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An informal interview with Maria Dolgusheva (HR from Silicon Valley)



“How many people did you hire in America?”

- Our HR team has been working for 3 years, now we have 100 people working in PandaDoc.

- What is the difference between hiring in Silicon Valley and hiring in Russia and Belarus?

- The speed is higher. At the lowest and middle positions - one to two weeks. Candidates do not wait and they leave pretty quickly. Market speed is much higher.

More communication with each candidate: for each - 10-50 letters. Communicates the recruiter and hiring manager, and sometimes CEO.

Here everyone has a letter on LinkedIn every week with a job offer, people often ignore them, and if CEO addresses you, then the candidate answers.

The main communication channels: LinkedIn, SMS and e-mail.

- How many years, usually, a person has been working in a company?

- The average “over the valley” is one and a half years. In America - 3 years. No need to worry that people are leaving you, maybe they will return to you. There is such a thing that Silicon Valley is an employer. People are easier on this.

- What can be done in 1.5 years?

- This is the biggest problem. First, you should try to create an environment so that a person stays longer. We succeeded, we have an employee who has been working for more than 5 years in the sales-up market, and this is very cool, because he knows the product better than anyone, customers trust, because he has been working for the company for 5 years, it's super cool, but it's hard to achieve. Secondly, you need to reduce the time for onboarding. It’s standard for 6 months, and out of 1.5 years it’s a third, so we try to reduce it to 2 months.

4 days product training, complete immersion: why your product has value in the market, who your customers are. Plus training on the company's culture: what values, why it is important, how to use these values ​​in the selection, in promotion. And the last stage is onboarding in the direction in which the person will work (marketing, sales).

We appreciate any feedback. Right away. “Feedback sandwich” - does not work, it is proved (+ - +). If you want to say, tell him directly.

- At what size of the company did you begin to do cultural trainings?

- The most important trainings are sales and product. Previously, HR made a presentation about culture, the document “Cultural Code” written by Sergey and Nikita. I think that when a company grows to 100 people and there are resources, it makes sense to invest in professional trainings on culture.

- What is the "company culture"? There is simply a lot of skepticism about this, that it is almost a religion and worship of someone or something.

- In the Russian market, this is often a formal HR-thing, about which they say "this is bullshit, let's get down to business." Everything that is perceived as a fake, there is no love for this. What did Nikita and Seryozha, and I think this is a very important move, they sat down and thought what was important to them . What theythey appreciate and what kind of people they would like to see around them as a team, and what they would like to do together. In fact, they chose only three values:

1. make impact. In the technology world, it's hard to understand what you really do. You have 14,000 users, the company brings money, you know these numbers, but you don’t see it. Unlike an oil field, where you first see the desert, and after three years - oil rigs. Therefore, you often need to remind each other what we do, what value for customers.

2. Learning. Making mistakes is normal. But you need to do them quickly and not repeat, learn. And we understand that feedback is very important. Feedback is a gift (gift). Criticism is also a gift. If you treat your colleague well and want him to grow, you will give him critical feedback. Not in order to demotivate, but in the next stages he did something better.

3. Make fun. This is an analogy to a video game. If you enjoy the process - you quickly move from level to level, and you can not tear yourself away from it. You really love what you do.

- What are the pitfalls of hiring and firing? CEO should hire, and HR should fire, is that so?)

- In California, the most intricate recruitment regulations. Other regions are easier. About layoffs - most layoffs are one day (to deny access to the product). For us, this is done by the head, with whom the person worked, he dismisses. You should have a perfomance review or something else that proves that the person is not doing the job.

There is such a tool as state employer insurance, deductions go there. You can also pay the employee the amount (two-week fee) and you sign an agreement with him that he cannot sue.

Candidates look not only at how you hire employees, but also at how you fire them. It is necessary to dismiss as a human being. Give feedback why.

- Is it true that women over 45 cannot be fired? You cannot be fired from the sick-list. Racial?

- We had such cases, but we did everything honestly. We advise you to do everything according to the procedure. There should be a special form for the dismissal of women after 45 and other prepared forms and everything is correctly spelled out from a legal point of view. We must act within the framework of the law, which is quite transparent here, and then there are no big risks. In the valley, on the contrary, they strive to make the team as diverse as possible: gender, race, age.

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