The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor | Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

You have built and are known as someone that can build the most elite, high talent density teams.

Let's start with how people do it wrong.

Something you call the funnel of doom.

Companies think about recruiting like a funnel.

I am going to reach out to 100 people.

20% of those are all high.

By definition, that is not the top 20%.

That is just the 20 people who you caught on a bad day.

The way we all recruit is we kind of weed people out at each stage and we hire the remainder.

In your mind, like, hey, there are 50 people in the world who can do this.

Let's go find those 50 people.

And you relentlessly pursue and you focus your energy on activating those people, not trying to find them out of the funnel of doom.

The mistake that most companies make is they'll say, hey, Lenny, who's the best product engineer you know?

That is the worst question you can ask.

The better question to ask is, hey, Lenny, of all the product engineers you've worked with, who stands out to you as the person who's most collaborative with designers or who can translate a framework into a product better than anyone you've ever seen?

When you're looking for that first recruiting hire, is there anything you think is important to look for?

Recruiters are excellent at 90 to 110% capacity and are terrible outside of that.

If they only have half a rec load, they kind of like are useless, but they're kind of great at this like edge of adrenaline rush busy.

You want to find those people.

What are some things you've learned about building incredible teams, keeping people working for you over the long term?

When you look at candidate satisfaction scores, the number one thing that's always there is

Today, my guest is Adam Ward.

Adam is known in the Valley as the most effective recruiting leader at building elite, high talent density teams.

He co-founded an independent recruiting firm called Growth by Design, which Cursor acquired fully last year.

Which is not something that you often hear and is a testament to how good he and his team are and how important talent is right now in today's market.

Adam is now head of talent at Cursor, helping them scale and build one of the most talent-dense teams in the world.

Prior to starting his own firm, Adam led global recruiting at Pinterest, growing the company from 200 to over 2000 employees.

And before that, he led a global team of 65 recruiters across 10 offices at Facebook, helping them scale Facebook's tech org from 1000 to over 10,000 employees.

Adam gets super tactical and extremely specific and you're going to thank me for inviting Adam on this podcast to share all of this incredible advice.

A huge thank you to Bree Wolfson, Janet Fishberg, Jill Macri, Mike Joyner, and Tim Kendall for suggesting topics and questions for this conversation.

Before we get into it, don't forget to check out Lenny'sProductPass.com for a free year of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's Newsletter subscribers.

With that, I bring you Adam Ward.

Adam, thank you so much for being here.

Welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.

It's a pleasure.

You've been doing this for 20 years now, hiring, recruiting, building teams.

How different is the market we're in today?

How crazy is the market, the hiring market we're in today?

If there's a scale, it's an 11.

But yeah, I do think there are similarities to some other markets we've been in over time.

You mentioned the years.

There was a moment in time where a lot of companies were moving to mobile.

And there was like – there literally was not a mobile engineer.

Like an iOS engineer was not a thing, you know.

But there was a scramble for talent to, you know, build your mobile app and things like that.

Like there was this moment that like that was a thing.

And it has like some –

Similarities to that market and moment.

I think that really the difference here is like everything here is like just so compressed.

So that mobile moment was...

Two years maybe, you know, where, like, there's no mobile engineers and then there are, like, mobile boot camps, mobile engineer boot camps and all these things.

And, like, now we're in, like, days.

We're in weeks.

You know, there are no months or year measures right now.

And so that's what makes this, like, feel very different.

The other thing that feels very different about this market is there's many people doing extremely well.

It's the most competitive, as you said, 11 out of 10 for specific roles.

A lot of other people are just really struggling, having a really hard time fighting jobs.

Yeah, it's a tale of two cities, really.

You can read back-to-back headlines of...

You know, NBA salary offers to a new grad PhD and the next line being a blue chip company laying off 10% of workforce.

How can both of these things be true?

And you see this shift of how companies are doing work and getting work done.

And I really believe we're in this moment where

There's this like resettlement of talent and labor and how work gets done.

And I really believe that there will be a resettlement and there'll be a shift and this will come back.

But I feel like we're in like one of the largest gaps of those worlds right now that I believe will, and I want to believe will come back closer together.

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What are roles that are kind of trending up in the most in demand right now?

And what are maybe less and less in demand?

And you have a really unique perspective because not only you're a cursor now, but before that you had your own independent agency working with a ton of different companies.

So you got to see across a lot of different places.

What's kind of trending up?

What's most in demand and what's maybe softer now?

Yeah, I think one thing that's really in demand is this, and there's lots of different names for it, but this forward-deployed engineer, this technical person who can partner with a sales team and partner with a customer to deploy what can be for some audiences in a company a very technical and maybe overwhelming task.

Or helping companies think about moving from token maxing to like optimizing, maxing to optimizing.

And so that's like, I think, a new skill as CFOs start to get the bill coming in.

You know, companies are able to help partner with them to think about what's the best solution for them.

So that's a really unique skill because you are you're deeply technical yourself.

You understand the product, but you can also walk into a room with executives and leaders and help conjugate some of that and then even deploy that, help them deploy that into their workforce.

I think that's like a real supply demand issue right now.

I think maybe the thing that is waning, I would say, is like the specialized technical person.

The person who is – because I think you almost see this like squeezing together of engineer, product, design in some ways where we would love a designer who could actually be more of like a design engineer.

Yeah.

Right 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 um specialized in a way are waning like in like in the same way along that vein might also be like the new grad who just hasn't had enough like experience uh to be able to do that where

A a product like cursor or others can do some of that work right now

This is extremely interesting

I haven't heard it put this way before

Interestingly with the fde role it feels similar to the mobile uh example you shared

We're not very few people have actually been for deployed engineers uh

So what

What's kind of the the um

I know the look of a person that can become an fde

Yeah, I actually think it is that engineer.

It is that person who maybe was like a full stack engineer in like a three to five years ago is now maybe actually that forward deployed engineer, right?

And so you talk to some of these folks and they actually like unlock something in them.

They're kind of like moving out of the terminal

And moving in into the company and into the customers and clients.

And for the right person, that's super energizing, kind of unlocks another chapter or maybe an unexpected chapter in their career.

That is interesting.

I was expecting you to say AI researchers, so this is interesting.

And imagine because there's not as many of those roles.

I think so.

I think that's a very defined set.

And so I feel like it's a very clear bracket of what that is and how many there are and where they are.

And I think that sometimes the bigger challenges are the nebulous things or the new, the very new things that I think are sometimes just as challenging as the scarcity ones of an AI or ML engineer.

Just as a final question along these lines, what about just the core product design engineering roles?

Are those kind of steady as they've been?

Is one increasing, decreasing?

How's that looking?

I think they're hot, but I think you probably see a lot of conversation out there around this, where I think we're getting a little bit back in a good way to the craft of things.

And so if you think about what AI can do in the design world, it can also create a lot of slop in its own way.

And so I'm an optimist.

You'll probably hear that throughout.

Same.

And I think it's just a better way to live.

But I think what will hopefully help us get back is to the craft of what we do, you know, and maybe an appreciation for it.

And I see that in the design world too.

And is that in saying ICs are more in demand and especially ICs that have good taste, good judgment?

Is that kind of the quote?

I think so.

Yeah.

I think like, you know, we've seen this for maybe the last 12 or the rise of the power IC.

And the recognition and appreciation for that work, I think, has come almost in a full circle moment for them.

But I think taste, decision-making, problem-solving, these characteristics, curiosity, and all the good ways, I think, are coming back up to the surface.

Awesome.

Okay.

So let me kind of zoom out and frame the conversation that I'm hoping we have broadly.

You have built and are known as someone that can build the most

Elite, high talent density teams.

So many people kept telling me, you are the person that does this better than anyone else.

This is every company's and founder's dream, build the highest talent density team.

So I'm going to go through this in a sequence.

Let's start with something you call the funnel of doom hiring.

Talk about the funnel of doom.

What is the funnel of doom?

Yeah.

And this is a concept I got to recognize my very first as an intern, actually, in 1998 at a company called Trilogy, which is somewhat of an infamous company around recruiting and

It's kind of where I learned to trade.

My very first manager, Jeff Daniel, we did this campus tour around the country talking to CS students.

And that's where I first heard the term.

He coined that term.

So I had to acknowledge that.

But I think what the funnel did forever, almost forever, as you think about the recruiting history, companies think about recruiting like a funnel, maybe akin to a sales funnel, right, where they think about different stages, pass-through rates, and things like that.

And when you think about how most companies have recruited over these last several decades, it's really been, candidates come from kind of three buckets.

They apply, they are activated or sourced, or they're referred.

But if you kind of think about like for a lot of companies who think about talent density, typically referrals and sourcing or activation of passive talent is really the focus.

And when you kind of even narrow further on this like source talent, this is how most companies think about it.

I am going to reach out to 100 people.

20 people will reply just for round numbers.

So 20% of those will reply.

By definition, that is not the top 20%.

That is just the 20 people who you caught on a bad day.

For them, good day for you, bad day for them.

And so you're starting with a suboptimal set.

You're not starting with the top 20%.

And then the way we all recruit is we kind of weed people out at each stage and we hire the remainder.

So this remainder hiring is the output of the funnel of doom.

And when you say that out loud, you're like, that's kind of messed up.

If I think about building a talent-dense company over time, is that really the best approach?

Or does that kind of get me just above average over time, 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.

And so...

We just think about this in a different way.

It's like, what if you had confidence out front of who the top 20% was, and then you use your assessment process to validate that thesis of who those are?

That seems like a better, you know, so there's this funnel doom, but there's like within a funnel doom, there's just a pillar of excellence.

What if you started with the pillar of excellence and went from there versus having this wide funnel?

Because imagine how expensive that is to do remainder-based hiring and you kind of hire the person who drops to the bottom.

I love this, especially hearing this.

This is how hiring has been forever.

And just hear you describe it.

It's clear this is not optimal.

Why hasn't this changed ever?

There is something detrimental about comparing it to a sales funnel.

Because in a sales funnel, 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 another rational unit of a candidate.

And so to believe that things are transactional and linear and pass through in the same ways, I think is a bit of a fallacy.

But sales has been around for hundreds of years, a long time.

Recruiting as a craft or in the kind of this is like,

50 years, 40 years, you know?

So we're behind on it.

But like as humans, we often try to relate a problem to another problem that we know.

And so I think this connectedness to sales has been somewhat detrimental to companies as they think about doing this in a more strategic way.

So let's follow this thread and help make it very clear what you're describing here.

The way I've heard you describe this is you treat every hire as an executive recruiting sort of hire.

And the goal is to go for the top 1% of people out in the world versus kind of who kind of drops in the funnel.

Talk more about just that kind of way of thinking about it.

So if you've ever worked on like a senior specialized hire leadership role done well, here's there's roughly like three main steps.

One is scoping.

And so if you think about going after the 1%, the most important step is getting really clear on what 1% means to you.

And so if you've ever heard that phrase, like, I'll know it when I see it.

I'll know what great looks like.

Actually, you won't.

You won't see.

You won't know because you haven't spent the time objectively identifying what great looks like.

And so when you think about scoping, if we can just dive into that cornerstone piece.

Really good scoping is thinking about what are the skills and experiences you're looking for.

You stack rank these things.

You get really clear objectively before you talk to any candidate.

But it sets up your entire process.

It sets up your sourcing strategy.

It sets up your pitch.

For them because you're asking questions like, why is this role important?

What would success look like?

It really helps you craft those things.

It also helps you set up your assessment process and like what you're going to be assessing against.

And it helps you think about kind of that close of like why this person and why this role is going to have big impact here.

So it really, that I think piece of the hiring process is under-invested in, but in a leadership search that is often like known to be a really strong cornerstone.

So let's say you take this really good scoping, and then you pair it with really good market mapping, intelligence, and signals to give you confidence of who the very best people are.

So when you're doing a leadership search, for example, you're like, okay, there's really in your mind, like, hey, there are 50 people in the world who can do this.

Let's go find those 50 people.

And so that kind of that approach, I think you can do a scale.

If you do that really good scoping, you get really clear on what that looks like.

And then you take that list of 50 people, those targets, and you relentlessly pursue and you focus your energy on activating those people, not trying to find them out of the funnel of doom.

Large population.

Amazing.

I imagine everyone listening to this is going to be like, we need Adam on our team ASAP.

Unfortunately, you're locked in at a company.

And so we're going to do our best to try to extract as much wisdom as we can in this conversation because you're

You have a job.

So this is great.

So kind of the three steps here that you walked through of how to approach hiring from this perspective, the way that executives are hired, this idea of going after top 1%.

So step one was be very clear on what top percent looks like.

So just to kind of mirror back what you just shared,

Be clear on the skills you need and kind of stack rank.

Here's the skills we need from this person.

What experiences we're looking for and stack rank that.

Talk about why this role is impactful and just why this is so important.

Is there anything else there just to flesh that out?

I mean, those are the general buckets.

Every company will have other specific things that really matter.

But yeah, those would be the things.

And remember, these are things you're not asking are, what companies are they from?

These are objective, somewhat transferable things.

Versus trying to piggyback off of someone else's process or definition of great.

Because we just said almost every company is doing this wrong or has kind of been doing funnel doom.

So why would we mirror or map

Someone else's process that we feel like maybe wasn't perfect.

And your company is different.

Your product is different.

And so you owe it to yourself to kind of identify what does great look like for you and who's going to be successful in this role in this product versus what was successful for someone else in a process that maybe you don't have full confidence in anyway.

So you're saying specifically don't focus on, and it's a trap to focus on the logos on the resume.

I think so.

Yeah.

There are clearly vintages of companies when you're like, hey, you know, this team at this company at this time did fantastic things.

And possibly because that person was on that team at that company at that time, they are great.

Possibly.

That can be like shorthand, uh, but that, but most companies jump to that.

Almost immediately.

Awesome.

Okay.

Step two is mapping out and finding basically the top 50.

What are tools that help you do that?

Is it like LinkedIn?

Is it something else?

I think it's a combination of things.

But I think where we typically start is a set of people who we trust in terms of having high taste and talent.

But I think the mistake, though, and that's an obvious mistake.

Point, but the mistake that most companies make is they'll say, hey, Lenny, who's the best product engineer you know?

That is the worst question you can ask.

The better question to ask is, hey, Lenny, of all the product engineers you've worked with, who stands out to you as the person who's most collaborative with designers?

Or who can translate a framework into a product better than anyone you've ever seen.

You kind of have to put these very specific characteristics or skills or needs for your team.

And then that's way easier for you to conjure up people that way than like this broad question of who's the best person.

And imagine that maps to step one, which is where you map the skills experience.

So the questions you're asking are mapping back to that cornerstone work that you did in step one.

So when you ask very targeted questions to a set of people, you actually start to triangulate around the same names.

Yeah.

They're like, ah, Lenny mentioned them, but so did Sally.

Let's put this person on the list, on the target list.

Okay, so part of the strategy here is you talk to people you trust, who are awesome, whose tastes you trust, ask them these questions.

What else helps you find these people in the world?

So if you think about, let's pull out the set of...

Like, okay, the characteristics of someone we want is like really curious, systems thinker, whatever they might be, maybe two or three things.

Then you're like, think about what companies also share that approach to how they hire.

And you could literally probably do a quick Boolean or...

AI string and be like, hey, look at all the job openings in the world among these 100 companies, which ones also say these characteristics matter, right?

So you kind of think about, oh, where could they've maybe picked up some of these skills for a company who also said that that matters as well.

And so then you start to kind of build like company lists that aren't the normal list you have, but they might show up there too.

But let's validate it through the things that we objectively said we wanted for us.

It's so interesting.

Systems thinking has come up on the last four podcasts I've done.

Such a trending up attribute people are looking for these days.

Yeah, I think it's like always been there in a little bit, but I think it's just become really accentuated now in this era.

When you hear the term systems thinking, what's kind of a way you describe what that actually means when people hear that term?

I learned this pretty early, maybe in the second company I worked for, and it comes around to a fundamental question of what problem are we trying to solve?

And so when I think about systems thinking or when I'm sitting in a room, what is the fundamental root problem that we're trying to solve?

And then how do we take this larger problem and break into really small pieces?

And I fortunately have been working with engineers most of my life, and I just really have learned

And I admired how they can take something that's really big and break it in and kind of start to tackle that problem.

As long as you're anchored into like, what is the overall thing that we're trying to solve here?

Awesome.

Very helpful.

People always hear these terms.

They're like, yeah, I'm a great systems thinker.

And so it's always helpful to just hear from different people what that actually means.

You know, I think systems thinking sounds very strategic, but actually I think it's extremely tactical.

The very best systems thinkers take these things and put them into like very small tactics and start to remove each, you know, tactic by tactic, kind of remove the problem, remove the blocker.

So to close the thread on this step of finding these incredible people, what I'm hearing is mostly it's kind of sit around, talk to people and just jam in a doc probably of here's people that people recommend, here's companies to look at.

Yeah, and there are tools and there's LinkedIn, there's all these things too.

But I think the most valuable one is the most time intensive one.

Which is spending time and digging into people's networks.

We've shared this before, but people on my team whose entire job is to dig into our current employees' networks.

You could automate that.

You could use an AI tool and walk them through a facilitation of it, but nothing beats you and I sitting down every other week for six weeks and diving into people.

You're like, hey, last session,

Uh, you gave me these three names.

I checked out like, and then, but what about this person?

You're like, oh yeah, they were great too.

I'm like, oh, what was good.

And so you kind of go back to back.

And by the way, I'm also holding you accountable for you sending out notes.

And what did they say?

Oh, they didn't reply.

You're going to send another note.

And so kind of this like one-to-one hand-to-hand.

Cultivating a signal, I think, is really important.

Of course, those signals go into a system and a database, but the extraction, I think, is a hugely personal and effective approach.

This all sounds very time intensive and slow and lots of work.

How do you...

You know, there's a reason companies don't hire this way.

Treat everyone as an exec because they're not execs.

They're, you know, I see engineers, PMs.

How do you talk about that tradeoff of taking this approach, knowing that it's going to take a lot more time and effort?

Yeah.

So, I mean, I usually like will ask a question.

So founder, like.

You know, in the, all the things are important to you.

Um, where does talent fall into that list?

And like, ah, it's number one, like talent is the most important thing.

Okay.

So if talent is a no, it's not one thing like there is not about time or cost.

Like this is the most, this is where the focus should be.

And so if.

If talent is number one, then there should be no obstacles to in terms of effort or resourcing or time put in to get there because it is paramount to your success.

You just said that objectively.

And so if both can't be true, you can't say, hey, this is the most important thing and I'm going to outsource it or I'm going to hand it over to a recruiting organization to do.

If it's the number one thing, that is your focus.

Hearing that, obviously correct.

Why would you not do that?

And then there's like, holy shit, everything's on fire all the time.

I have to make time for all this stuff, all these meetings.

And it's just like, is there anything you do to help keep a founder and a team on track and just sticking to this plan knowing it's so much work and time?

Yeah, I mean, typically the founders keeping the company on track around that, the very best companies.

And so in part of it, keeping on track means like keeping top of mind.

You know, there's also the adage of what gets measured gets done.

So if it's an important thing, we measure it just like we might measure uptime or we might measure customer satisfaction or we might measure revenue.

And we hold those teams accountable.

We also hold hiring managers and leaders and organizations accountable to hiring.

And so keeping it top of mind, we're putting in the right systems.

Around rewards and recognition and all those things around it will help people keep it as a priority.

But if you aren't measuring it, they will hand that over.

They will shirk that responsibility to somewhere else.

Yeah, one of your big pet peeves is having the recruiters, not basically empowering the recruiters and hiring managers not being deeply involved in the process.

Yeah, 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 recruiter's goal is really about helping provide confidence to that hiring manager to make the right decision.

They're a confidence engine.

They're not a decision-making engine.

And so I see a lot of companies where they lose the thread is when they essentially hand over the function of recruiting, the act of recruiting to a function of recruiting, right?

And so no one should care more about a hire.

No one gets the joy or the pain of a good and bad hire.

Then that hiring manager and that team.

So why then is a recruiter or recruiting organization holding that accountability when they actually don't have the decision-making, let alone the benefits or pain or cost of a good or bad hire?

I want to come back to this.

It's like a different funnel, but I'll call it a funnel.

Would you still describe it as a funnel, but the funnel of non-doom?

Is there another term?

Because it's still kind of a funnel.

Yeah.

Not all funnels are bad.

Funnel of talent density.

Yeah.

So coming back to the how to discover the best people.

Luckily, there's this incredible post out there about how cursor approaches hiring by Brie Wolfson that was very helpful in helping me prep for this talk.

And another tactic that she shared of how cursor finds the best people is there's a slack channel called hiring ideas.

And people on the team just share here's someone we might want to hire.

It's super active.

We could pull it up right now.

Let's check it out.

Let's see what people are recommending.

Yeah, maybe we can get some audience input on it.

So the general gist is someone will come across something impressive, a product, a post, whatever.

Overheard at a barbecue and they'll drop that person's profile or that ex post into the hiring channel.

And it becomes a rallying effect around, Ooh, I've heard of them.

I know here's how we get together.

Here's what I think is compelling to them.

You almost like create this quick, like strategy of how we might engage this person.

And imagine working at a place where the company just is wired that way, where people are excited and enthusiastic and love the thrill, the hunt, and to go want to work with great people.

And so we're just very fortunate to have that as an ongoing tailwind.

But that was an early...

Expectation, if you will, in early, almost like

It's almost like social credibility in the company to be able to surface someone who is great and then people come in and help out and try to get them into the process.

So as recruiting, that's such a gift.

We are not initiating that.

We're not dropping in a profile, does anyone know this person?

This is non-recruiting folks in the company

Dropping in ideas and then the company rallying behind it.

Amazing.

So this is just a really good way to just resume out again the way most companies hire.

There's this funnel people apply, people refer and they kind of work through and you try to reach out and kind of work through and pick a few people at the bottom.

And your point there is this is like not the top people because they're not going to reply to you.

They're not going to make it through the funnel.

You don't even know what you're hiring for a lot of times.

Right.

Correct.

And by the way, all the hiring ideas aren't always great ideas.

They aren't always right for us, but it becomes this almost like tangential injection into the hiring process that is often a great outcome.

And so just to maybe make very clear how different this approach is, basically it's the opposite.

It's figure out who are the best top 50 people for this role in the world and then relentlessly pursue them.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So let's talk about that part of it, how to actually relentlessly pursue people.

What are some tactics and stories there of just how you convince these top people to actually talk to you and then join?

Yeah.

And I think one of the things you said a few minutes ago is, hey, this can be a very slow process.

Right?

And if you're at like a zero point, you're at day zero, that can feel like a slow, it can feel like a slow burn.

But imagine over multiple days, you're actually planting all of these seeds with potential top 50 people.

They're going to come to harvest

At different rates, but you gotta plant the seeds.

You gotta start.

And because it will take weeks for some, months for others.

I have stories of years that we've worked on candidates, but you have to start the clock on that.

And so how we think about this relentless pursuit is you'll often reach, you know, one step is just getting them into a conversation, getting a response, getting some kind of engagement.

But most people will tell you, if you get them, it's like not good timing.

Here's all the reasons I can't do it.

And you're like, hey, I'm not asking you to interview.

I'm not asking you to consider a role.

I'm asking for our next conversation.

And so when you say, hey, you know, it's not really good timing for me right now.

Maybe in the late fall.

You're like, hey, I totally respect that.

That's great.

But also, can you come by for, you want to come by for a coffee and see the office?

Right.

Can you can I introduce this other person on the team who's really fascinated by your work?

Can you chat?

But so, you know, it's not.

Let's say it is true.

They can't join till late fall.

That doesn't mean you're not.

Connecting them and having conversations on a weekly basis and working that piece.

And it can only move it forward.

By doing nothing and actually talking to them in the late fall, at best you get them, even if they're still interested then or someone else hasn't grabbed them.

So we think about this continual touchpoint approach to them, to getting them into process.

But that could, again, we're willing to do that over days, weeks, months, and sometimes years.

When you reach out to someone, imagine working at Cursor, now part of SpaceX.

It's like, oh, this is interesting and cool.

You know, it's like, you never know, maybe it'll work out someday.

A lot of companies, and you've worked with other companies that are not as interesting of a brand and as successful.

Is there any advice for folks to get someone over the line to even talk that works?

I imagine it's all very particular and nuanced, but just any advice there?

Yeah, I think it's really spending a lot of time up front to get a sense of what could be engaging for them.

So who might that be and what might that topic be?

And so there are a number of excellent people in the world who aren't on any platform.

There's no information about them.

But most, you can get a couple nuggets.

We spend a lot of time here thinking about who can create a warm intro to that person.

Almost as much effort goes into that.

Than it does the actual messaging.

Because if you get the right person, that accelerates it.

And once someone's ignored one thing, it's much easier for them to ignore the second and third.

But if you get the first one right, you've condensed that activation timeline and effort.

I've heard that you often say caring is free.

Yeah.

Talk about that because it feels like that connects throughout this entire process.

Yeah, I think there's all kind of tactics out there that are of varying degrees of cost, but out-caring other companies.

When I've built recruiting teams, that's something that we've always talked about.

We can care more about that candidate

Than anyone else.

That's in us.

That's within us.

We can do that.

And I think like over the history of time, when you look at candidate satisfaction scores, the number one thing that's always there is the company generally wanted me.

They made it feel like I belong there.

And so the more that we can care for our candidates and demonstrate that, I think is an unfair advantage.

And it's in all of us.

And so that is like an effort and that is a extra step type of thing.

It's the extra...

Intentionality that you take that I think in a very somewhat feeling like transactional business, like recruiting, if you're doing this step-by-step funnel of doom, you kind of get caught up in the steps.

You get caught up in the numbers game.

I need to reach out to 100 to get to 20.

I need to have 10 hiring manager screens to get four onsite.

You get caught up in the numbers and you lose the human element.

You're looking for the one.

I try to remind my team, we're trying to hire one person for this role here, not 10.

So don't get caught up in the 10.

Focus on the one.

That is such a big reframe in this way of thinking.

As you said, instead of this funnel of we need 200 people at the top to get one at the bottom, you're just like, here's the 50 people that would be the best 50 in the world for this.

We just need one of these 50.

It feels a lot more doable.

And we're building, hopefully we're building relationships with dozens of other those that could be.

So when you talk about this being slow, we're planting seeds, planting seeds, we're planting seeds.

And I think the other thing that often happens when you kind of get into this funnel of doom mentality is I think you become overly consistent in your hiring approach.

And we are very comfortable with bespoke and ad hoc

Hiring, that doesn't mean we don't have like similar stages for consistency, but like who that next conversation is, what they might focus on.

I think we get a little robotic sometimes in recruiting with that.

And we have like, so a lot of companies as they get into like higher volume hiring, they might like, hey, we have a pool of these interviewers who can do this type of interview.

And they just let fate decide.

They let availability decide who has that next conversation.

But the savvy recruiter or the savvy hiring manager is like, oh, they mentioned this thing.

Who on our team has that shared interest?

In that pool right

Can we like be a little bit more prescriptive and can we um orchestrate a much better can experience by being taking the extra thoughtful step of who might have a better conversation together

It's so interesting hearing just how important that initial contact is for the rest of the process and how much of this is for future seed planting versus even immediately

Yeah, I feel like we put so much energy to the onsite interview, which I totally get.

But honestly, the most important one is that hiring manager first conversation.

And so it kind of feels like this like 50-50, like, hey, half the people you talk to hiring managers should come on.

And like, we kind of like, I think we underestimate the importance of it because this is like who you're going to work with.

This is the person who should care.

This person is going to make the hiring decision.

And so they should be asking the most important questions.

They should be.

Getting, uh, pulling out the most important motivators from that candidate.

And I feel like we sometimes maybe we put it into a 30 minute thing.

Often it's like 30 minutes and it feels like so important to the rest of that process.

Especially if instead of we just need this funnel and work through a bunch of people, this is one of the 50 in the world that could be the best for this.

You might meet three times, right?

You might meet four times as a hiring manager before that person actually is like, you know, fully in process.

The way Bree described this in her piece is that you treat hiring as the atomic unit of hiring is the person, not the job spec and not the role.

Correct.

And I think that makes it incredibly frustrating.

Imagine for my team, because you're like, oh, what's the process?

And you're like, well, it's almost like a decision tree.

It could go many different ways based off of this conversation.

But when you are not caught into the numbers game, it feels a little bit less scary.

When you're really focused on how do we get that person here versus how do we, are they the right person for that job?

And because they're on this list, they're innately very popular and in demand.

Is there anything else that works for getting them excited to talk and interested other than, you know, soft, warm intro things you've shared?

Yeah, I mean, we've done lots of tactics, I think, to get them involved.

I mean, one thing I just love is breaking bread.

Having a meal with someone is one of the most human and leveling things that you can do.

You know, sharing a meal across the table is just a disarming act and a joining act that I think is just so important.

So that could be a coffee.

It could be a lunch.

It could be, you know, it doesn't be super formal, but I just think it is this humanizing activity.

That I think is really important.

So we try to, we try to center around food and drink as much as possible.

I think we've done other things I think are very useful, which is like, if they are one of these 50 people, they might be somewhat famous or well respected.

They probably have an expertise having them come in and give a talk to the team, having them come in and do like a fun side project.

Like some of these people, they love, they love to kind of like share and like learn and they're curious.

And so, but also it's like, it demonstrates increased interactivity between the two teams around quality and kind of gives them this like realistic preview of being there.

We try to play home games as much as we can, bringing them into the office.

But we also understand some of the folks early on might want to go to a neutral site of a coffee shop or something too.

But we try to play home games when we can.

Because you have the power of the team.

You have the power.

One analogy I think about is like when you, sometimes when you walk on, when some people are considering university early in their lives, you kind of walk onto a campus and you get that feel in your gut, you know, and you can't really describe it, just like, Ooh, this feels like home.

We want people to feel that when they kind of walk into the offices of Cursor.

And like, that was like a priceless moment.

And by the way, it's also like, it can be like a defining moment.

It also could not hit.

And that's, it's good to like suss that out early too.

But for a lot of people, it does hit.

And we like that moment.

This resonates so deeply with early days Airbnb.

I remember Joe Gebbia had the saying, just get them in the elevator.

And this is because the office was on the second floor of this building.

You had to like go in this elevator to get in.

And that was the whole strategy.

Just get them in the elevator.

Yeah.

That was like more than half the battle.

Along these lines of breaking bread and home court, I know this might be one of the reasons you guys have a cafe cursor right there near the office, and now it's happening all over the world.

I think Ben leads this work, but there's all these cafes popping up all over the world.

Yeah, I think it's been interesting.

Obviously, it's very much focused on the product and the user, but

He and that team have done a really good job of taking that vibe and putting into a moment.

And if you've been in the cursor offices, it almost feels like you're in a, um,

Hogwarts library.

It's very warm and soft.

But cafes bring that energy in as well.

And so we've tried to kind of lift that and drop that in really around the world.

There's also a lot of chalkboards at the office.

A lot of chalkboards.

It's like, again, this disarming, warm place.

Feel that I think really kind of exudes our like Midwest vibes.

That is like kind of sometimes how I describe Cursor, you know, very hardworking, very ambitious, but you know, at the same time, the work speaks for itself and understated as well.

And so I think a lot of our office helps invoke those vibes too.

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Okay.

So if people have been following along, we're working our way through the funnel.

This is kind of my strategy here.

So you've talked about how to kind of figure out what you're looking for, figure out who these people are, how to get them talking to you.

Say you got them in the interview stage.

What are some things you've learned about how to increase your signal on the person and identify if they're a good fit and someone you want to make an offer to?

Yeah, some of it's a little fundamental, which is research has shown that work samples are the highest predictor of success at a company, but yet most companies are still spending a lot of time doing one-to-one across the table assessments.

And so, you know, I think we are famously known for doing long onsite experiences for some of our roles where they do a project and they get work to side by side.

So that gives us a very strong signal.

It also gives them the candidate tremendous signal.

And so I think this is where most companies get it wrong on the onsite.

They're almost always buying.

This is like we are assessing, we're extracting information.

We're not giving much back to the candidate.

And I'm a big fan of the power of self-selection.

And self-selection, really good self-selection starts with really good inputs and data.

And so we want that experience with a candidate to feel more two-way than most.

So we really think about crafting that onsite experience through who they might meet.

And we talked about that really clear, like handpicking who they might meet for those interviews.

We do a lot of work sample and project type of work to give us good signal, but we also really curate who's greeting them.

Who's sitting beside them for lunch?

Like we always try to put it around a meal, a dinner or lunch or breakfast.

And everything is really curated to make that as high quality experience for them and get them the data.

But we, you know, but also us getting data from people that we feel like are most going to connect with that person.

Who runs point on this sort of experience?

Is it a recruiter or is it the hiring manager?

I would say I think it's the recruiter primarily as the quarterback, but they're pulling lots of levers.

And so the hiring manager is probably going to have the most insight into some of those people.

Our recruiting coordinators are tremendous.

And I think we probably, they do a lot of this hosting with us as well.

And so our recruiting coordinators, of course, do some scheduling, but they're probably doing more of this candidate shepherding.

So imagine a candidate was with us for a day or two.

There's lots of moving pieces and helping them move from a workstation where they might be doing a project into lunch, back to that, helping them get their environment set up.

So there's a lot of people in play.

We ask our recruiter to be the quarterback, but a lot of the insight is coming from hiring managers and execution with the coordinator, too.

It's interesting just how much of the experience and process changes with this worldview of the every person we are talking to is very special and is they're very rare.

And these are the best for this role.

And so it's clear how much of it trickles down into thinking deeply about every touch point along the journey versus the typical journey.

And imagine that you have teams and employee base to like understand that while they went through it.

So you get to over this like tipping point moment with a company where they had that experience.

So they recognize, acknowledge it.

Now they're part of how fun is that, right?

They had a great experience.

Now they get to help deliver that for this next batch.

Of people.

So you kind of create this like flywheel opportunity once you get kind of over that initial hump.

I just remembered actually I had a friend applying for a job at Cursor and he said it was the best candidate experience he's ever had.

That's amazing.

Just remember that.

So by definition, we thought about doing a lot of scoping of really great people.

Not all of them are going to be a fit for us by their choice or ours, but every one of them can walk away as a net promoter.

And again, by definition, they're some of the best.

Those promoters weigh more and count more than others because they're influential, they're great, they're known to be good.

And so they may never come back to us, but they might tell you,

Who now tells this audience or they might tell you who

Then you mentioned something at a barbecue and like now it becomes this like groundswell and you start to build a little stronger magnet and that activation becomes a little bit less hard

If you do that well.

Absolutely.

The work trial piece,

I saw an interview with Michael Terrell talking about this, and he said how they tried to get rid of it because it obviously adds a lot of load, and some people don't want to be doing these things.

And he said that it just totally tanked their signal, and they had to bring it back.

Yeah, it's a huge commitment, you can imagine, of time.

But...

If talent is your number one thing, then that is a good investment of time to do it.

We all have a role to play in recruiting.

At the company.

Um, not everyone is like carved out or, you know, best to do work trial work, but like some are, you know, some, but some can do the lunch, some could do the greet some, you know,

So there's like lots of different ways that people can play a role.

Um, but yeah, when we ran that experiment, um, you know, cause it is, it is quite expensive.

It is also a big ask of candidates.

Um,

We really struggled to have confidence in our decision.

Again, this is a confidence building function.

And so we are excited to bring it back.

So good learning there is it's like, if you are not doing this, you're lacking significant signal.

Possibly.

Yeah, I think so.

And I don't think there's a lot of maxims or absolutes in this business.

But I think for a lot of companies, it's hard to think of a better way than doing side-by-side real work to get those signals.

Obviously, some of it in this case is like a technical signal.

But imagine the amount of like...

Core values and collaboration and other signals you get over a stretch of time that can be arguably more important than the specific technical skill.

What do you do for PMs or, I don't know, go-to-market or ops people?

Is there something like that?

We have a version of this across.

And so the go-to-market...

Team does like a challenge where they work through like a challenge together, like a challenging customer and things like that.

And that's like often like one-to-one with the hiring manager.

Product does a similar like project type together as well.

So we have like versions of that that I feel like are titrated to

The function, but also the role and things like that as well.

So we try not to be like a uniform across this because these functions are very different.

One of the classic criticisms with the work trial is you're doing work for the company and it's like, we're just solving problems for you for free.

What's the philosophy on the problem they tackle, say engineering or PM?

Yeah, there's a set of problems they can choose from.

So, um, you know, and, uh, so we feel like they have like some direction and discretion.

We also are very open to right sizing it for them based on where they are and their availability in time too.

Up to a certain extent.

So we try to be flexible in understanding around that.

And we also will sometimes use Saturdays too.

So we understand it can be hard to take time away

On a work week or a traditional work week.

And so we totally get it.

It's a big ask, a big commitment.

We think it's worth it, but we're also willing to schedule that when that works for them.

So there's this like conflict around a lot of time and effort that could feel slow, but when they're ready to go,

We are fast, right?

We make up that time.

So if you and I were having an initial screen, you're like, yeah, I'll be open talking to open up your calendar.

I have their calendar.

Great.

You're going to talk to them in an hour.

Right, so once they're ready to go, you gotta capitalize on that.

You can't create openings for them to have second guessing.

So when we go, we go, but it might take a lot of time to get up to that moment.

Moving ourselves further down the funnel, what's kind of the moment when you decide we're going to make this person an offer?

Is there something that you look for specifically and or just what's the process like a hiring committee meeting or something else?

Yeah, we debrief as immediately as possible as a team.

Each function has a little bit of a different hiring process of what that looks like.

But we don't have hiring committees.

It is hiring manager-led.

They get lots of input from the team.

And remember, the role of the hiring manager is it's not a democracy.

Hiring manager is holding that group accountable for helping them get the right inputs to make the right decision, to make the best decision, hire or no hire.

And so we try to frame it in that way, making sure we get really good signal on it.

So we try to move really quickly.

So debriefing is typically same day, if not next day.

And, you know, kind of like they make that decision, then that decision goes to the founders for stamping.

Awesome.

Okay.

Then you get to the offer stage.

There's a bunch of stuff here, but one is just, there are many massive offers happening these days.

Okay, so say you made an offer to one of these top 50 people and they're like, okay, but I also got this offer from Anthropic for a bazillion dollars.

Mm-hmm.

How do you handle that?

And also just is that like super frustrating or is it like, oh, wow, more signal.

This person is incredible.

Yeah, I think it can it can be both.

There's room for both.

I think that the goal is to not be selling at the close.

We're trying to sell throughout.

And so if you think about the craft of recruiting, the craft of recruiting is upfront getting a really clear on this person's motivations and what might be, why they might make a move and for what, and then making sure that that entire experience

Hits to those pieces.

So at the end is a culmination, not a start, right?

It feels almost like a natural outcome of it, where it's just like, oh, this is almost like this...

Just like a sumptive next step of, yeah, and here's the offer that we talked about all along.

So versus like kind of starting the clock or starting the conversation on a close.

I think we try to get back to those motivations.

So we might think about how we would differentiate against an anthropic size-wise or the role or the team or the people you work with.

Um, we try to think about, we really try to focus on the intrinsic things, not the extrinsic things, which is very hard to do when you're, you're getting NBA players like offers and salaries and sometimes great bigger than that.

But we really try to focus on people who, uh, want to be, want to be here, you know, and, um,

Often when people are thinking about their job search and what might be next, they maybe start with a set of things and we maybe help them discover other things along the way.

And we might discover at the end that it actually, this is not the right fit and that's okay.

And we should be, we feel good about walking away from that.

But often it's around helping them

Discover that actually maybe this is the right place through that journey.

How often do people take a job that doesn't have the highest comp?

Is that common or is that rare?

Yeah, I think you're trying to mitigate comp as a reason people come or don't come.

And often that means it's not the highest number.

And I think, you know, we've all probably talked with people who maybe at some point in their career chase just the largest number.

And I think what you realize six months in is like that just becomes your new level of like comp life.

But you're not excited by the people you work with or the work you're doing.

And so we try to kind of mitigate that as a piece, but I think it happens a lot.

And also rightfully so, we've probably lost people where maybe we were the highest one and they went somewhere else too.

And if that's the right fit for them, this is going to sound a little polyamic, but I fundamentally believe there are right people for right companies at the right time.

And if they discover at the end of that, that we're not, that's the right call for them.

And like, as a recruiter, if they're not the right fit, I literally have to redo that work in six months.

I don't want to redo that work.

I'd rather let's figure that out right now and have that more open conversation.

You should build an agent that helps you decide and figure that out, which company is the right fit for me right now in this time.

Because that sounds really valuable.

That would be super interesting.

Something that I've heard Anthropic does that I've never heard anyone do, similar to Tesla, they don't let you negotiate.

They're just like, here's the offer.

Do you feel like that's an only Anthropic thing that they could do because they're just Anthropic?

Or is that something you think about?

I mean, I've thought about it.

I've seen, you know, over time, different companies have done that.

And I think what I respect about it is like you make that call and you kind of stick with it and there's a commitment to it.

But every company is different.

And I think the approach is so I respect it.

But think about it.

But it may not be right for us.

From the candidate's perspective, what are some mistakes that people make when they get an offer that kind of shoot themselves in the foot?

Generally, the advice I give to candidates is when you think about your offer and if you're negotiating, it has to just fit a line of logic.

And so if you are asking for a certain piece of compensation or a certain other piece of it, what is it rooted?

Walk me through the logic behind it.

I think that makes it easy for the person to understand, but also easy for them to communicate that forward to maybe a different decision maker as well.

So I see candidates who are maybe a little bit all over the place on that, where early on it was this, and now it's this, and it's kind of the add-on type of thing.

Versus a can who's coming in of like, here's the four things that are important to me and being clear and consistent with it as much from the outset as you can.

Not all things can be there at the outset.

That makes it very logical and easy for the company to kind of engage with that.

Versus just finding random excuses for more comments.

Correct.

And, you know, I think what a company generally knows is like we're not their top.

We're intrinsically not their top choice.

Right.

And so we're trying to win head and hearts here.

And it's not we're not trying we're not we're not trying to we're not trying to buy that out.

How just like mind blowing are these comps these days?

I imagine you've seen so many.

Yeah, I think it's all true and worse or higher.

I think the open question, a lot of us AI companies are like, how does this, like, where does it go?

How does it go from here?

Like, how does this end?

Nobody knows, but it does feel like,

The unit of measure that matters the most is the most fixed and finite, which is time.

It is a race against the clock.

To get the model, the talent, and that is the thing that matters the most is the most precious.

Clearly for some companies, there's more money and there's more other things, but time is the most fixed and important asset right here in this market.

Just coming back to the AI researcher trend, it's crazy how these people used to be just like off on the side, building these AI models and no models, not that exciting to anybody.

And now they're like the most in demand.

And I remember I helped build out the research group at Facebook before they had, they just don't hire PhDs, even advanced degrees really much at all.

And yeah, this is 2010 or something.

And I remember meeting just like this set of academics, really, who were getting this like growing frustration of their work, not ever making it outside of those, the halls of academia.

And so I'm like very excited for that population to have like this moment.

They've been arguably the underpinning of technical innovation for decades, and they're having their moment and well-deserved.

Kind of along those lines, to close out the funnel of, let's call it the funnel of joy instead of the funnel of doom.

Yeah, love it.

I heard from one of your candidates, here's the quote that I got, that you and your team's ability to close and convert candidates with offers to accepts is extraordinary.

What are some things you do that help get someone over the line that are kind of on the fence?

Yeah.

So I think there's like a couple things there.

One, I'll just re-mention quickly, which is that the closing is happening throughout the process in terms of like who they're meeting and motivations and like removing objections along the way.

So that's one.

I think the second is closing is a team sport.

And so when we have a candidate, particularly like a high profile, high caliber, there are often daily standups around that candidate about what we're doing to get them to yes.

And that might be 10 minutes.

But it's not the amount of time.

It is like a focused energy every day around what we are collectively doing.

And so that could be the hiring manager recruiter, but also could be former peers.

You know, there's like lots of people who influence that.

And we try to be very intentional about making sure that person feels cared for and belong here and coming here.

It's like staying on top of things.

The third thing I think is we just try to make it very personal.

And so just this week, two days ago, I just saw, and we try to share these stories internally too, because this is how it builds the culture of recruiting.

We kind of share these stories back to the company

But someone was sharing, we were working on a candidate in New York, and we learned that through getting to know them that they went to a performing arts high school and were a classically trained violinist.

And was just kind of very into like stringed instruments.

Um, so this person, um, I found this like specialty store in New York city and bought this like kind of unique Turkish guitar, almost a violin guitar thing.

And, um,

They're meeting for like a dinner where they got the offer and they presented that gift to them.

And so it was...

A couple hundred dollars maybe, right?

Not a lot of money, particularly relative to like the size of offer and the size of impact that we thought that, you know, that someone's going to have.

But it's like, it's the thoughtfulness and the touch and the uniqueness of it in the personal moment of that

That like I think stands out.

And I think when a candidate thinks about having the best candidate experience, often they feel like, wow, this felt like tailored to me.

This felt unique to me.

I know there's also a Slack channel that gets created for each candidate.

Every candidate.

Yeah.

So I think when you talk about the stand up, sometimes that's also strategy and updates.

And so there's the same rallying effect to activate is no different at that close.

And each candidate has their own channel.

Just so much of this just keeps coming back to intentionality around every specific candidate and not treating it like the funnel, but just this is the atomic unit, this person.

What can we do throughout the entire process to make them get excited and see if it's a fit?

Which is hard to do when you're doing at scale at the funnel of doom.

So when you are thinking about a hundred candidates for every role, then that does not scale.

But when you're narrowing that down to a small percentage of people that you've been kind of laying groundwork with over time,

Because now people are moving faster through those steps and it's a smaller number of people.

So the time that you're taking holistically for that funnel, you're just displacing and putting it in different places.

It's so interesting.

And it's such a different approach.

I've never heard of anyone hiring this way.

Yeah, and we had this like thesis when I was at Growth by Design, you know, around like, we think there's this different way to do this.

We'd seen all these companies over time and worked with labs and all these things were like, wow, like these companies are literally at the cutting edge of a technical revolution here.

Probably the most exciting one we've seen

In millennia and they are recruiting in a web browser way.

And we're like, if a company like had this willingness to commit this time and effort as this collective force, they could really have an unfair advantage when it comes to talent.

And when you think about companies over time, whether they become this iconic logo or one that we no longer recognize, it often isn't the first company, the fastest to market, the first idea.

It's actually execution.

And execution comes down to having the right talent at the right time.

And when companies figure that out, they're like, oh, this is the most important thing.

And this is how we're going to approach it.

And so when we met Cursor, we're like, this could be fun.

Cursor is actually such a great example of exactly what you're describing, because it feels like throughout the entire history of Cursor, it was always just like, how are they going to survive?

There's these model companies building these things, the IDEs, shit like that.

Like people are moving away from IDs and it's been incredible to watch Cursor execute and get ahead of each of these shifts whenever people doubt that there's an opportunity here and just keeps growing and killing it.

I mean, it's not too long ago, it was like tab autocomplete, you know, on it.

And like now we're in a fully cloud agents and it's just, um,

But just remember the time span is like months.

The condensed nature of this is just wild.

I came to the office at one point and I got a tab button and now it's just like no longer even.

Yeah.

Now it's just cute.

Yeah.

Now it's just on the shelf.

Yeah.

I just talk.

Something that one of your colleagues wanted me to ask you is just what is it like to work with an exec team who truly believes recruiting is the most important thing?

It's a gift and at times incredibly frustrating.

So the gift part of it is like, imagine that how much they care, like trying to convince a founder to go have a conversation or to do anything recruiting late.

That is not a problem here.

And like, we've all worked with companies who, you know, where you're like, you're trying to like,

Pull them in to things.

Um, so it's a, it's a true gift.

The, you know, the challenge is like, they're in your shit, like they're in it, you know, like they understand it.

Like the cursor team hired their first 80 people, roughly 80 people on their own.

They know how hard they know.

How to do it

They know how hard it is which is great

But also like they love it and they're in it and they want to do it and so there can be zero ego about this of who owns

You know who has what piece and like it's an all hands on deck and so sometimes that can be confusing on who's doing things and things that you know you find out about things after the fact they have like but like it's like I will take that every day

That is extremely net positive.

But there's always a counterbalance to such an advantage like that.

So interesting.

That's like CPOs often are frustrated for that reason, where the founders are always in their shit.

Yeah, but they care.

I'll take the effort and care with that tax any day.

I know one of your hot takes is that the recruiting team should be the highest paid team within the company.

And one of them, yeah, if not, I mean, if you think about this impact that they're having, and I feel like there's a supply and demand crisis around really strategic recruiters because of the somewhat transactional nature we've made recruiting over time.

And so I just think there's a really small supply of recruiters who can function at this level and at this approach and style.

And so like any other labor market,

It's a cost of labor thing, and there's just very few of it.

And so we think that they have tremendous impact, but it's like a really rare skill set.

Something I wanted to ask you that I forgot to ask is, we talk a lot about talent density.

How much of it is about the person specifically versus the team that you assemble around them?

Yeah, I feel like where companies like overly focus is like an individual.

And unless they are a team of one, it's actually like, you know, if you think about amazing leadership and amazing managers, they're actually quite great puzzle builders.

And they think about building these teams that are complementary together and then help them excel.

And so talent density is not a single piece and less like the numerator and denominator are both one.

But that's not the case.

Often this is one over how many people.

And so talent density is actually a collective nature of individuals and humans.

But we often, because you are recruiting one human at a time, I think sometimes we get overly focused on that specific 10Xer thing.

And actually, I like to think a little bit more around exponential, around 10X, stuff like that.

A team versus an individual.

I don't think you can have a 10x person on a bad team.

It just doesn't exist.

I used to think when we were at my last company, we can't be a great

Service provider if we don't have a great client.

There's just a bar there.

And similarly, a person that might be excellent is going to be throttled if they're not on a strong and supportive team.

That makes sense to me.

Okay, I'm going to ask you a bunch of random questions.

Again, I think people are going to be hearing this and be like, I need Adam immediately.

We need help.

And they're not going to be able to get that because you've got a job.

So I'm going to try to extract as much as I can while we're here.

One is, say you're an early stage company thinking about hiring, setting up your hiring approach.

What's kind of...

The most common ways that early stage companies and founders F up their early team and hiring?

Yeah, I think the thing they try to do is do this silver bullet.

Hire, which is a first head of talent, and they kind of collapse two competing skill sets into one.

Okay, so when you are, generally as a founder, when you're ready to hire your first recruiter,

You're probably behind on hiring.

There's a problem to solve there.

You're behind on hiring.

So maybe there's like a debt of roles to fill, 5, 10, 15.

But you also are hiring someone at this stage because you want them to build a system.

They might be like, wow, I want to build something like Adam's talking about.

So you're trying to build this, hire someone who can also put in the right pieces to help scale out.

And those are competing interests.

Because person wants to come in and like just any new hire, they want to like prove out, they want to make hires, but they might not put in the system

Or they might put in the system, but not make any hires.

And now you're like, and so they try to collapse this into one role.

And generally that's a mistake.

And so we recommend kind of decoupling those things.

So that means you still might want to hire one person, but can you get some help with the other one?

I'm going to hire the person who's going to put in the right system, but I'm going to partner them with a contingent recruiter or something else to like make some short-term progress while they're in kind of like

Teach the company how to do this through these roles that they feel that they're helping orchestrate or vice versa.

I might bring in someone to help us put in the right foundation, which like we did at GBD.

And then they hire like a really high powered IC recruiter who can kind of execute.

Amazing.

That makes all the sense in the world.

When you're looking for that first recruiting hire, is there anything else you think is important to look for?

I know it depends on maybe which of these two buckets they're going to be in, but any other advice?

Yeah, I think number one is that they are curious and business focused.

They're an early member of the team.

They got to be really curious, understanding of how the business works and how each of those hires is going to change the slope of the business.

And so.

You know, often that means that they have all these interesting, it shows up in lots of way, curious people.

But I think that's the number one thing I think of.

The number two one, which I think, and I think these sometimes get,

Switched is just like high motor you know someone who like understands the grind that it will be and the pace that it works and is down for it and that doesn't have mean they have to be

Younger or older, it doesn't mean anything.

It's just that they love working at this edge of overwhelmedness.

And so I often think about my team is like, we want the water level to be like right here.

And so you're like, you're breathing, but you know, and if you've met any kind of recruiters, recruiters are excellent at 90 to 110% capacity and are terrible outside of that, right?

If they only have half a rec load, they kind of like are like useless, right?

Or if they're like, you know, way overwhelmed, also just overwhelmed, but they're kind of great at this like middle ground of like edge of adrenaline rush busy.

And you go, you want to find those people.

Oh, man.

So along those lines, I heard from a bunch of people that you just have a huge followership on your team.

There's a lot of heads of talent from other companies that decided to join your team to be ICs.

What are some things you've learned about building incredible teams, keeping people working for you over the long term?

One thing I learned is at each place my team has looked different because the company, how they think about recruiting or the product is different.

And so the cursor way demanded a different type of team.

It demanded this level of recruiter and who understands the leadership recruiting motion, who's not going to get caught up in the numbers game of the funnel of doom.

They have this confidence and they have a network that they can tap into.

And so I think we talk a lot about hiring managers and other people in networks, but

Seasoned great recruiters have their own networks too.

Like you have a couple of recruiters in your life that you trust that you probably would like seek advice on, you know?

And so we try to collect those people too, because they can be as influential in tapping their networks as a technical leader, for example.

So then I kind of just kind of think about like three attributes of someone who I want on my team.

So one, I want people who are excellent humans and excellent at what they do.

And I'm not willing to trade that off.

We are going to spend most of our waking hours during the week together.

And we should all be selfish enough to want to work with great people, great humans.

The second is people who, I look for people who have a chip on their shoulder, something to prove, love the craft.

They have this internal drive and motivation to be excellent.

And that can show up in lots of ways, and I try to get to that.

And then the third thing is I look for people who put team over themselves.

And so this is really important, clearly, for the team I built now.

They could be running recruiting at lots of places.

But what they've realized is that no one really aspires to get to middle management.

We kind of end up there.

But what they did realize is like they love the craft of recruiting and they love to be challenged.

They love to learn.

They want to work with great people.

And so when I would go out to my network and I'm like, hey, Lenny, who are three people you know that are excellent humans and excellent recruiters?

They just have this natural drive or chip on their shoulder.

And they put Timo by themselves.

You're like, oh, you should talk to Janet.

You can conjure those things up.

And so we've really tried to build a team of those folks here.

And I'm really excited about the people we've collected.

It's a good sign when I'm just like, wait, I want to work for Adam.

This sounds really great.

I try to be this balance of, because recruiting is sometimes around inspiring your team, but it's a deeply operational.

Function.

And so I've tried to find this balance of where I can be in the weeds, operational, understand it, be in it with them, but also sometimes lift out and help paint the bigger picture too.

Amazing.

Adam, we've covered so much ground.

We've gone through the whole funnel and more.

Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to share?

Anything else you want to leave listeners with?

Any nugget you want to double down on?

I mean, one thing that we didn't talk about, which I think is happening, I'm seeing more of, is reneges on offers.

And so I think a lot of companies get to the yes point.

Of the offer acceptance, and there's often like a gap of time, and the more senior they are, often it's beyond a couple weeks.

We think about a second motion happening after offer accept.

Which is, you know, we are a button seat business in recruiting.

And there's like a big window there where someone has like, ah, they accept the offer and we kind of like go on to the next one.

But what are we doing between offer, accept, and join?

And there's two parts of that.

One is like make sure they show up.

The second is like a bit of a pre-boarding and helping them have a fast ramp by staying connected with them.

So we'll do dinners with other people who have accepted.

We try to essentially create community around them.

We'll send them a cursor laptop

You know, it kind of feels like a presumptive you've joined kind of way.

We do these dinners, we do these like touch points.

One is help to make sure like that delivery happens, but also to feel like they start to get excited too.

They start to kind of visually realize what it's going to look like.

Wow.

That is so brutal to have gone through that entire funnel, got the offer, made the offer, accepted the offer and just, you know.

Oh, man.

And you're saying this is a trend, I imagine, because just the market is so hot and they're getting better offers, offers that they didn't expect.

Correct.

Yeah.

I love, I feel like there's this lake of things we didn't talk about.

Is there anything else, any other trends, any other trends, things that you noticed of like, wow, this is changing in the hiring landscape?

I think maybe the other trend, I think we see like the rise of the talent engineer.

I don't know if you've seen that out there, you know, the kind of the

The function within a recruiting team who is a possibly former engineer who's like building tools and things like that.

And my warm take, not a hot take, my warm take is like every recruiter should be a talent engineer.

Like the things that recruiters now have at their fingertips that they could build in cursor or other tools.

Is really phenomenal.

And in earlier companies I was in, we're often beholden to like begging for engineering time to build us tools or functions or features.

And now that's like that's in us.

Like we have that right now in our team.

And so I want a future state of my recruiting team to feel like they are talent engineers.

Versus leaning on someone else on the team to help them build a tool, if that makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely.

I completely agree.

It's interesting.

There's good market engineers.

Every function is going to have their version of engineer over time.

Engineers, engineers.

Well, Adam, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round.

I've got five questions for you.

Are you ready?

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

Yeah, this is super nerdy.

So there's two.

There's one that I read in undergrad that has stuck with me.

And it's Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.

And, you know, it's kind of the rise of EQ.

As an important piece of it.

And I just feel like emotional intelligence right now, more than ever, is so important in this AI age.

And so it was super transformative to me way back then and I think is really important now.

And the other one I love for founders is just the high growth handbook by Eli Gill.

I just think it's, I'm a big fan of a book where you can just jump to a chapter and get an answer.

And it's not this like linear piece you got to work through.

And so I think it's such a great reference guide on different problems.

And, you know, for the most part, building companies, the components are the same.

You know, the core principles, even when that came out several years ago, I still think hold true.

So I like the high growth handbook.

A straight press shout out.

High growth handbook.

I imagine you've read Scaling People by Clarice Johnson.

It feels really up your alley.

Yeah.

Love her.

Yeah.

Another straight press.

Amazing.

I love that.

Yeah.

Elad's book is still useful.

Like, I don't know how many years later.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?

Yeah.

I have not seen a movie in years.

I feel like my life is at like 20-minute chunks.

But I have been watching a series, The Pit.

Um, and I'm from Western Pennsylvania.

So from like the Pittsburgh area.

And not only is that like, it's not only is it extremely well done.

Um, but two, it makes my life feel less frantic living hour.

It's about the only thing that can make my life feel less frantic is living an hour in an ER.

And like all they go through.

And I often try to tell my team around like the gravity of things.

I was like,

Hey y'all, like we get to work for this amazing company and product things, but people are not living and dying every day by decisions that we make.

In the pit they are, you know, so it's kind of just gives us like leveling part.

And then third, I think they just like capture the ethos of that region, which is like my core, which is like Western Pennsylvania, blue collar grinder.

And I just think they do a really good job of capturing that.

So I've been watching that when I can on some airplanes.

I love that for most people, that's just very stressful.

And for you, it's calming because it's less stressful.

It's just the relative nature of things is helpful.

Like if you launched the bear, cause I feel like that'd be another example.

Yeah.

I think if I was probably Chicago guy, that would probably, that would probably resonate.

Although I have seen it.

Yeah.

Oh man.

Okay.

A couple, a few more questions.

Your favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love other than cursor.

Yeah, I think there's two.

I think one is like semi-recent.

I'm a huge granola fan.

I think I was super early on granola and I love that they continue to innovate and really just great product decisions, easy to use.

They're great on feedback too.

If you've ever given them feedback, they're phenomenal.

The second I've been using a lot is Whisper, Whisper Flow, and just trying to get out quick notes to my team.

I am better this than this in terms of my thoughts.

And so Whisper's been amazing on the go to drop notes to my team.

Listen to this, Adam.

You may not know this.

I don't.

Subscribers to my newsletter get a year free of not only Cursor, but also Granola and Whisperflow.

I did not know that.

And 30 other incredible products, Replit and Google and Lovable, and it's out of control.

So if you like any of these products...

Ladiesproductfast.com

That was not that was not a place at all that was just

Yeah I did not know it's just we have all the best products for free for a freaking year including cursor

So there you go ladiesproductfast.com

Okay two more questions

Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life

Yeah, I think there's like three things that I come back to and I try to instill in my kids too.

So one is like work hard.

I think the value of hard work is hard to understate and something like I grew up in.

Second is like do great work.

So let's not confuse the two.

And third is like, be helpful.

And I think like one thing I've really tried to do, and maybe part of the reason I was able to help build this team is I've really just tried to be helpful.

And if you talk to founders out there, anyone, I will answer their emails.

I will jump on a 10 minute call with them

And I want to think that people come to me for help and advice and like, it's the right ones.

And so, and that's just has now, like I now getting to reap some of that of people who like want to, you know, come to the work on the team.

But so there's three things I've really tried to live by.

That is an awesome set of principles to live by.

Clearly, it has contributed to your success.

I'm going to steal them all.

Those are really good.

That's like a good tripod of things to be focused on.

You talked about being a dad.

Final question.

People said you're you're an expert on the importance of a well-placed dad joke.

I'm not going to ask you to do a joke unless you want to.

But more so just like what's something you've learned about raising kids?

Because I'm a dad, three year old.

What's just like a thing you've learned about raising great kids?

It's humbling, you know.

They will challenge you in ways you don't expect.

They are like mini mirrors of you sometimes.

So it's like that's like it's a feedback mechanism.

And it's like such a joy, honestly.

And I'm very lucky to have an amazing wife and partner who

At times, most times, it takes the unfair load of it.

But yeah, it's definitely my greatest joy.

That's such a good summary.

That's exactly how it feels.

Very challenging at times, but the greatest joy.

But just think about your career though.

The thing, when you look back on your career of your most enjoyable times, you were a little bit over your skis.

You were thrown into something unexpected that you weren't ready for and you like figured it out.

And in the moment,

It was a series of ups and downs, stacking S curves, but you'll look back and I'd be like, wow, that was like one of like my career highlights, but you were really over your skis.

Molly Graham who's been on the podcast and did a couple newsletter guest posts

She has this concept she calls the J curve, which is you, your best roles are just you join and then you go way down and suck at it for a while and then you come back up and that's the best experience you've ever had.

Molly is yeah Molly has gold out there for sure.

She's so incredible.

Working on a new guest post right now.

Might have come out by the time this comes out.

Love it.

With that, two final questions.

Adam, what do you want to plug?

Anything you want to point people to?

And how can listeners be useful to you?

I think they're one in the same.

I mean, I'll plug.

I mean, I would love people to try.

Try Cursor.

I think it's incredibly exciting things that we're coming out with and we're really proud of it.

Some things in the pipeline too.

I'm not super out there online.

I think I'm on LinkedIn a little bit, but...

I really honestly try to let my work and our team speak for what we do.

But I'm always down to be helpful, back to the last point.

So I really do get pure energy and joy from helping people.

And so I know at some point that we'll come back in some kind of way or form.

Don't expect it to, but...

That's just where I get that drive for me.

Just to plug Cursor a little bit, not only is just the design and experience of Cursor awesome, the best feature for a lot of people is you could just switch between models extremely easily.

So instead of getting hooked on Codex or CloudCo and use Cursor, and then a new Opus comes out, a new GPT comes out, and you could switch and just play around with it immediately versus switching the product.

Yeah, there was a world where models were coming out every three or four months.

We're down to a number of days between models.

And people I know who love to build products want to be working with the best tools at any given time.

And so, you know, our agent allows you to choose the right model.

And I think for a lot of companies, also cost matters.

Is a rightful consideration now.

And so it really comes around optimization.

I'm using the right model for the right task.

And so that's kind of just landing into Cursor SweetSpot.

Yeah, and you guys are also now just building state-of-the-art models built sitting on SpaceX's data centers.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Getting to train on the world's largest data center has just unlocked our models.

So it's been amazing.

What a time to be alive.

Adam, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Bye, everyone.

See you in the next episode.

[The Art of Building Elite, High Talent Density Teams: Insights from Adam Ward]-[The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor]

📋 Summary

Rethinking Recruitment: Escaping the 'Funnel of Doom'

The Pillar of Excellence: Shifting from Volume to Precision

The Atomic Unit of Hiring: The Candidate, Not the Role

Building a Talent-Dense Culture

Closing Thoughts: The 'Funnel of Joy'

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Art of Building Elite, High Talent Density Teams: Insights from Adam Ward]-[The playbook for building high talent density teams | Adam Ward, Head of Talent at Cursor]

📋 Summary

Rethinking Recruitment: Escaping the 'Funnel of Doom'

The Pillar of Excellence: Shifting from Volume to Precision

The Atomic Unit of Hiring: The Candidate, Not the Role

Building a Talent-Dense Culture

Closing Thoughts: The 'Funnel of Joy'

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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