Screen In vs Screen Out Recruiting with Nate Wylie, Recruitment Leader, Formerly @ Lyft

How do you align hiring expectations in a competitive market? 

Nate Wylie, Recruitment Leader formerly at Lyft, shares his insights on how to balance pursuing A+ candidates while maintaining practical recruiting strategies. 

In his conversation with Shanon, Nate emphasizes the importance of screening candidates in rather than out. This means focusing on the value they bring instead of finding reasons to reject them. Nate also touches on the unrealistic expectations many founders have for candidates and offers practical advice for building a successful recruiting process that reflects the realities of today’s market.

Key Takeaways: 

1. Align hiring expectations with market reality: Not every hire is going to be 100% perfect. Help leadership understand the reality of the talent market and have an open mind rather than holding out for the perfect hire.
2. Screen for potential, not perfection: Focus on a candidate’s potential and contributions instead of reasons to reject them. This mindset helps avoid delays and makes everything more enjoyable and efficient.
3. Tailor your recruitment processes: Hiring isn’t one size fits all. Customize your hiring process based on specific industry needs, market conditions, and the role's requirements to ensure a better candidate fit.

Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(03:05) Common recruitment pain points in startups
(05:16) Aligning founders’ expectations with market realities
(08:11) Screening in vs. screening out
(10:30) What is screening in?
(14:46) The importance of forecasting in recruiting
(20:44) Managing founder expectations and candidate budgets
(25:12) The value of screening in candidates
(30:09) Defining hiring excellence

Transcript

Nate Wylie [00:00:00]:

I think that's what oftentimes people forget about you can do, you know, every step strategically in the hiring process. Extend an offer and they decline extended offer, they accept and then get offered something else and they, you know, renege and say they're going to go with this or family situation changes. Like, there are so many variables I've seen take place. And so I think sometimes as important as hiring is, we overthink it.

Shannon Ogborn [00:00:23]:

Welcome to offer Accepted, the podcast that elevates your recruiting game. I'm your host Shannon Ogborn. I join us for conversations with talent leaders, executives and more to uncover the secrets to building and leading successful talent acquisition teams. Gain valuable insights and actionable advice, from analyzing cutting edge metrics to confidently claiming your seat at the table. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of Offer accepted. I'm Shannon Ogborn, your host, and this episode is brought to you by Ashby, the all in one recruiting platform, empowering ambitious teams from seed to IPO and beyond. I'm super excited to have Nate here today.

Shannon Ogborn [00:01:03]:

Nate is a talent acquisition consultant with a diverse background in startup and big tech environments. He's known for advising industry leaders on scaling teams through strategic growth and efficient processes. He previously led recruitment as head of talent at a startup and advanced from recruiting leader for data science and machine learning teams at Lyft. Nate's key achievements include redefining recruitment processes, reducing costs by insourcing and implementing new technology. So great person to have insights from Nate, thank you so much for joining us today.

Nate Wylie [00:01:37]:

Thank you Shannon, appreciate it.

Shannon Ogborn [00:01:40]:

I know that I just kind of gave a little bit of background sort of overall, but can you give our listeners a little bit of background on yourself and sort of what your current work is?

Nate Wylie [00:01:52]:

Yeah. So currently I've been fortunate actually to be pretty booked and busy with three startups. So I've been working with them the majority of this year on a fractional basis. So embedded head of talent, essentially helping them of course feel some roles is the main priority. But also I've implemented two ATS's, so configuring it, administrating that sort of keeping the data clean, also partnering with the founder of course, to try to help them better understand what some of the hiring needs may be. Compensation, analysis. So pretty much everything that touches ta. I try my best to sort of take off the plate, but um, I stop it.

Nate Wylie [00:02:30]:

Like any sort of HR er, duties, I gotta put a hard stop there. I don't, I don't, I don't try to drift in the waters I'm not comfortable with.

Shannon Ogborn [00:02:38]:

Totally. Well, you have so much interesting background in startups and in tech and in recruiting, in your work with startups. More recently in particular, have you noticed any pain points of areas that could be improved in the recruiting process or any areas that you've said, okay, now that I'm working a lot with startup founders, like this is something that really stands out to me.

Nate Wylie [00:03:05]:

Yeah, it's been quite a few. I've talked to colleagues a lot about just the market in general and just how it's so different from, you know, depending on how long you've been in recruiting. For the most part, recruiting has been pretty much the same. You know, you find candidates, you interview them, you hire. Sometimes the market changes a bit. Usually it swings in the favor of candidate versus employer. Right now, I don't know, like it's kind of a draw. All founders that I'm working with or are familiar with are usually, you know, every single hire needs to be this a plus player and that's checking all the boxes and then some who fits within the budget who can start right away.

Nate Wylie [00:03:43]:

So it's this wish list that they're trying to fulfill that just isn't a realistic in today's market just because that a player is usually going to sit tight until something that is, you know, almost silly not to accept comes knocking at their door. And so I always try to make sure founders understand, just like a candidate, you got to understand what your value is and also like what are you offering these a players? Like what's going to be your carrot to pull them out of their very comfortable seat where since they are a player, they're being successful, they're a high performer, they're on path to promotions. You know, you're essentially trying to disrupt that. And so what are you offering? And it needs to be usually like an expedited career progression path. And so I find oftentimes founders are wanting to hire these a players but also wanting them to accept a lateral move and try to sell them on this great opportunity wherever, honestly, they're already sitting in a great opportunity. And so I try to sort of let them know like, hey, you can hire this a player, but, you know, we're going to have to beef up this role or, you know, increase budget or something along those lines. And so trying to get them to better understand, you know, there are, there's talent out there. More of that potential piece I think has been one of the biggest patterns or trends I've been seeing.

Shannon Ogborn [00:05:05]:

Yeah. So in other words, trying to really get them to understand the alignment between the reality of what's out there, what the market is, and what they're looking for.

Nate Wylie [00:05:16]:

Yes, yes, exactly.

Shannon Ogborn [00:05:18]:

Yeah. I found too, especially with startup founders. I love how passionate startup founders are, but I think one of the difficulties that I found working for startups sometimes is they expect everyone to absorb that passion and be that passionate, just kind of up, up front or feel so passionate about the project or the company, just like they do to where they're willing to take a lower salary or they will lose some career trajectory just because they're so passionate about the mission. And I feel like what can be missed is not everybody functions that way as a candidate. That's not always the most important thing to a candidate. It's important to a lot of candidates, but that might not be the top one thing that they're really focused on. And so I feel like reaching that alignment could be a little bit difficult, too.

Nate Wylie [00:06:08]:

Very difficult. And I try to watch my words, but essentially you're telling a founder, like, your baby, isn't that cute as you think, as you think it is. Like, that could be a hard message to try to get across in a tactful way. But it's the truth. I mean, you're paying me to find you people because your ATS isn't flooded with the best of the best. Like, you need me to go out and intentionally, you know, reach out to these individuals. And so trying to make them understand that just because you want something doesn't mean they want it. And then even finding individuals who check those boxes and then them being on the fence with moving forward with an offer, because they don't see that passion or that offer, and they're curious, well, how long would this person stay? They stayed at the last startup, a year and a half.

Nate Wylie [00:06:52]:

We need someone dedicated at least three years. And so you started to get into a lot of those details around personality and behavior and trying to predict the future of the candidate, it can be a tough conversation to have. Cause, again, like, I think to a founder, sometimes a recruiter, given that realistic feedback, feels like a challenge to them. And it's just speaking from a very neutral, sort of unbiased position of, hey, I want you to win. I want you, your company to do great, and I want you to find a great person. But, you know, the candidates aren't you, like, they aren't the founder. They're just gonna support your efforts and your vision. Like, you have to sort of humble yourself a little bit.

Shannon Ogborn [00:07:31]:

It's hilarious what you say about telling someone their baby. Thank you. That's a perfect analogy. Well, I know that one of the things that we had talked about previously is sort of achieving that alignment through screening in versus screening out approach and philosophy. Can you walk through how this is important or why this is important to get alignment with founders on that screen in versus screen out? Because some of what you're saying is like, it's just not possible to have all five of these things. So how do we screen them in versus trying to screen them out? And what are the benefits, sort of at large, to implementing this philosophy amongst recruiting teams?

Nate Wylie [00:08:11]:

First, I would say the benefit is saving time and really recruiter sanity, myself included. I, you know, anything I say, I've usually experienced, and even if it's mistakes I've made on myself. And so that's why I like to talk about it. I've learned that most people are making a lot of the same mistakes. But when I first started consulting and, you know, I got my first contract signed and recruiters are already naturally people pleasers. And so we just give them to JD, I'm gonna find your unicorn, your purple squirrel. Let me add it, I'm gonna get it. And so I sort of ran with it that way.

Nate Wylie [00:08:44]:

And literally everyone I was coming back with it was like, nope. You know, I'm looking for two more years of experience, nope. I want a better college degree, nope. I want, you know, to have this startup experience, nope. But they also need some big tech. Like, it was just kind of everything that, like, that one thing that was missing. And whenever I try to, you know, account for that and come back with another box check, it's like, well, this box isn't checked on this one. And so I found that it's important to align during that initial kickoff of, okay, you can have this wish list, but we need to, you know, force rank what's most important to you and really make them think about take away this skill set.

Nate Wylie [00:09:20]:

Can this person be successful in this role? And once you start to get them to say they could, but, okay, we're getting somewhere. This person can do this role without this particular, you know, attribute or skill set or piece of experience. Something they can learn is something someone else can coach them on or they can develop over time. And so that's where you start to kind of chip away at that mentality of I need to find the perfect candidate. And then I've also learned is very helpful. You work with founders, but depending on what stage you are, how big teams are, you're usually founder usually has a lot of input, but there may be a different hiring manager. And so I really try to find, like an ally that may be a little bit more aligned with the way I'm thinking about going about the hiring process. So that the founder is not just hearing this from me, but is hearing it from someone else, specifically someone who's considered to be a subject matter expert, that they can tell them, hey, this person will be a valuable asset to the company even though they don't have x skillset.

Shannon Ogborn [00:10:16]:

Totally. And kind of taking a step back when thinking about screening, inverse screening out, can you explain a little bit about what that means to you for people who haven't implemented that type of philosophy before?

Nate Wylie [00:10:30]:

Yeah. So screening in versus screening out is trying to get everyone online on the mindset of the candidates that we're speaking with, candidates that we're spending time with. We're trying to find the value in them versus ways to reject them. Rejecting candidates is very easy, and I think oftentimes that's a go to for a hiring leader or a founder to give themselves peace of mind and saying, well, I dodged a bullet. No, that person wasn't going to give me what I wanted. And let's just keep looking. Let's just keep looking. You can source forever, literally, if that's what you choose to do.

Nate Wylie [00:11:04]:

I know several companies or colleagues who said there have been roles open for a year, year and a half. Like, to me, like, that's ridiculous. If a role, one, if it's been open that long, you don't need it. Second, clearly you haven't defined what exactly this person needs to do and or you aren't willing to pay that person to do it. It's usually one of those. And so getting everyone aligned on screening in is, let's look for not just potential, but actually what value and what experiences is this person actually going to bring and what impact is that going to have today? I think oftentimes founders or hiring leaders get caught up in just forgetting the fact that if you have a role open, there's a hole in your organization somewhere that needs to be filled for, for a very specific reason. And I like to get them to think about, okay, like, how much time do you have to let this work go undone or to stretch your team then? And what that may, you know, what domino effect that may cause? So what happens if you lose this one other person who's carrying all the weight for this particular department? Is that gonna, you know, tank your entire company? So you need to really start thinking about these things. And that good candidate may be, you know, the perfect candidate for right now for what you need to get done, versus spending another couple of months trying to find a great candidate that we, we still don't know how we hire.

Nate Wylie [00:12:20]:

You know, what's going to happen is, I think that's what oftentimes people forget about you can do, you know, every step strategically in a hiring process. Extend an offer and they decline extended offer, they accept and then get offered something else and they, you know, renege and say they're going to go with this or family situation changes. Like, there are so many variables I've seen take place. And so I think sometimes as important as hiring is, we overthink it and think that if we spend so much more time and effort into doing it, then it's going to be perfect and it just never will be, in my opinion. Let me throw that in there totally.

Shannon Ogborn [00:12:55]:

And I think it's worth noting that while there are some things like structured interviewing that predict job performance better than others, nothing, nothing predicts job performance 100%. When people say, like, I think I could find someone better, I think we should wait. You just have to evaluate what is the cost of that and what does that mean for your organization.

Nate Wylie [00:13:21]:

I completely agree. Again, I love taking a self assessment and just understanding where we are right now and what's needed in order to make progress, in order to push things forward. Like sometimes a company may have two years Runway and that's drastically being ate up because some work isn't being done or some type of position is in field, and that is a revenue generating role or whatever the case may be. And so getting someone to start doing that work today would actually be more beneficial than finding someone that you feel is the right person four or five months from now?

Shannon Ogborn [00:13:57]:

Yeah, it's an interesting balance for sure, as all things recruiting. One of the things that you mentioned earlier was about a kickoff process that really gets this behavior set and aligned. Can you talk a little bit about what in a kickoff process for you would actually encourage this behavior and philosophy from founders, hiring managers, and honestly, even other recruiters? Because I know I've worked with recruiters who are like pretty stringent on who they're sourcing and bringing in, and they're actually missing out on a lot of quality candidates. And I feel like where the should be the facilitators of getting those candidates in the pipeline if they could potentially be a good match. So how do you start a kickoff process that really encourages that philosophy of screen inverse screen, up.

Nate Wylie [00:14:46]:

I usually like to kick off with founders and really getting a better understanding of the history of hiring at that company, what challenges they may have had so far, what challenges they're having today, and really get a better understanding of, you know, why am I here? It could just be cost savings. Like maybe working with me is better than agency or whatever the case may be, but getting a better understanding of, again, their philosophy around hiring, the things they've tried, what has and hasn't working. Like, I take note of all that before. I kind of really dig into what type of candidate are we looking for where your non negotiables, what are we talking about as far as timeline compensation? I start to really kind of understand because that puts me in the right mindset of how much, if any, change management is going to be needed. I think that's what it comes down to because I've actually worked with some startups that was too loose with hiring. Okay. Like you kind of, you need to do more than one interview for, for this head of, like you might want to vet them a little bit further. And so it can go both ways.

Nate Wylie [00:15:47]:

I think the majority of the time is trying to get a founder to loosen up, but sometimes I've seen where founders are just kind of so free when it comes to hiring and just thinks that, okay, now I'll just get them in here, we'll figure it out. You know, that can work when they're been hired onto a pretty well built out team with some good coaching and mentorship available. But if this person is laying the groundwork, you want to be a little bit more thorough, I guess, embedding that individual.

Shannon Ogborn [00:16:13]:

Definitely. When you're starting these meetings, like, let's just say you're starting from square one and you're working with a founder or hiring manager. And they're like, I have 20 requirements, which, it sounds ridiculous, but we know that, we know that happens. How do you talk to them about reducing sort of like the minimum qualifications versus the preferred qualifications? And I guess how many do you recommend? Like how many very hard stop factors do you recommend a hiring manager has for a candidate they're looking for?

Nate Wylie [00:16:53]:

That's interesting and I don't want to cop out, but it is very individualized and I think I would take a very tailored approach to that type of situation. And it depends on the role because that role, you know, could be, the market could be flooded with those individuals or it could be something very niche. What industry are we talking about is, you know, has that industry been impacted by a lot of layoffs, have they not? Has it been stable? All of these variables play a huge factor because if someone's been in a very stable environment, I see them less likely to leave. That's going to, you know, reduce your candidate pool versus something where again, the market is flooded because the sector has been hit by so many layoffs and you can kind of throw a rock and hit these individuals. That's going to help me sort of, you know, measure how we sort of assess and qualify candidates. But I also, I try my best and hopefully, you know, I'm successful at making sure founders keep an open mind. I love working with founders who, who are open to those exploratory calls. Like if I find someone who's in industry who's done this work, who, because sometimes a candidate could have like a very, almost like, confusing or scattered type of profile, but, you know, they're in the realm of what you're looking for.

Nate Wylie [00:18:08]:

They may have, you know, have a long career in startups, and so they've worn many hats, as they always like to say. And so I love to have those people talk to founders as well because sometimes that helps the founder better understand what type of person they're looking for, even if it's not that person. And they can hone in a little bit more and come back to me with, okay, like, I really need someone who can do this and this, and now we're a lot more calibrated just because they've had a couple of conversations and they see that they can now be a little bit more specific because they've spoken with people who has done similar work 100%.

Shannon Ogborn [00:18:42]:

I always also found it helpful to present hiring managers with someone in the industry who's not necessarily in the market, but just willing to talk about their experience and that particular role, like kind of things that they would be looking for in a role. And I found that to be really valuable because the person on the other end isn't necessarily like, invested in saying whatever they need to say to get a job, but they're invested in lifting up their own industry in their own role, people in their own role. So I found that to be a really interesting avenue to helping hiring managers and founders understand, especially founders, who you literally can't know everything about every role. It's impossible. So who can you talk to in your network or in the recruiters network who will say, hey, yeah, I've been in this industry, in this role for a long time, and here's what people get really excited about. Here's what people are really looking for. The salary expectation is way too low based off of probably more anecdotal. But sometimes when you do, like, the compensation analysis, it just doesn't line up with what people are really looking for to make a move.

Shannon Ogborn [00:19:50]:

Because like you said, if there's a bunch of people in this role type that are stable and not a flooded market, then they're going to be less likely to move. So they're going to need to be incentivized to do that. So I always found that to be pretty valuable means there, too.

Nate Wylie [00:20:06]:

Again, I love when a founder is just open to having those conversations. To me, like, it just creates a better relationship between recruiter and founder as well, is sort of a, it's a lot more collaborative. It's trust, it's not transactional. Whereas, like, no, only. Only send me people that can help me in what I need to be helped today. Like, it's more of like, no, let me, let me talk to them. Like, I have some questions. It creates, like, a completely different type of dynamic to the relationship.

Shannon Ogborn [00:20:33]:

I've seen any other tidbits on the kickoff process or kind of encouraging that philosophy that you've seen to really resonate with founders and hiring managers.

Nate Wylie [00:20:44]:

I mean, setting appropriate expectations around your capabilities and how quickly you feel you can start to present candidates, aligning on how those candidates will be presented. Again, these are all things. Especially, you know, start off my consulting career, I figured out as I went, a lot of it is very relevant to working with hiring managers internally. But consulting is a little different sometimes because, you know, it's intentional, where I don't want to be overly involved in your day to day, or we shouldn't talk all day every day. Like, it should get to a point to where we connect as needed if there are things to talk to. But we kind of create this process of sharing candidates, you review it and us collaborating to figure things out. And so just setting that up early and sticking to it, I think is beneficial. And then also I love to share candidates in the screen in, screen out type of philosophy.

Nate Wylie [00:21:40]:

Share candidates that, you know, are spot on but are way over budget and just show, like, this person does it all. This is what the market rate is going for. Their response to that can tell you a lot as well. Are they just, you know, sort of writing that off as, oh, you showed me one person who's above market. Like, oh, well, like, no big deal, but like, but you agree this person is exactly who you were looking for. So if we're finding people like, this, why wouldn't they be operating in that same salary range and budget? And so I think even if they don't admit it, like, it starts to plant that seed of you. You may need to compromise on some things as we move forward.

Shannon Ogborn [00:22:18]:

I think strategically, pushing boundaries is such an important role for recruiters because, again, strategically, you don't just push boundaries for no reason. But like you said, it's like super telling if it's like, okay, I found you the perfect candidate. They're two x the budgets. Like, oh, no, we can't do that. It's like, okay, so now we need to take a step back and say, this is what it costs to hire this, this perfect person for the role. Perfect in quotes for the role. But that's not achievable with the budget we have, which is okay, but we need to start taking things away that, you know, maybe instead of ten years of experience, we can bring someone in with five years of experience. So we have to adjust something because this is not realistic.

Shannon Ogborn [00:23:01]:

So it sounds like you have a knack for getting people to that aligned place where try where you're getting them to a realistic, a realistic place.

Nate Wylie [00:23:12]:

The thing with me is that realistic place is, it's a good place. I mean, I just hate, sometimes I feel like a founder or hiring leader is thinking I'm trying to get them to settle and that's not what I'm doing at all. Like, I promise you, like, I don't want to, you know, give you, you know, someone you feel to be mediocre, to fill your role. Like, I want you to find someone that, you know, checks the majority of your boxes. But like, with most things in life, I just don't, you're just not thinking about this logically. And that's the thing. If you want this perfect person, give me an open budget. Like, just, just talk to, you know, the cream of the crop.

Nate Wylie [00:23:50]:

Like, the people I bring you, if they're good, you're willing to pay them what they're asking for, but most don't want to do that. And so, okay, you don't want the best person. You want the best you can get for this amount of money that you're willing to pay. That's where we need to sort of set the bar and make sure that we're, again, being realistic about this.

Shannon Ogborn [00:24:07]:

Yeah. And sometimes that makes sense. Like, you don't always need someone with ten years, twelve years of experience in a specialty. Sometimes what you really need is at least five, and that's what your budget is. So then you probably are going to hire someone around five years of experience, not ten years of experience. So, yeah, it's all, it's all balance. It's all give and take. It all depends.

Shannon Ogborn [00:24:30]:

Like you said, I hate the cop out. It depends. But it really honestly does.

Nate Wylie [00:24:36]:

It does. It really does. And that's sort of at the root of the screen in versus screen out. Like, we're looking at each candidate individually instead of trying to, we have this blueprint and just seeing, you know, does that person match the blueprint perfectly? I feel like I'm far removed, and most recruiters are, you know, like, I'm not giving you candidates that are just completely out of left field. Like, there's something here. Now, whether that person, you know, meets your standards of what you want or you feel like you click with them or they're going to be. Have the capabilities, okay, that's. That's on you to assess further.

Nate Wylie [00:25:12]:

But you can't tell me it doesn't make sense that I brought you this person. Like, this person clearly has the background and the experience that you're looking for.

Shannon Ogborn [00:25:21]:

Is there any better feeling, though, than bringing a hiring manager or a founder to this philosophy of screen in verse, screen out, and then they hire one of the screen in candidates that wasn't quite the perfect match, and you're just like, see, it works. The system works.

Nate Wylie [00:25:39]:

The reason is, it's tough to say that, because if it goes the other way, it's like, oh, man. But that's the thing. You never know until you get them in the role. But recruiters usually have a higher EQ, and so I think sometimes we can pick up on certain things. Like, there have been times I've tried to convince hiring leaders that, hey, this person is gonna work here until you don't let them work here no, more. Like, just because they have so much excitement. They're highly engaged with me. They're following up at the calls.

Nate Wylie [00:26:08]:

They're asking me to prep them. They're just so engaged versus the ones that are just kind of lingering. You know, they respond to the email. They'll say, yeah, they'll take the call, but you can tell, like, their heart isn't in it. Not to say they wouldn't be a great candidate either, but those are things I try to point out to a founder as well. Like, okay, you can hire this person or this person, maybe something you're very interested in. They're passively playing around with us. This person, without a shadow of a doubt, would accept our offer.

Nate Wylie [00:26:37]:

Come in. And be able to make an immediate impact. It's weird. It's so weird dealing with people on all sides because sometimes, like, a founder wants the individual who, who doesn't seem desperate or super interested. They want to feel like they won them over. And it's just, it's funny. It's funny all the different directions it can go in, and recruiters just try to manage it all and sort of spot when these sort of sticky situations pop up.

Shannon Ogborn [00:27:01]:

Yeah, the psychological games are definitely no fun. I mean, I remember, I think what's really cool about having, and helpful and impactful about having, like, high trust with recruiters and founders and hiring managers is they come to you and they say, how did this candidate treat you? You know, did they treat you well? Did they treat you like a real human being? Or did they treat you very transactionally? Like, the only thing you're good for is to, like, get me into this job. One of my previous CEO's would, when I was doing more like, coordination, like recruiting ops work, every time we would get to the offer stage with a candidate, he would stop me in the hall when we were in the office. I haven't been in the office in a while and say, hey, like, how did this candidate treat you when you were booking them? Like, were they respectful? Were they kind? Were they grateful? And I would always give, like, a pretty straight up answer. And there were actually people who were, like, quite rude to me that I wasn't trying to, like, block them from getting a job, of course. But he would ask me what I thought and I said, yeah, like, we had a little bit of trouble. Like, he was like, okay, I think we shouldn't give this person an offer. So, like, this is also a note to candidates. Like, you got to treat everyone, like, with respect, because if you do have that high trust between founders and recruiting and talent, like, that could be the difference between the person who gets an offer or not. So I love that aspect of building the trust with, with founders especially.

Nate Wylie [00:28:38]:

Yeah, for sure. And to your point, I think all people should just treat people with respect.

Shannon Ogborn [00:28:44]:

100% a lost art, apparently.

Nate Wylie [00:28:47]:

Yeah. Like, I've had candidates say some very nasty things to me after I, you know, tell them they didn't move forward or I'm, you know, late responding to an email or something, whatever it may be. That's just like, calm down. Like, it's just overkill. It's just overkill. Like, why are you talking to me like this? And I found myself, like, I'll be, I'll get mad for like 3 seconds and then I just calm down. I'm like, it's not that serious. Like, that's, that's them, you know, not being able to check their emotions and same thing internally.

Nate Wylie [00:29:19]:

Like, I, you know, I've had hiring leaders and founders, you know, get nasty about something and it be the smallest thing. Like, you know, maybe the coordinator booked the wrong room or forgot to add a zoom link. I'm just like, everybody, let's calm down. Like, what is, like, why are we behaving like this? Like, it really usually isn't that serious. That's why I like recruiting, because it's, it's very important to the company, but it is fun. Like, it's just connections and networking and talking. So if we all can just keep it, you know, at that level, it shouldn't be any reason for the rudeness, but that's just people.

Shannon Ogborn [00:29:53]:

Yeah, keep it calm. Keep it cool, everybody. Keep it calm. Keep it cool. Well, taking sort of like a huge step back, we talk a lot at Ashby about hiring excellence, and I always love to hear from our guests. When you hear hiring excellence, what does that mean to you?

Nate Wylie [00:30:09]:

Oh, man, that's a good one. I think hiring excellence to me, and I'm just a very tailored, individualized, approach type person. And so when I think about hiring excellence, I think about putting together a process that works for that particular organization, that particular department, that team, really, you know, diving in and understanding historical data of what's been successful or what hasn't been in hiring or recruiting that particular position, and really putting together a process that makes sense. And that's how many people are they speaking with? What sorts of questions are we asking? You know, are we going to do an assignment? What should the assignment look like? How much time should we dedicate to this? Usually, myself included, I'm guilty of this. Like, you create a good recruiting process, and then you try to apply that recruiting process to every role that becomes available with some tweaks here and there, but it's still like a very blanket generic recruiting process that could work. But to me, excellence is creating those processes that were tailor made for those particular roles.

Shannon Ogborn [00:31:19]:

I feel like you know that better than anyone, too, especially having worked with data science and machine learning. Teams like that requires a pretty niche specific process, and applying what you did for sales is just not going to work for these very niche and hyper specific roles like data science and machine learning.

Nate Wylie [00:31:41]:

It's just not one thing I've seen become a barrier or a bottleneck, we'll call it in. The process is not adjusting your process as the market changes or as things differ. A good example, when I was at Lyft, we recruited the same way before the pandemic and after the pandemic and things that kind of changed and shifted. And of course, Lyft was a very, you know, a larger organization, so there could have been pockets of change. But for the most part, what I saw, we were still sort of applying a lot the same, you know, with, of course, the exception of, like, going remote and things like that. But the recruiting process itself and sort of how we were assessing and identifying candidates stayed the same, whereas I think sometimes we need to, again, kind of take a. Take a pause and assess. Okay, like, how has things changed? What can we improve upon? And I get it.

Nate Wylie [00:32:33]:

When you're recruiting, you're just. You're trying to push. You're trying to push. You're trying to get people that next stage, the thought to slow down and redo a playbook, you know, create new scorecards, all that kind of stuff. It's just like, oh, I don't have time. I need to get these candidates through. And so I love, or let me say, rather I miss having recruiting operations because those were the things we can kind of hand off. They get worked on in the background.

Nate Wylie [00:32:55]:

We come back together and boom. Like, I didn't have to necessarily slow down too much. When you're a one person show. Like, it's tough to juggle all of that. And you just kind of prioritize getting candidates through 100%.

Shannon Ogborn [00:33:07]:

Shout out to all the recops. The recops, people, you are my heroes. Okay, so last question. I feel like you have, like, a reasonable amount of hot takes on LinkedIn, but I would love to hear what is your recruiting hot.

Nate Wylie [00:33:21]:

Take top of mind recruiting again? Like, there just hasn't been much change. Like, we've implemented a lot more technology and a lot more sort of like, tooling and automation, but the process itself hasn't changed much. I think interviewing is just trash and poorly done, usually at most companies. And I say that because just like we've discussed during this time is there are so many variables involved. One thing I would like to see implemented more is giving candidates the opportunity to choose how they want to be evaluated, because a lot of us operate very differently. Case in point, you know, I'm sure I've hired some, you know, some. Some bad candidates because they interview well and I'm sure we've missed out on some candidates because they turned in a poor assignment. But with a little bit more time, a little bit more context, they may have killed that assignment.

Nate Wylie [00:34:19]:

So it's, it's just sort of, we use these interview processes and we make everybody run through the same process, almost like playing a sport. Like you, you're a good athlete, but you're making everybody try out for the basketball team. Like, that's not the sport they're good at. They're a good athlete, but you can really see them shine if you were to give them a different assignment or you run them through a different type of process. And so I think figuring out, like, how do we create these unique interview processes to where, like, we're actually seeing the best of every candidate and understanding what they'll bring to the table and what value. I especially hate when candidates don't get through just because I can tell they're nervous, they don't interview well. You know, they lose their train of thought. You know, it happens.

Nate Wylie [00:35:01]:

Interviews are very, you know, anxious types of situations. And so everybody, it's just, for some people, it's tough to navigate that, and that's really the only thing keeping them back because they, they have the skill sets. And so it'll be my hot take. I think we need to revamp interviewing, you know, as a whole and really figure out, and I think that will provide a better candidate experience in and of itself versus making sure everybody gets feedback. I would rather go through a process where I feel like I was able to perform at my best based on what I know I'm good at versus getting, you know, some constructive feedback on why someone else did better than me. So that's just me, though.

Shannon Ogborn [00:35:43]:

Totally. It's the balance of the candidate experience with predicting job performance. And I think setting candidates up for success is just inherently going to get you to a place where you can better predict job performance because of all the reasons you're saying. Obviously, at scale, that's really hard. So I think it's something to work on, but hopefully you can come back in a bit and hopefully you've made some changes there and you could inform us on how you did it, because I think what you're saying makes total sense. And at the end of the day, like, this is a human to human role and capacity, and we should be treating it more that way.

Nate Wylie [00:36:18]:

Yeah. At the end of the day, we all know the people who get hired because they know the right person. And so if, if that person can get hired just because they have the right connection and skip the entire interview process. That's why I say it's broken. Like, there's no way you can tell me that this person, you don't mind paying them two hundred k a year because you know them or know someone who knows them and you just trust that connection versus this person, you know, completed an assignment. It wasn't perfect, but it was good to me. Person B deserves the role just as much. But I mean, those are those, those factors.

Nate Wylie [00:36:53]:

That's the way the world works. Like, I just, I understand that, but I just wish there was something more we could do to, like I say, give people the opportunity to show up as their best selves during the interview process.

Shannon Ogborn [00:37:04]:

I think that as recruiters, we just continue to plant the seeds of and then the grass will grow. It's going to take time, but I think it, I think it'll get there. So fingers crossed on that. But I think we're coming up on our time. Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

Nate Wylie [00:37:23]:

I'm on LinkedIn all day, every day, so. Nate Wiley on LinkedIn, her hackernate on Instagram.

Shannon Ogborn [00:37:29]:

Nice. Well, Nate, can't thank you enough for sharing your insights with us on offer. Accepted. I really appreciate you spending the time. This episode was brought to you by Ashby. What an ATS should be a scalable, all in one tool that combines powerful analytics with your ATS scheduling, sourcing, and CRM. To never miss an episode, subscribe to our newsletter at www.ashbhq.com podcast. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.