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Cacioppo: Vanta tests candidates with real internal problems to prevent surprise

Christina Cacioppo · The early-stage lessons of a $2.45 billion company (Vanta's Christina Cacioppo) | Masters of Scale · Mar 17, 2025 · at 23:53

Christina Cacioppo, founder and CEO of Vanta, explains her interview strategy for screening candidates who can handle startup uncertainty.

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“The questions, the exercises in our interview process are all sort of ripped from the headlines. Like, they are just real things we are thinking through. And I think repeatedly through the interview process, trying to be very direct and transparent about what we're struggling to do and what it is like to work at Fanta In a way that I think sometimes surprises candidates because they'll say, you know, you're telling me a lot or like, wow, you have a lot of problems. And the answer is kind of yes, but these are the things we're working through and you can learn about them now and opt in or opt out, or you can not know about them and then accept the job and then be very surprised later. And so I think it's just kind of setting up these interview processes such that people mostly aren't surprised in their first day, week, month.”

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