning, we have always been very honest with people. This is our type of environment, this is who thrive here. If this is not for you, you can self-select out. That's okay. No one is gonna be offended. It's totally fine. But really allowing people to make their own decisions, you know, like people are adults. If you are applying for a job, you are definitely of a majority. You probably have been in the market for a couple of years. And so you can definitely make your own decisions. So giving people the information to make informed decisions about is this the workplace I want to work for? Is this the culture? Is this the values? Um, and we have had people self-selecting out and said, look, I don't think this is the right thing for me. That's good. Like you saved both of us time. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Yeah, I think that that's actually important for folks to understand is it's actually you should have a certain percentage of your candidates self-selecting out. That's a good thing. Sometimes lower conversion rates for many reasons actually are a good thing between interview rounds, but there should be a certain percentage of people. I mean, when uh for for one of my customers, I still do some hands-on supports a company I've been working with for five, six years, and uh, I'm an advisor over there, and I still interview folks at linger stage in the funnel for a few of their open roles. And I probably spend 10 to 15 minutes talking to them about the challenges uh and the problems that uh the company is working through. Um, and I really slow down on it because what what I tell them is like, look, I'm looking for the person that is excited to solve for these things. Right? Like, there's no right or wrong. It's like some people are gonna hear what I'm saying and be like, yes, this sounds like fun. Other people are gonna hear this and be like, no way. So I try to pull that out of people to, you know, it's easy to sell people on the things we do really well, but the right people, they're gonna be excited about coming in and solving for the challenge. And I think that that's sort of a startup gross stage mindset. Like, absolutely probably you're probably the same. But I mean, I like being able to go into a company where there's a lot of work to be done, there's a lot of improvements to be made, or something is is there's this really high potential, but something holding us back, and we have to break through. I mean, that kind of stuff is what really excites me. And for some people, that's their worst nightmare, right?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean exactly. And that's that's why like there is uh stages and companies for everyone, and that's why like being in a startup in this type of environment is not necessarily cooler than being in a bigger company because it depends on what's your personal drive, it depends on your circumstances, and honestly, like what do you like doing really? Like what you know gets you out of bed every day? You know, we are not all the same. So absolutely.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, uh, look, we're we're coming up on time here. And uh I wanted to see is related to pool side, is there anything else that you wanted to mention that you're working on or you're doing or that you think would be helpful to operators? I know we have a handful of questions I want to cover with you. Uh more so rapid fire format, but anything else that you want to talk through?

SPEAKER_00:

No, I think we are good so we can let's go. Let's go to our questions.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. All right, rapid fire questions. So, not exactly yes, no. Some of them are a little more context, but we're implementing this uh segment to the show. I think it'll be fun. Um, the the big one, the fun one is will AI replace recruiters?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, short answer is no, slightly longer is partially. So I personally don't believe that you can replace recruiters in a sense there is a big human connection uh in the recruitment pro in a recruitment process that is well done. In my opinion, there is a lot on values on and how people interact with each other that cannot be done by AI. At least as of today, I don't believe it. But I would say there is a lot of the work that recruiters do that will and should be replaced by AI because it's all of the automation work that we spend on a day-to-day doing repetitive tasks that no one likes, be my guest, of course. But yeah, my answer is partially partially no.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I hear you on that. Okay, cool. What tools would you say are game changers and which are all hype?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't particularly believe in tools as game changers, to be honest. I mean, they can be, depending on your context, but I would say there is no perfect tools. There is tools for the problems you want to solve, for the context, the stage you are in. Um, it depends what you are trying to achieve. I have tools that have served me very well in other stages. And then you once you get to a certain stage, it no longer serves you. I still love those tools, absolutely, just not for the context I'm in. So my answer will be actually I will not name any tool. I would say it depends on the problem you're trying to solve in the stage you are in.

SPEAKER_01:

I agree with you there too. Okay, next question. What is more productive, an office or remote?

SPEAKER_00:

Hybrid. I hope I can uh cheat on that um question. So I have been I have done both. I think like most people have done both at this stage, or even if those who haven't done fully remote have done a hybrid. Pullside is remote first. We we have a little bit now of a hybrid that we go to Paris once a month to be with the team. Uh in my previous company, we were hybrids. I personally believe in giving people the autonomy and agency to work remotely, to manage their own lives. It gives a lot of people freedom and time to manage their own personal lives, their own hobbies, family time, reduce commute, and so on. But it's also important to spend quality time in person. And there are things that are simply better done in person than not. So I really believe in a hybrid, but the hybrid that gives freedom of choice rather than a forced you have to be at the office every Monday type of situation.

SPEAKER_01:

Got it. Got it. Cool. And what is the best piece of career or leadership advice you've ever received?

SPEAKER_00:

This is my favorite question, I would say, of today. Um I would say my biggest the biggest advice I have received, and it's the advice I like to give, is take the seat at the table. I would say confidence goes a long way. And through our throughout our careers, even if you are in a leadership position or not, it doesn't matter. A lot of us at some point might think to ourselves that we are not ready for something. We are kind of we have imposter syndrome, and you don't want to be in certain rooms because you kind of think you are a fraud somehow, um, or you don't feel confident enough in a specific conversation, and then you don't really take the opportunity to go in and say something. My biggest piece of advice is you take that seat at the table. Walk into that room that you are scared of. Confidence goes a long way. If you're lucky enough, you will not be the smartest in a room. Um, but you'll have the chance to learn from other people, you'll be out of your comfort zone. But you might even get surprised with yourself with what you were able to accomplish. You might be able to be to be seen and heard by people that you never thought that would listen to you, but more importantly, you will learn a lot. And that's how you you grow. So take the seat at the table. That's my biggest piece of advice that I have been given and has helped me a lot.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's great advice. And the last question I have for you is what is one book that has had the biggest impact on your life or career?

SPEAKER_00:

So I love reading, so that's a hard one. There is a few ones that I would recommend. Um, a book that that has helped me a lot is called The Coaching Habit from uh Michael Senior. That book was actually recommended by my coach, and it's how any people in a position of management, leadership, mentoring, whatever that is, should know how to coach others to an extent and having the coaching mentality in conversations. That's been incredibly helpful for my role specifically, but I do recommend that to everyone and anyone that I mentor. That's one. On a more personal level, I love the book 4,000 weeks. Um, I would say that book is incredibly interesting. It's not about HR, it's not about building a business at all. But it gives you perspective in time. Like what's actual time? An average lifetime has 4,000 weeks. When you think about 4,000 weeks, that kind of sounds a bit short, doesn't it? Um it give me that actually cancel a little bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, sorry when you talk about it now.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm sorry if that sounds a bit dark, but the the way that you look at time and decisions, and it's I think the biggest conclusion of the book, without wanting to spoil anyone, at least for me personally, there is many conclusions and views you can take of it, is really you need to make choices and you need to commit to them. You cannot be here waiting to say, oh yeah, okay, then I can make that choice, and then I will tomorrow I'll do that, and then I'll never really commit to anything because I have enough time in life to do all of it. Well, actually, we don't. Our lives are finite, and so you have to make decisions and commit to them. And if they don't work, then you move on to the next one. So that's like it really translates to a lot of areas of life. I love that book. And then final one, which is very, very helpful for HR leaders, leaders in general, is scaling people. Uh, the stripe book from Claire Um Johnson. I love that book, it's phenomenal. I would say any startup or anyone who is building a business should buy that book and go home and read it and spend a lot of time on it because it's exceptional.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Okay. Well, there you go. I gotta check it, I gotta check those out. Thank you. Yeah, cool. I got some reading to do.

SPEAKER_00:

Cool. Enjoy. I hope so. I hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think of that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I know I definitely will. I will. Um, well, look, I coming up on time, I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a really exciting episode. I know everyone tuning in is going to have learned uh a lot. And um, so thank you for joining us and sharing your insights. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure. Um season.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. And for everybody tuning in, just so you know, we're gonna be getting back to a regular episode cadence of every Tuesday and Thursday morning releases. So uh stay tuned for more amazing episodes. Talk to you soon.

unknown:

Bye.

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James Mackey

Host