The Exchanges

Q And so, I guess, to get the most out of a tool like Juicebox, how detailed should my search be? Like, it's almost like I'm prompting Juicebox. So, like, am I trying to write, like, a full system prompt here? Or, like, give it, give us, like, a sense of what I should be doing?

A I think the easiest way to learn is kind of by starting with what feels natural. That might be a couple sentences about the role, and then Juicebox gives you a few different ways to filter further. And so we have a feature called Autopilot, which is personally my favorite feature in the platform. It lets you define criteria, and then you'll get a check mark for every profile who matches that criteria. Criteria can be super specific, like has published a paper in at least two peer-reviewed journals, something that doesn't exist as a filter otherwise, and you can write your own. You'll get check marks for everyone who matches that, and then continue customizing from there. And so I'd start with like a fairly broad initial prompt, maybe a couple sentences, and then as you fine tune in and get more narrow, adding additional criteria.

AI assessment note: “I'd start with like a fairly broad initial prompt, maybe a couple sentences”

Q When it comes to sort of like the channels sort of outreach, we have different channels, um, Should I be trying to contact the same candidate through every channel, or should I be focusing on one channel, um, and do certain channels tend to have better response rates than others?

A Ideally, yes, we'd reach out to every candidate on every channel. Um, practically it becomes difficult and quite time consuming. I'd say the default should always be email because it's what you can automate and get real data on. What are your reply rates, open rates, and more. If you're just sending a single message, your best response rate is probably going to be on I guess apart from like a Twitter, it's probably going to be on LinkedIn, but the advantage of email is that you're not just sending a single message. Instead, you're orchestrating this multi-step campaign, and so with those multiple steps, you're going to get a better response rate on email than you would with a single message on a LinkedIn. Um, and so I think the easiest way to get started is just email automation, um, improving your response rates by adding in a LinkedIn step, and then if you want to get creative beyond that is when you can start layering into other channels.

AI assessment note: “Ideally, yes, we'd reach out to every candidate on every channel.”

Q I would love to go deeper into that. You mentioned that some of the companies you work with are getting 40% plus response rates, and it's not just brand, it's that they're sending these really well-crafted outbound emails. Um, what exactly are they doing to make these emails and messages so great? Like, any examples that might spring to mind?

A Yeah, I think the, There's two things that, that they do well. The first is creativity on who they actually send the outreach to. And so they'll have pretty creative sourcing strategies or ways of finding talent. Maybe that's people who went to the same high school as you. Maybe that's people who, um, happen to have worked at a similar company previously, and you have some connection through that. So really going deep and thinking about every individual person, why am I actually reaching out to them? And then that also gets reflected in the outreach text. And so, um, for 40% response rates, those are definitely going to be Personalized. And that may mean you spend five minutes on personalizing each outreach message. It takes a good amount of time. Um, but it's also worth it because you're going to be getting in touch with people that are definitely not going to be responding otherwise.

AI assessment note: “There's two things that, that they do well. The first is creativity on who”

Q One question I have, I think that every founder has on their mind is that when it comes to sourcing, isn't effectively everybody sourcing for like the same people and it's highly competitive and how, have you seen any strategies for how can you be creative in your sourcing to find people who might not be so competitive but are equally talented?

A I think being able to find people who are non-obvious on paper, um, but then become obvious throughout your interview process Is a real advantage. It's also really hard. And so I think there's like no kind of single path that, that makes it work. Some things we've seen people do that have worked for them is in some cases just looking through GitHub and basically clicking through contributors to open source projects. In other cases, the Twitter strategy sometimes goes in that direction because, uh, even if it's a Twitter profile you recognize, it might not be like a LinkedIn profile that you would click into. I think there's often a lot of indexing, especially amongst founders for colleges and A lot of great talent may not have gone to a great college, um, especially from, like, your competitive advantage perspective. If they went to a good university and worked at a good company, they're going to get a lot of outreach anyways. If they've maybe only done one of those two things, they might still be really talented, and they might not be getting as much outreach.

AI assessment note: “looking through GitHub and basically clicking through contributors to open source projects.”

Q As it gets towards more of the, you've identified someone you want, you've interviewed them, you know, you want to hire them. You mentioned a lot about sort of convincing them to join you over a bigger company. How hard should you try actually to convince someone? Um, and when do you know if maybe you're trying too hard?

A It's again, a little bit like enterprise sales. Like, Knowing what does the candidate or in the sales comparison, the prospect actually want, what are they really looking for? And you might get signals early on that they really want to be in big tech, and that can be really hard to convince them otherwise, especially if it's like, say, comp package related or stability of job related. It's probably not worth fighting that battle because they are likely going to end up going that direction. I think in the later stages, if they have indicated they want to be at a startup and you've kind of, you know, checked in on that a few times and you're pretty convinced they want to be at a startup, then you should fight really hard. Because then it's you against a different company and, um, you should try to win that.

AI assessment note: “It's probably not worth fighting that battle because they are likely going to end up”

Q it's because the product just works. I don't think I have a better answer. I've always been curious, like, Why is it so difficult to make the product work? What's actually so hard about when I type in, I want a software engineer with 10 years of experience, um, um, why is it so hard to surface, like, the relevant candidate, and how have you been able to do that?

A A little bit of context on Juicebox, we do search, um, contact management, outreach, and then sync all of that data with your ATS, and of those, search is really the hardest part, and so being able to find the right person is a hard problem for two reasons. One, There's a long tail of different search queries. And so if people are using the platform correctly, no one will have exactly the same search query because there's always something unique about the rule or unique about the opportunity. That also means that there's a long tail of, um, potential filters we might need or potential ways to, to think through how we filter a segment of search. And then that relates to the depth of a profile. So if someone has previous experiences, those are really important in a search result. And it's also quite different than how search on like a sales tool might work Like, where it's all about the current company or the current role. Um, with recruiting, it's really about their full depth of experience. And so, I guess, long-winded way of saying that search is really important and is usually what drives those outcomes.

AI assessment note: “being able to find the right person is a hard problem for two reasons”