Dragging Hiring by the Collar

How many hours a week do you spend on hiring coffee chats?

Earlier this year, at a leadership meeting, Leo, our Data group lead, brought up the topic of "hiring."

He pointed out that putting effort into "hiring" solves everything, yet DelightRoom leaders weren't putting enough effort into it.

He was right. Having almost no interaction with the outside world, we didn't even realize we needed to do that. Our only external communication was earnestly sharing our learnings through the DelightRoom Medium blog. But hoping to recruit the talent we wanted just through that was no different from crossing our fingers and blindly praying.

Ah! We needed to treat hiring like a proper project, setting concrete goals and milestones and sprinting towards them!

I didn't know the exact "how," but the goal of hiring N people for a specific position was crystal clear.

And just like that, we hired 14 people this year—all seniors.

Our total headcount is 37, including those scheduled to join.
This means about 37% of our entire staff joined this year.

On top of that, about six more people are currently going through the interview process.

So, how exactly did the leaders put effort into hiring?

First off, I started grabbing our precious Hiring Managers (HMs) by the collar and dragging them along.

First. Setting laser-focused leading goals

Make tangible goals crystal clear.

Lagging goals are usually pretty clear. "Hire 3 Android engineers this quarter." "Hire 2 product designers." These are clearer and sharper than most other projects. The problem is that this seemingly simple goal is actually a highly difficult lagging metric. Sitting around waiting won't magically bring the right person at the right time. You have to set leading goals that are more within your line of sight. Otherwise, hiring will just get pushed to the back burner by urgent daily tasks and management duties.

Let's start by setting bottom-level goals. Usually, if the conversion rate from entering the interview process to the final offer is 25%, we set our "getting applications" goal to four times the target headcount. For example, if we want to hire 2 people, the goal is to get 8 people to apply.

We can also roughly set mid-level goals. Even if we don't get them to apply right away, it means having coffee chats with potential talent who seem like a good fit for us. Keeping it simple: between having 0 external coffee chats a week and having 10, the one with a higher chance of leading to a hire is obviously 10. We set a target number and sprint towards it.

At this point, if you estimate the application conversion rate after a coffee chat, you can work backward to set your target number of coffee chats. The conversion rate will vary depending on how laser-focused your targeting is. If you're going for sheer volume—"I'll meet as many potential candidates as possible!"—we aimed for about a 10x multiplier. The strategy was getting 1 out of 10 coffee chat attendees to apply. Conversely, if you feel your resources dictate that you need 1 out of 4 to apply, you just need to target much more sharply when arranging those coffee chats in the first place.

Second. Narrowing down goals by period

Only one tangible goal at a time.

When setting leading goals, you end up splitting the numbers by position. For example, 30 coffee chats and 10 applications for Product Designers & 20 coffee chats and 6 applications for BackEnd Engineers—you end up approaching all positions in parallel. But a hiring project is akin to high-level B2B partnership sales. It's different from a quick revenue-boosting sales promo. It's about finding teammates you'll work with for a long time, and it's a highly difficult (and concentration-heavy) task where you have to convey our product and culture to that potential teammate in a short amount of time. The way you need to approach each position varies greatly. The supply and demand within the market for each position is different, and our company's positioning in that specific market also differs.

We set a goal to resolve the position answering the question, "If we could only hire exactly one person this quarter, which position would it be?" within a specific timeframe first. In our case, hiring Android engineers was more critical than any other position. We went in with the mindset that if we didn't hire at least one person in November, the company would go under. Fortunately, we hired one person in November. And another one joined in early December. Now, our priorities have shifted to other positions. We plan to focus on and completely fill those positions during the remainder of December.

Third. Just start sprinting

If you haven't met even a single person yet.

All these coffee chat and sourcing strategies are great, but the most important thing is to just "sprint." Do you know what the current Android hiring/job market looks like? Due to the fast-paced nature of the industry, taking your eyes off it for even a single quarter makes it hard to keep up with the trends. Even if you think, "Wow, they seem like a perfect fit!", when you actually meet them, you're more likely to hit variables that block an application: "Ah, this aspect might not align well," or "They seem great, but they have zero intention of changing jobs right now." Since this is an area that inherently requires some "luck," it's better to quickly meet one or two people to grasp current industry trends and figure out what we're lacking in the funnel from sourcing to coffee chat.

Fourth. Sincerity-driven coffee chats

Treat precious coffee chats preciously.

As mentioned earlier, we aren't looking for teammates to work with for just a little while. We are looking for teammates who will share our joys and sorrows, building an incredible journey together over the years. Of course, even if they agree to an interview, we can't guarantee the outcome, but if you truly want someone, your sincerity must be fully conveyed in just a 1-hour coffee chat. Rather than preaching about the ideal candidate profile our product and organization need, we listen to their story as much as possible and evaluate whether our organization can solve the problems they want to solve. If it's simply not a match, we wrap it up honestly by saying, "It's a shame, but I don't think this is the right fit." Even if things don't work out for practical reasons, as long as our sincerity came across, I believe our paths could cross again someday (next year, the year after, or beyond).

Laser-focused leading metrics >> Narrowing down goals by period >> Just start sprinting >> Sincerity-driven coffee chats"

Looking back, it was a repetition of this, checked on a weekly basis. I managed it as relentlessly as a personal trainer.

It might sound brute-force, but we reached out to 317 people this quarter alone and held about 40 precious coffee chats.

And N potential candidates went through interviews, ultimately allowing us to welcome M new members.

Thanks to running so fiercely, we also secured some valuable data. (Coffee chat acceptance rate, post-coffee chat application rate, final offer rate)

Playing the role of the personal trainer, I think I spent at least 5 hours a week on hiring. The Hiring Managers spent 15 to 20 hours. The important thing is that, among all my contributions this quarter (organizational culture planning, product spec, team management, strategy building, etc.), hiring feels like the contribution with the highest impact. Perhaps that's why those 20 hours a week didn't feel like a waste at all.

You don't even spend a single hour on hiring?
Just like we used to be, that's no different from crossing your fingers and blindly praying.

I recommend grabbing yourself by the collar and starting light.

Invest at least 10 hours a week and try conducting at least 3 coffee chats.

You'll feel the effects faster than you think.

Hiring that was so urgent we had to drag it by the collar.

Even after putting out the urgent fires, I've concluded that we need to continuously hold hiring coffee chats, even if it doesn't involve grabbing collars anymore. My retrospective on this will come around the end of next quarter...

The folks who dragged hiring by the collar with me this quarter:
P&C Manager Synth (Juyong Yeon), Head of Engineering Jason (Junwon Lee)

I couldn't include it all in this post, but
you worked incredibly hard. I'd like to use this post to express my gratitude.

⏰ DelightRoom is looking for precious teammates 🙌