ROTR - Dubi Ben-Shoham
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[00:00:00] This is Recruiters on the Rise, and I'm Colleen Gallagher. Join me for candid conversations with talent leaders as we explore the work that drives them, the lessons they've learned, and how they're helping people find careers they love. This show is sponsored by Lavalier, an interview intelligence platform built by Textio.
Colleen Gallagher: Welcome everyone to another episode of Recruiters on the Rise. I am so excited to talk to today's guest. He has personally hired nearly every employee at his company, all but three. He also hasn't posted a job in nearly two and a half years, and he'll tell you why that's a feature and not a bug. He spent his first decade recruiting for hedge funds, private equity, and venture before crossing over to tech.
He's also built a fake resume generator in three minutes to prove a point about AI, and we're definitely gonna talk about that. He currently serves as a senior director of global talent acquisition for Socotra. Dooby Ben Shoham, welcome to the show
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Thank you. [00:01:00] Great to be here
Colleen Gallagher: All right. So I'd love to start off with getting your take on what is the one thing or one action that makes the best recruiter
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Ooh, only one? I think
it's two. I
Colleen Gallagher: You can, give us a couple. We'll,
Dubi Ben-Shoham: to
Colleen Gallagher: we'll allow, that
Dubi Ben-Shoham: go? Okay, excellent. I think for me, I'll start at just understand the whole business. understand the revenue model. I go to SKOs, I go to product offsites. I immerse myself in the company. I probably know more than most people that work there because they're just doing their one thing.
I'm, like, getting involved in everything. It allows me to just be an expert on every, every, uh, interview I do. I can talk about anything. that's one thing, uh, I would say is probably the biggest thing. And then just I think I have a great ability to, um, build trust [00:02:00] quickly. Um, I am super honest, and I think that's a really good way to do it. I'll tell candidates things about me, personal things if I have to. Um, just connecting on another level. Uh, I, I think that's a, that's a big one.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah, I'd say those two. I mean, I got probably four more, but I think those are two
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I love the, the first part around, um, knowing the business really well. You know, I think my, my sort of path to where I've gotten today started in finance. And I think, um, anyone who falls under the finance or HR umbrella, you know, part of the reason I think I even went down that path originally was because I, I liked the fact that you weren't, that I was gonna have the opportunity to like all aspects of the business because depending on what fun-- you know, function you might be supporting, but you're really looking holistically at the business.
And I think, um, that's like a really unique feature of being in a, in a finance or an HR organization. And like you said, [00:03:00] you end up knowing people all across the organization that you may not, um, if you were, you know, sitting just in one function. And so I think that is really a unique experience. And for the people that embrace it, they tend to be the ones that do better and, and advance further if that's what they wanna do, um, within the organization.
So I love that perspective. another thing you talked about was, um, this concept of white glove service, um, and treating every search almost like an executive search. So I'd love to hear more about like your approach around that and that philosophy.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I'll give you today's example. Um, I am looking for a leadership role. So this is an executive search, but this is how I treat everybody. So I meet with-- I'm looking for a VP of sales basically, and I'm interviewing the candidate. It's going great. I'm just listening. So I'll do my little pitch up front 'cause being a storyteller is important too.
Like you lead a story, right? [00:04:00] And then if you just kinda listen, you learn so much more than asking interview questions. I mean, I feel.
Colleen Gallagher: Mm-hmm.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Listening away and I'm thinking, "Oh, this is a really good candidate." I cannot wait for this candidate to meet more people. So at the very end, what I do.
I say, "Here's who you're gonna meet first. This is how it's gonna go. I'm gonna send you a separate link, and you're gonna get on my calendar after every interview we schedule.
Colleen Gallagher: Mm-hmm.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: We'll then have 30-minute or however long we need conversations about who you're gonna be meeting. I'll talk about their background, my relationship with that person, and just kinda what to expect on the process."
And I'm, I'm gonna say every candidate I tell that to, they're like, "Wow, really? Thanks. That's really great." Like they never get it. It's so clear they never get that.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: But when you do that with just like an engineer or a, a junior product person,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: you, when you offer that up, um, it just makes a huge difference.
So yeah,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: That,
Colleen Gallagher: Okay.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: That's
Colleen Gallagher: how on earth do you have time to do that? Like, how do you approach that when you, [00:05:00] you know,
Dubi Ben-Shoham: OneLogin.
Colleen Gallagher: In the intro that you've hired, you
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah
Colleen Gallagher: almost every person, I think you said, except for three,
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah, there's
Colleen Gallagher: at your current company
Dubi Ben-Shoham: So I mean, I do have-- I've had teams. I have one right now only, but I've had six, I think you just have to make time. Like, there's a lot of time in the day where, you know, maybe you have to do some, you know, update your applicant tracking system or work on a job description, what have you. But, um, sometimes I'll just do it early. Like today's was like before my normal day starts. I met the person at 7:30. I just think it's important to find the time for that, versus, you know, again, we, we have time during the day where we tend to, to kinda just waste time. So, um, that's-- I just, I just find it.
I just make it happen. And sometimes candidates are like, "Hey, I'm busy. Would you mind, like, ca- can I hit you up on, on the weekend?" Yeah, okay. I mean, if that's what I have to do to accommodate them, that's what you have to do. So I just, I just find the time. I make it [00:06:00] happen.
Colleen Gallagher: we've also talked before and you shared that, you know, often recruiters are experts in the room, but a lot of recruiters don't act like it. Like, what is-- how does that show up and, like, why, why do you think that's the case?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I think a couple of reasons. Uh, one is, I mean, this is a, a little bit of a stereotype, but in general, recruiting teams have kinda newer to the workforce folks. It's kind of an entry-level job for kind of the junior ones.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: That would be hard for someone like that to establish like trust and ownership on a process.
I get that. I mean, I have a lot of years of experience, so it was a little bit easier for me, but you still have to be willing to put yourself out there. my view of my experience is that I have hired thousands of people, and you probably have hired a hundred, maybe. If, if that many, right? A new manager especially. "Oh, I just became a manager, you know. [00:07:00] What do I do? I, I need, I need help hiring." And usually they're scared to hire 'cause they don't wanna make a mistake. So being able to come in and say, "Hey, you got this. I'm gonna help you." Just like the white glove service I give for candidates, I give it internally as well. So I think early on when I started here, I just established that I'm the expert in my field and, um, you sh- I'm gonna earn your trust, but you should trust me that I am gonna be good at this. And I think that just worked really well and resonated. I do think the white glove service, I don't know how sustainable it is, to be honest, 'cause I will tell you this.
When I tell people what I do, they're like, "Wait, you do all that for the hiring managers?" I'm like, "I do." So like my whole executive team and hiring manager team is pretty spoiled
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: say, "Hey, I'll do the first run of the job description. I'll build the assessment out for you. I'll create the interview panel.
Then we'll meet, and then we'll decide, and you [00:08:00] can just edit." Like so-- I mean, they're so grateful 'cause they generally don't have time for this
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: They don't wanna deal with it. That's a, that is the, uh, that's a positive with AI,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Able to like create that stuff
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: quickly. again, I don't know how sustainable that is 'cause most recruiters I talk to are like, "I don't know.
I have the hiring managers do all that stuff." Even like resume review, I almost never h- let hiring managers review. Not let them. They don't have to review resumes. I've built so much trust if I say, "Oh, I met this person. You need to meet him." Like, "Great. Set 'em up."
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: that's a nice feeling.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: a minute to get there, but like should work on that with their executives and hiring managers
Colleen Gallagher: I mean, I think you just mentioned it, but I feel like what's at the heart of everything you just said is, is building trust, right? Because a- as a hiring manager, if I was working with a recruiter that came in and had a lot of that stuff done, the [00:09:00] thing that it would evoke for me is like, A, this person knows what they're doing, so I can do-- I can have some trust in them, and B, I have things I can learn from that person.
And I think that's always really important. Um, I've also worked with, with recruiters who I couldn't... You know, they were relying on me to do everything, and then it made me feel like I'm on my own. And so it did become a, like, you know, that sort of, that teamwork component of, like, a we're all on the same team here sort of escaped, right?
Um, and so I think, like, even showing up with some ideas, even, even to the extent somebody doesn't have the time or energy to do a full, you know, JD spec interview panel build-out, like, there are probably components of that that would, would enable the, the trust creation, um, that don't have to be as broad of a scope as what you just outlined.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: [00:10:00] True. Just even getting like an outline, like getting something started, right? And it's easier these days to do that. And, you know, most companies have a lot of like greenfield jobs where, "Oh, I need another engineer, I need another product person." So once you do one, you, you, you know, have something
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: At Securo, which is interesting, a little, little sidebar but, but related, is in every onboarding we have, we do like, um, a live session with the new group coming in, and I do recruiting training like from day one. I, and I have my slides and I talk about, and I, I start by saying, "You're not gonna have to remember this, but there is a link to look at it, because when you start hiring new hire, I'm gonna get on your calendar and we're gonna spend an hour and we're gonna go through everything together. So don't worry about like memorizing everything, but like just some basics on like how we think about hiring and recruiting and all that."
Day one, they get it
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. And I think, you know, bringing it back to, um, [00:11:00] something I mentioned in the opening, um, you, you've told me, you've shared with me that you have not posted a job in over two years. Um, so obviously these things are tied together, but tell me more about, um, you know, why you haven't done that and how, how is that working for you?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Okay. I'm gonna tell you that, but I will have to throw one thing in there first love trying out new tools. I'm like, if you're gonna send me-- sell-- you know, find me the perfect tool to help me with my life, I'm gonna look at it.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Well, uh, twice I posted a job for like 15 minutes to try the s- resume stack ranking tool.
So like, I have done that But to answer your question, really, um, I noticed that-- So I think it all started when we were hiring a senior, like a backend engineer We posted a job, and I'd already started feeling about-- I'd [00:12:00] already started feeling like, oh, there's some-- there's like some fraudulent stuff going on here with candidates, and especially on the engineering side. So we took it down. This was, again, like probably two and a half years ago. we realized that, um, the resumes, the LinkedIn profile were like perfect matches. Wow, look at that. 10 perfect candidates to interview right now. Well, top three were fake, and we uncovered that. Luckily, we didn't hire them.
Um, I used some tools for that because again, I'm the tool person. If you have something you want to sell me, I'll look at
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: so that was kind of the end.
And then, uh, so Eddie, who works with me, he's, he's an amazing sourcer. Like that's his primary, like number one skill set. He's full cycle. He does everything. He does his own searches. But like, he just loves finding people. So that's what we do. We just, we talk to the hiring manager, we figure out what we want. We kinda-- Eddie and I have actually a [00:13:00] good idea already 'cause we've worked together now, I think he's been here maybe he's probably four years. So like we know probably better than what the hiring managers want.
Colleen Gallagher: Mm-hmm.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: We're just kinda there. So, um, and what's nice about that is it's very rare that we'll source a candidate and not talk to them. Because another thing I feel is like, if I'm gonna say, "Hey, we think you're gonna be a good fit for something, we'd like to talk to you," kinda feel obligated to talk to them.
Colleen Gallagher: What?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: It's very rare we'll source someone and I'll say no.
I just won't-- I feel like that gives a good experience for someone, even if they're not the perfect fit after the call.
Hey, it's 30 minutes of my
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: It. So that's what we do. We just, we source everything ourselves. We do not post. We just, we do internal posting, right? We have an internal job board, and I usually share that as we have-- I get new jobs with the whole company. we've had a-- actually, last year was [00:14:00] an amazing year.
I wanna say people that wanted to work at Socotra, they just went to our website and there's like a little link, if you're interested in working here, send in your resume.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: And referrals, it was like 40% of our hires came from those two sources. So was great
Colleen Gallagher: How are you building your employer brand without having public-facing,
uh, Jobs?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: That's a little difficult right now from a recruiting perspective
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: brand. But back to my example this morning of the candidate interview, like I was really looking forward to talking to you. I looked up, um, Trustpilot, I looked on LinkedIn, I looked on, uh, the other one, Glassdoor, like a lot of good reviews, and people really love your CEO.
So we-- have spent time on branding
Colleen Gallagher: Okay
Dubi Ben-Shoham: trying to do that, and I guess historically because we have posted and been a partner of LinkedIn, there's stuff-- [00:15:00] there's some stuff up there.
Colleen Gallagher: Yes
Dubi Ben-Shoham: But even, even at that, if we're reaching out to a hundred candidates sourcing for a new job, in a sense there's a little mini branding going on there,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: They're like looking at the website, we're bringing them here, they're looking at LinkedIn, they're looking at Glassdoor. It's just not as, broad as I would like it to be. So TBD on how we do that, but that's a great question
Colleen Gallagher: I guess then what, what's your overall advice or what do you say to folks who think they have to post jobs to fill roles?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: this. When I see a LinkedIn post of someone saying, "I'm the VP of HR and I'm looking for a blah, blah," I'm thinking, "Oh my God, you're gonna be bombarded with like junk. Like, you're wasting time." You asked me, like, do you find the time to do these like white glove conversations?
'Cause I don't have to deal with that. I don't have to look at thousands of resumes or have some AI stack rank them, and then I still need to look at them, 'cause again, 20% of them are fake,
[00:16:00] right? AI is just, you know, it, it's, uh, equaling, it's canceling everything out, right?
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Per
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: That you talked to,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: you're giving the candidate too many, too much ammo to kind of bullshit their way into staying, right?
Like this... So I would suggest trying some, trying not to... Empowering your recruiting teams to actually source. I, I read something recently, it's like, um, it was on LinkedIn, that recruiting teams don't have time to source because they're going through so many resumes. So there's your answer. Stop posting and let them do some actual sourcing.
That's
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. I mean, I think I probably have a, a little bit of a contrarian take to that in just that, um, I still think that you, you can get some high quality candidates, and I, I believe the solution is to figure out how to combat some of the problems that AI [00:17:00] is introducing into the process rather than just like abandoning it altogether.
And I say that like without any judgment on it because it is a difficult thing that I know folks are dealing with. And in-- there are situations like yours where obviously what you're doing is working very well. Um, so it's hard to make sort of broad sweeping statements about it.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah, same on this side. Like right now it's working. Is it gonna work forever? I mean, I think I'd love to know the stats, but historically I think about maybe 10% of hires come from postings or it's
Colleen Gallagher: I think it's actually quite high. I think, um, I think it was Ashby recently released some data on this, and it was still-- I'll have to go back and we can put it in the show notes, but I think it was something close to like two-thirds of, um, of jobs are still being hired by, um, inbound versus outbound
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Interesting. And I think it depends on the job too, right? So we know that engineering, since we're both in [00:18:00] tech, there's a lot of fraud there. So like
maybe don't post those. Maybe try to source those and post the other jobs.
Colleen Gallagher: are there tool-- You, you said you're, you're a person who looks at a lot of different tools. Are there tools that you're really liking right now for sourcing?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I've tried a bunch, and I think that's also a nice thing, right? So having sourcing tools should make it easier for the sourcers to actually source their own candidates. And I think that's what's been, uh, helpful in not posting. I've tried, I've tried so many.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Um, I like the ones that are, um That, that do more than just like source. Like actually we use a CareerPack it's called. They're our kind of our job board. I'm gonna try this. So they have, uh, they do sourcing as well and sequencing, but they also have now like an AI chatbot, chatbot been kinda hesitant, but I, I had it tested on our new senior engineering manager and she was like, "Oh man, this was really good."
So she has a job and we're gonna, we're gonna use that. We're gonna try that.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I think it's the [00:19:00] future and I'm all about trying new things. I th- I just wanna make sure it makes sense and it doesn't turn off candidates
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. How are you thinking about bringing AI more into your your process or workflows? Where do you think it fits in?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah, I think in this, um, this use case, how I'm thinking about it is this. I'm gonna, um, I'll do my normal interview, and then I'll say, "Hey, here's the next step. Colleen, here's the next steps. I'm gonna send you a link and, and, and our chatbot," whatever that person's name decides to be, "is gonna ask you, like, three questions that we're gonna share with the hiring manager while we schedule your call with the hiring manager. This will allow the hiring manager to just focus on what's important and not get into, not waste time talking about, you know, what do you do on the weekends?" Or whatever we decide to
Colleen Gallagher: Bye-bye.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: That's what we're gonna present. It's gonna be not the first step, not as like a, a screener, but as after they talk to a real person, then I'm gonna present it.
I'm gonna try that first and [00:20:00] to see
how that feels and send out a survey and see how the candidates feel about it, but I feel like that's a good use case for today
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. So you're not gating it based on-- It's, it's not a gating, um, step. It's part of the-- There's humans all around it, um, and it's not something that is a requirement before you get to speak with a human
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Correct. Now, if I was posting a particular job, I would definitely use it as a gating tool. Because again, that would at least maybe weed out some of the ridiculous people that apply for jobs.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fraud and, and sort of definitely unqualified, um,
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah.
Colleen Gallagher: Anyway. I guess when we talk about this, it sounds like inbound is hard because of the issue with resumes. And so if, if the resume is dead, like where are you looking to help understand, you know, the things you used to get out of a resume before people were just generating them using AI or using [00:21:00] fraud?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I s- I was talking to a friend of mine, she's a VP of talent at Greenhouse, and she said the same thing, like the resume is almost dead. We were joking that we don't have resumes 'cause like we've had jobs for so many years. And, um, I'll just tell you my approach today, and then I wanna...
Y'all give me a minute to think about it 'cause it's such a really good topic. Um, I'm not a big resume fan anyway because I don't wanna judge someone based on how good they are at making a resume. What's happened now, though, is everybody's good at making resumes. I just wanna look like how job hoppy are you, and then do you have some relevant experience? And that's all I need to know because I'm gonna meet you, and then we're gonna talk about it. you know, that's really all I look for. I mean, if, someone's not qualified at all, then you know, that's easy to say goodbye
to. You never know what kind of gem you're gonna find, and if you just screen people out based on a resume, like you're missing out.[00:22:00]
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: That's how I view it, right?
Colleen Gallagher: Well
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Now that resumes are so perfect, you're gonna wanna talk to like everybody,
which is a problem.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Which I feel, I think then that's the case, maybe the, um, AI chatbot is a great gate to use, right?
Colleen Gallagher: Well
Dubi Ben-Shoham: And second to that would be, or in addition to that would be like, um, line, like early on assessment.
Colleen Gallagher: Mm-hmm.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I just met someone that said, "Yeah, we do like a..." They do an assessment first.
They
Colleen Gallagher: Mm-hmm.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Applied, great, here's an assessment. So I think maybe that those two things would be a good way to overcome the perfect resume. And then of
course, they're all so perfect, like you said, that they become outdated, then it's just like LinkedIn profiles, right?
I mean,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: After that? I don't even know
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. You still have to have a good LinkedIn profile if you're, if you're job seeking, um, in a lot of the, in a [00:23:00] lot of the roles anyway. Um, on the assessments piece, I'm curious, y-you mentioned when one of the white glove service things you do is you help create the assessments.
Like how would you think about bringing AI into that? And how are you guiding candidates or what are your instructions for candidates right now in terms of like using AI in an assessment?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah, that's a good, that's a good one. Uh, let me give you an example of
the one we did, and then I'll, I'll get to that 'cause that's a great topic too. we were hiring a kind of like a senior rev ops manager. had a sales ops person, but this was kinda new for us, right? And that team is so stressed then. Like they said, "Oh my God, how am I gonna come up with fake data and all of this?" I mean, they didn't even know where to begin. So I'm like, "Hey, let me take a stab at it, then I'll share it with you." It was a praying to the CFO who I report to, but also obviously head of sales and COO, but highly involved. [00:24:00] I literally created the whole assessment in fifteen minutes in ChatGPT. It was incredible, including sample data. I shared it with that team and they're like, "This is perfect. This is exactly what we need." Then I-- candidate was going through the process. I sent the candidate the info and they thought, "What a great assessment."
I'm thinking, "This would've taken weeks, honestly,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Hiring manager had to put it together."
Colleen Gallagher: Totally
Dubi Ben-Shoham: So that, that, that's a real example of, of how it worked.
Colleen Gallagher: Like how, what, what's your guidance then once you create that and give it to a team? How do you ensure that they basically don't just like throw it back in and get the output in from, from AI so that the assessment ends up becoming similar to the resume, which is not giving you the signal you need?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: in every assessment, we have the candidates present their findings. So I say, "Hey, if you want to build your PowerPoint in three seconds in AI, have at it, but you better be able to talk about it 'cause you're gonna be [00:25:00] presenting it."
I don't care. I'm actually good. Do it, because then you're gonna be more productive, and I'm fine with that. look at a tool recently that does assessments, and the reason I liked it so much was because it actually has like ChatGPT and Claude built into the assessment, So then you can actually see what the candidate's doing and how they're doing it and what they're copying and pasting or looking at.
I think that's kind of the future. I like that. But we're-- we wanna be-- we want people that, like, wanna play around with AI.
So
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah, that's the balance. Um, I had a-- I was recently hiring for a role, and we, I put together an exercise and, you know, you could definitely tell who had used AI and who hadn't, and it's okay for people to use it, but to your point, you could just tell who used it for the whole thing versus like who used it as a way to be a thought partner and actually produce some content.
So I, I think it still, at least in my opinion, still [00:26:00] requires sort of a human review of the assessment versus some sort of submission or things like that. I mean, obviously, um, I think we're seeing a lot of that too, even with like technical roles, right? It's like, it's fine to use Cloud Code or whatever you want to help you get to some answer, but like the real thing you need to be able to do is to reason back and forth with why you're going down certain paths.
And so that's what I'm seeing people do in, in technical interviews.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: interviews to me are still the hardest thing to really figure out. I think we, we have someone on our team that, that does like a 90-minute interview, and what I like about what he does is he just will tell the candidate, they'll do some coding, but it's not about LeetCode.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: And it'll be more like talking about a project and then tell me everything you did on that project. And then we, we can determine, like, were you like one of the like five people who did a little piece, or did you actually end-to-end did you own it? And I think that's one way to really under-- to [00:27:00] hire good engineers.
Colleen Gallagher: Mm-hmm.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: People just don't get through that because they just haven't had the experience or the opportunity. Maybe they worked at a bigger company, and that's just how it works there. They only get to do a little part of it, right?
So yeah, assessments is, is, is an interesting thing. Um, and the one thing I don't like about, um, like when I'm interviewing candidates, I don't want them to be on ChatGPT or whatever they use kind of look and like answer my questions.
Like just tell me. Like you don't need to be so perfect. Don't-- I, I don't like that. To me, that's like you're, you're
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah. you know, obviously, transparently, like we're working on something to help with that during, you know, with our, with our interview product to make sure that people aren't using it. You know, we've had people even in our own interview process who will fully repeat the question, and it's like they're doing that to make sure that the AI heard it and then give that, give it time to process.
Um, so, you know, that's coming soon. [00:28:00] There's a bunch of technology solutions you can get through there where, um, you can remove that. And I'm all for it because you just want, you wanna be able to assess whether a human can talk about something without being prompted, right? Because that's what, you know, sort of that I think as we are in this era of AI is like, um, the ability to deal with ambiguity and the ability to be curious and thoughtful is actually the-- those are the skills that you want.
And so having to read off of a teleprompter effectively, um, to answer questions is, is sort of the opposite of that in my opinion.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah. You know, I do think this is, this is another great thing to discuss. So I'm thinking now based on what you just said, what I would do in my next round is send this, you know, whatever the email to get on my calendar, and I'll just say that, "Hey, we love AI. If I'm interviewing you and you're using ChatGPT to answer my questions, you're gonna be disqualified.
Just come with... Just be yourself. You'll be [00:29:00] fine.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: A good chat."
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Just like put it out there,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Right? So they don't do
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: You may lose a good candidate because they think they need to be perfect, and sometimes that's just not the case,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Just come as yourself, you know?
Colleen Gallagher: I'm seeing-- I think another way I'm seeing folks sort of, um, try and solve for this like resume fraud problem is by doing work trials
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Oh
Colleen Gallagher: Where you go and work on site, or even if it's fully remote, you're sort of working as though it's the first couple of days of employment with the company.
And I think, you know, most are getting paid because legally I think that's, that's a requirement. Um, I'm curious if you have thought about that, those at all, or have, have heard anything about them and what your thoughts would be on that?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I haven't heard that. One thing I-- we-- Socotra has done in the past is we were hiring someone on the marketing team, [00:30:00] and we actually paid them to do a, an assignment.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Said, "Hey, really want you to do this, but we don't want you to do it for free. We're gonna, we're gonna pay you. I think it was like 150 bucks or something like
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: It'll take you like a couple hours." thought that was a really good way for someone to feel like, "Okay, they're not just like using me for their next, you know, marketing plan," right? Or whatever it may have been. That's an interesting idea what you're saying though,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah, I, um, I think I have mixed feelings generally. Like, my gut reaction was, um, you know, which gut reactions aren't always, are, are always accurate. I, I fully, uh, believe that. But to me, it just feels like there's something broken in the interview process, um, if you have to do, like, two or three-day trial.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Right. That's a good point
Colleen Gallagher: And I, yeah, I think there's probably, you know, things to be done in terms of fixing that part,
Dubi Ben-Shoham: you're right. If, if a company thinks they need to go there, they really need to look at their process. Like, is it a [00:31:00] structured interview? Like, what are they doing?
Colleen Gallagher: right. So just shifting gears a little, I'd love to learn. So, you know, you shared with me and we talked a little bit earlier in your intro, you started working, um, in recruiting, um, in the financial, uh, services space and then made the shift to tech. So tell me more about how that happened and,
Dubi Ben-Shoham: So in 2000, I relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area to beautiful Marin County to get a job as a recruiter. And actually funny, the company that I hired me was doing packaging recruiting, which I knew even less about. At least I was a stockbroker, so I knew a little bit about investments. But anyway, they would do, they were packaging. And I'm like, "What is that?" "Well, just basically go to the grocery store. Everything's in a package. You're gonna be hiring people that do, do that stuff." I'm like, "Okay."
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: In my first job, and it was a great lesson, the guy that sells, it's called thin films, and basically when you buy like a water [00:32:00] heater, there's like a sticker on it, a warning sticker that's fireproof, and he sells those.
I'm like, "Oh my God, this is so weird," right? But the lesson I learned was I had the second candidate, and the first one turned down the offer, and I made the placement. And I was like, "This is a great lesson for me." So anyway, about six months in, one of the founders got a financial services company, 'cause he knew I was a stockbroker, called Fisher Investments.
It's a big
company.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Heard of them now.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: think at the time they had 6 billion. Now they're like 60 billion. And I worked on that account for, years, hiring like salespeople, all different, all different kinds of folks. And then I got into like wealth management, I loved it so much. I loved analysts and portfolio managers and salespeople. I just loved talking to that group. It was super fun,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: which also kept me away from tech even though I was in the Bay Area.
but it was funny 'cause like when I started that job, we had a couple of like startups.
This was in [00:33:00] 2000, right? So there was a lot of startups out before the crash. And you talk to someone that literally was like one year out of college saying, "Oh, I, I won't even talk for less than like 80 grand."
And I was like, This is not for me." So I, I avoided it thinking, don't know if I can connect with engineers. I don't know if that's my thing." I was a little naive on that. Like, I just loved the financial market so much. And then, um, I had my own firm for a little while, and just, I- it was fine, but, like, I actually realized I really like working for someone else because I'm such a people pleaser that way that I just wanna do a good job for you.
But
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Myself, like, it didn't help. It didn't matter, you know? they did a lot of, like, tech, like gaming and this and that, and Pandora had just started and all these companies in the Bay Area, so I started touching the engineering space. And then after working for agencies for the first [00:34:00] 15 years, I said, "I have gotta work in-house.
I know that this is the perfect thing for me, and I'm gonna work at a tech company." And then it took me, like, a year and a half just for someone to give me a shot. It's very interesting how companies think, "Oh, you don't have in-house experience, you're not gonna be good." And I'm thinking, have in-house experience, you're not gonna be good." Having someone from an agency is so much better. Sorry, people that are in-house. I'm just saying urgency we have. And, and she gave me a shot, and then I was hiring, like, data scientists and all these fun things, and now I'm thinking, these are the real interesting people. What was I missing?"
You know? So that's how I got into tech.
Colleen Gallagher: Well,
going back to sort of work, you mentioned that you report into the CFO.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yes
Colleen Gallagher: Tell me more about that
Dubi Ben-Shoham: when I was hired, I reported to our... Her title was like VP of operations, but she, you know, in a small company, they-- HR, they do all that stuff. [00:35:00] And after she left, I think we worked together for the first four years, and then she, she left. And I knew that every time I needed something, I'd have to talk to her, and she'd say, "I need to talk to Sam," who's our CFO.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: So when that happened, I went to our CEO and I said, "I wanna report to Sam, because then I don't have this wall in front of me to, like, slow my process down." So now on a-- I'm working on an offer, I go to Sam, and I get everything I need in five minutes. Like, I get, know, how much stock we can offer, you know, salary r- bands.
I mean, we're, we're pretty good on salary bands, but in general, like I'll still say, "Hey, this person's like a little higher and they need... They're asking for more stock." I can just get that stuff done in five minutes and get an offer out. It's Um, now Sam like this amazing CHRO that, you know, has scaled a [00:36:00] big company I can learn a lot from?
No, but I learn a lot, like budgeting, fine. I learn all the stuff that interests me, which is the finance side. It's
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: been amazing. I highly recommend if you can report to the CFO, it's like incredible.
Colleen Gallagher: Do you have, um, like HR business partners that you work with alongside? Do they report into someone else or do they roll into him as well?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: No. So we have two people in HR. One's an HR man-- They're both like HR managers or senior HR and HR managers, so not like CHRO
level. Um, reports directly to the CEO, and then her direct report reports to her
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: closely with Sam. But do-- They're mostly involved in like rolling out new, trainings, benefits, you know, it trains, you know, off-boarding stuff, on-boarding stuff, that kind of, that kind of stuff.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: interesting dynamic,
Colleen Gallagher: It's [00:37:00] unusual for talent acquisition and HR not to be sort of under the same umbrella, but I also think, again, if given the size of the organization, like you said, it's, It doesn't need to be as, uh, structured as maybe some large organizations
Dubi Ben-Shoham: And if we grow and, and, and Sam's like, "Hey, we're gonna hire a CHRO or whatever, and, you know, it'd be great if you report to that
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Then I'm sure I'd be fine with
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah, all right, my last question for you. If you could give advice to someone in their early in their recruiting career, um, what would it be?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I would say, uh, confidence. Like, have a lot of confidence because you are gonna be an expert at what you do more than probably the people you work with, and immerse yourself and understand the whole business. Don't be shy. Ask, say, "I really wanna go to the off-site. I really wanna go to the all-hands for the..."
You know, I'd spend... I'm in all the all-hands. It's like, uh, I go [00:38:00] to all the different, I mean, all-hands, all the different department, you know, band ups, all that. I mean, I can't attend every one, but when I have time, I'll go to them, right? I wanna know what's going on.
So I think if you do that, you just become so much more valuable.
Also, like, my leadership, they-- I don't know how this comes out. I don't want it to come out like I'm, this big head. But like, they value me so much. Like,
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah
Dubi Ben-Shoham: I'm the heart of the company, really. Like, I know everybody. They value, they trust. Like, getting to that point, you know, takes time. But like, if you can, by showing your interest in the whole company, like, you can get there faster. Like, s- I've heard executives, some of the ones that I work with, will say, "Yeah, Dubie knows more about the business than most people in this company." I want it. That's what I wanna hear, and that's what they should hear.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah, I mean, you know, I, I, even when you talk about the white glove experience and driving-- really being focused on candidates, I think the [00:39:00] important piece of that too, and I think it kinda comes into employer brand a little bit, I think just agreeing with your point on this is like, I've heard somebody say like the, the time you're gonna be treated the best is when you're being recruited.
And it, it starts everything off on like a really high standard if you have a really strong recruiting process and people feel like they're really well taken care of. And it's a cultural-- it, it brings that culture into the organization. And so it's, it's helpful because you build a team that sees that as an example of how you operate as an organization
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Yeah. I think candidates that don't get a job here are very disappointed.
Colleen Gallagher: Yeah.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: And I, I, I know there's just a funny thing on this. So this, back to my interview this morning with this VP candidate, when, when the candidate asked me like, "What's the process like after this?" I s- I always say this line every time and like in a nice job I said, [00:40:00] "I'm gonna tell you the process, but I just want you to know it's all downhill after me." they laugh and then, you know, there you have it.
Colleen Gallagher: Um, I love that. Um, well, thank you so much for joining me. Where can people find you? How do you want them to connect with you?
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Definitely LinkedIn, feel free. And even for new recruiters, if they wanna chat, I will find time for you, I promise.
Colleen Gallagher: Well, thank you so much, Juby, for joining me. I really loved hearing your perspective on a lot of things. It's got me thinking, um, I love the, the success you've had with, with, uh, outbound only. You've planted a seed there for me, um, and really appreciate you joining and taking the time to do this.
Dubi Ben-Shoham: Absolutely, Colleen. I loved it. Thank you so, so much as well
Colleen Gallagher: All right. And thank you to everyone who's listening. If you learned something today or laughed, please tell somebody about this podcast. Thank you again to Duby for joining us, and this has been another exciting episode of Recruiters on the Rise. We'll see you all next time
And that wraps up another episode. Thank you for joining. [00:41:00] For show notes and other episodes, visit us at recruitersontherise.com. Recruiters on The Rise is sponsored by Lavaliere, an interview intelligence platform. Lavaliere goes beyond basic note-takers to improve your ability to assess candidates with AI-powered interview questions, summaries, and transcription.
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