It’s Not About Outrunning the Bear: 4 Strategies for Recruiting AI Engineers
Some of our clients
A Discussion Series with Matt Dumas, Bobby Mukherjee, CEO from Loka and Eric Zimmerman, Principal at AWS
It’s 2022, and building and managing an elite product and engineering team has never been more challenging. How can healthcare tech innovators scale their teams and ship world class products when the talent pool is tightening and growth is not stopping?
Recently taking the stage at ViVE 2022, Matt Dumas, Managing Partner of Chasm Partners, Bobby Mukherjee, CEO from Loka, and Eric Zimmerman, Principal Healthcare & Life Sciences BD for VC and Startups at AWS, provided best practices and insider perspective on how the most resilient product and engineering players are overcoming these challenges - and how they’re approaching talent in innovative ways to deliver the product roadmap.
We share key insights and offer practical tactics from this engaging discussion in this series of audiograms. We invite you to listen in as Matt and Bobby share experiences and lessons learned when recruiting and retaining high quality talent during times of hypergrowth.
#1 Focus On Diverse Talent Early
We all appreciate the value that diversity brings to the quality of leadership, creativity and culture in well run companies. Early stage companies need to focus on making sure diversity is top of mind for early hires because those new leaders will be carrying forward on behalf of the founders this philosophy in future hiring. An established diverse workforce in an early stage company is more likely to attract a diverse team in the future versus the alternative.
#2 Culture Is More Than A Catchphrase
For young companies, the initial hires both at the executive-suite and management levels are critical in creating a foundation that establishes and protects the cultural ideals of the founders. This means that the early entrepreneurs busy building product, commercializing, and raising capital also need to spend time attracting and vetting the right talent, which is never easy given capacity constraints.
#3 Don’t Overlook Onboarding
While recruiting is key to establishing scale during rapid growth, these efforts can be squandered if there is not equal attention given to onboarding these new hires. We see countless examples of fast moving startups ignoring the importance of training and assimilation for new recruits, only to see their first year attrition become a problem in achieving their goals.
#4 Don’t Fall for “Undifferentiated Heavy Lifting”
If there are things you don’t have to build from scratch - don’t! In the tech world, we view this as a good thing as it allows you to learn from others’ bumps and bruises, providing you the opportunity to move faster.
#5 It’s the Candidate’s Market: Are you Ready?
Today’s recruiting environment is remarkably different from the pre-pandemic market and requires a more flexible approach to hiring. This includes taking a more aggressive and creative approach to hiring decisions and compensation. Make decisions quickly and be prepared to negotiate.