Adam Ward (Head of Talent at Cursor) discusses founder accountability in hiring with Lenny Rachitsky.
Opinion
Ward: Strategic recruiting teams should be among the highest paid company-wide
“And one of them, yeah, if not, I mean, if you think about this impact that they're having that and like the, you know, I feel like there's a supply and demand crisis around really strategic recruiters because of the somewhat transactional nature we've made rec…”
Opinion
Ward: Demand for narrowly specialized engineers and new grads is waning
“And we want that like super deep technical engineer that has a little bit more stronger product sense. And so you kind of see that. So I think the people who are maybe like very narrow, very deep and like overly specialized in a way are waning like in like, in…”
Insight
Ward: Recruiters are confidence engines, not the ultimate hiring decision-makers
“I think a lot of companies recruiting owns the hiring goal. And I've yet to be in a company where recruiters are making hiring decisions. So these things are in conflict. Hiring managers or leaders or committees are making hiring decisions. And I feel like the…”
Insight
Ward: High-volume recruiting funnels inevitably regress candidate quality to the mean
“Assuming I have really good interview process and hygiene and all these things, you kind of regress to the mean over time as you get to volume.”
Insight
Ward: Treating recruiting as a linear sales funnel is a fallacy
“In a sales funnel, you know, as a salesperson, you're typically selling a widget, a piece of software, an item, those things are relatively static and rational. In recruiting, you have an irrational unit of a hiring manager and recruiter and in another rationa…”
Insight
Ward: Hiring managers cannot intuitively identify top talent without objective criteria
“If you've ever heard that phrase, like, I will, I'll know what, I'll know it when I see it. I'll know what great looks like. You actually, you won't. You won't see, you won't know, because you haven't spent, like, the time objectively identifying what that, wh…”