All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.
Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify to stay tuned for our weekly episodes.
My name is Lydia, and joining us today is Ben Otero of DoorLoop.
Welcome to the show, Ben. Good to have you with us today.
Ben: Thank you so much. It's really exciting to be here today.
How Excitement and Curiosity Led Ben to Recruitment
Lydia: So Ben, tell us a little bit about your background. What has kept you in the talent space?
Ben: Good question. I fell into recruitment and talent because it was exciting. I always liked understanding how people think and supporting others, so I wanted to jump into this space. I’ve been in the talent scene for a long time and am now at DoorLoop.
So, it is an all-inclusive property management software organization. We’re a startup, but we’re at the forefront of PMS software. What’s exciting about DoorLoop is that we’re growing rapidly, while many businesses aren’t in growth mode. Last year alone, we grew over 400%, and this year we’re on track to do even more. We’re striving to become a website for all things property management, with software for property owners and managers.
I’m the head of talent and have been here for approximately three months. Before that, I was at GitHub, and before that at Titan Holdings. I’ve had many opportunities to work in the talent space, and my teams have hired over 20,000 people in different areas.
Lydia: How big is your team now?
Ben: My team is small because we’re still in growth mode and moving upstream in the market. DoorLoop takes a different approach to recruitment, focusing on hiring ‘A player’ or top talent. We rely on features like automation and AI to cut out the middleman, allowing us to run a lean team while continuing to grow and scale. This leads to strategic recruitment initiatives, where we partner closely with the business to understand our hiring and talent goals for the present and future.
Lydia: That’s great. We’ll come back to the topic of top talent and how you work with hiring managers. It would be interesting to see how this works during a hyper-growth stage. You've been with DoorLoop for three months now. So, what are some areas that you prioritize in your role as head of global talent, Ben?
Ben: Absolutely. One of the first things I did when I joined DoorLoop was to spend my first 30 days learning as much as I could about the business. After that, I immediately started making changes. The first thing I did was change our ATS system, which is how we reach out to candidates. We integrated it with different software to enhance workflows and add more automation features.
From there, I focused on partnering with the business to understand our talent objectives as we go into the market. Right now, we’re moving all of our hiring to Tel Aviv, Israel. We’re in the process of more than doubling that team, which is exciting because we’re bringing in a lot of developer, team lead, and product designer talent to that office.
Now, we’re focusing on our talent branding strategy and how we go into the market. In my opinion, recruiting is shifting from the standard brick-and-mortar approach which I call it the spaghetti model - let’s post a job online, see what ends up happening, bring talent in, and source talent. Recruiting has turned into something more similar to PPC campaigns in marketing. We’re building in SEO features into our job descriptions and tying them back to job boards with other features to get us out into the market. We’re also utilizing other things like local television stations to get our name out there and taking a totally different approach to recruiting than what it was 5-8 years ago.
So, to answer your question, we’re ultimately tying together a scalable talent strategy and making sure we have the right systems in place. Now, we’re just focusing on execution and getting all the great talent into DoorLoop that we possibly can to continue scaling our product.
Plan Ahead for Talent Needs and Adapt to Market Changes
Lydia: As you plan ahead and look into scaling the team, how far do you look ahead? Is it three months, or six months? Or is it a year or more?
Ben: That’s a good question. I want to answer it in a different way by considering where I am today and my approach. It’s all about how your business thinks. Some businesses plan one year out, while others plan three months out depending on their model.
Personally, I’m a big fan of looking 12 months out so we can strategically plan, whether it’s at the beginning of the fiscal year in July or January.
It’s important to have a solid understanding of how to go to market. I’ve been part of organizations that have 24-month roadmaps, which have their positives, but the negative is that it’s harder to shift as the market changes so much nowadays. It’s one of the most interesting markets I’ve ever seen in that regard.
I wouldn’t recommend going three months out, but if you have to, it’s usually because you have a quick go-to-market plan. So, I always tell people to plan for one year.
Lydia: What are some unique challenges in attracting global hires compared to local hires, and how do you address these challenges?
Ben: That’s a good question. I’ll start with the local side and then move on to the global side. On the local side, it’s about understanding your talent pool and building strategic talent pools within your community. For example, I’m located in Miami, Florida, which has an up-and-coming tech scene with many people moving here from places like New York and California. There are also many new companies coming in. So, you can build your strategy around this up-and-coming area with lots of tech talent and great companies that are growing.
You also have to understand your current marketplace. For example, the talent in Miami is different from a place like Louisville, Kentucky. The reason I say it’s different is because Miami has a more youthful population with a lot of drive, and many of the talent is coming from other countries with the goal of starting a better life for themselves and their families. That’s how you build that picture here in Miami.
Now, if we jump over to Tel Aviv, it’s like competing in Silicon Valley with many startups. How do you separate your startup from all the others? In DoorLoop’s case, we have an amazing investor who has provided us with funds to accelerate our growth. Our founders have been in business together for four different companies and have scaled them quickly and successfully. Our executive panel includes people from major companies like GitHub.
We also tailor our talent brand and strategy to the marketplace. In Tel Aviv, we’re working on an amazing technical environment similar to Facebook or Instagram, which is exciting for developers. We have great talent who will guide and mold you, and our benefits are amazing.
So, it’s about understanding what the talent in the marketplace wants and learning from them to go to market with it.
Lydia: So, how do you differentiate the company from the others?
Ben: That’s a good question. It’s all about the benefits you offer compared to other organizations. One of the great things we do at DoorLoop is cover medical, vision, and dental at 100% cost. This is great for employees because there are no out-of-pocket costs for healthcare. We also have a 401k match that starts on your first day.
If you’re an office employee, you walk into an environment with people who want to be there. It’s youthful, energetic, and supportive. We hire great talent and give them all the tools to be successful. Our job is to ensure that they’re crushing it every single day.
We’ve grown rapidly over the last year, but our attrition is minimal because we keep our employees satisfied and engaged. It’s all about creating an ecosystem for our employees that recognizes how they operate every single day. We reward them for doing a great job and let them know why they’re doing a great job. It’s not just about individual performance, but also about how the team is doing.
Finding the ‘A Player’ Among Top Talent
Lydia: How do you define an ‘A player’ when you have many of them in one place? Who is the ‘A player’ among the ‘A players’?
Ben: That’s a good question. Who are the ‘A players’ among the ‘A players’? It starts with having an appropriate intake strategy and sitting down with the hiring team to understand what you’re looking for. Then, when you go to market and start finding people, you identify the key attributes that match well with your team and meet all the hard requirements.
Top talent attracts top talent. For example, our head of support, Matt Kay, was able to bring in people from his previous companies. Our CMO, David, is an absolute wizard when it comes to marketing. When we identify great talent and they sit down with David, they want to learn from him.
It’s about everyone in the business being an ‘A player’ and owning a part of the business. We’re all working towards the goal of making DoorLoop the greatest thing out there and disrupting the property management software space.
Lydia: Going back to what you mentioned earlier about working closely with the business to understand where it’s going, how do you ensure that your talent attraction strategies, especially for global hires, are aligned with DoorLoop’s business objectives?
Ben: For us, it’s about following our staffing plan and understanding where the market is going. We have a scalable staffing plan that we can get ahead of in terms of talent acquisition. For example, at DoorLoop, we offer our employees a monthly stipend that they can use for whatever they want. This is a privilege that we provide to all Loopers.
We tapped into this as a resource because we wanted to ensure that we’re providing the same type of benefits as other tech companies. If there’s something else out there, we identify it and see if it makes sense for our business model and integrate it into our talent attraction strategy.
Lydia: You mentioned earlier about tapping into communities of developers and tech professionals and attracting them with the excitement of building something in a hyper-growth stage. What are your thoughts or experiences on leveraging these communities?
Ben: That’s a good question. There are many unique ways to leverage communities of developers and tech professionals.
For example, at DoorLoop, we’re in the process of going to market to hire our next big wave of talent. One thing I like to do is called ‘sourcing bonds.’ We sit everyone down in a room and use a method called ‘Seven Touches’ to identify up to 7-10 great talents within someone’s network. We then go into those sub-pockets of people and keep going down, touching as many people as possible using one potential gateway.
Another approach is to have a sandbox environment where we invite developers to play around and let us know what they think. We pass this off to a Developer Advocate program, where developer advocates talk to developers about the great things we’re doing. Then, we can come in with our talent attraction strategy and let them know about open positions.
There are many unique ways to get out there and attract talent. Technology is always changing, so it’s important to find the next big thing that makes sense for your technical stack and attract talent with it.
Lydia: Is it a lengthy process, though?
Ben: The second part I mentioned earlier is a longer play. It takes about six to seven months to create that type of environment and tie it into your advocacy programs. It’s a lot of fun because you can tailor your message to the developer. For example, I like to create a video where I say, “Hey, I see that you’re doing great things with technologies like Node.js and React. Here’s a link to our sandbox environment. Come play with it and if you like what you see, join our team. If not, pass it on to the next person.”
It’s a fun way to differentiate yourself from all the other recruiters. When you’re headhunting talent, you’re in a bucket with hundreds or thousands of other recruiters. Developers are probably getting pinged by people left and right. But they always respond to the one recruiter who’s outside the bucket and did something that stood out, whether it’s their branding, message, or company.
It’s important to keep the human element alive in a world of AI and automation. It’s just fun and exciting.
The Secret Sauce To Keeping Global Hires Happy
Lydia: Taking seven months is an investment. If it doesn’t work in this cycle, it might work in the next. It’s fun and an investment of time, energy, and personalization. So, turning to talent retention, how does DoorLoop approach retaining global hires, especially those who have been brought in from across the globe or relocated from a different state?
Ben: That’s a good question.
Our talent retention strategies go back to our culture. If you go on our website and watch any of the videos, you’ll get an understanding of what makes DoorLoop special. It’s like walking into a beautiful place with fresh air where everyone’s job is to support you.
We have wonderful benefits and make it a point to recognize employees every day or at least every week. For example, if you’re in our Tel Aviv office, we have a weekly happy hour. If you’re in our Miami office, we might go to a Marlins game or make smoothies in the office. It’s about finding things that break up the normal workday and make it fun.
We encourage our employees to take breaks, stretch their legs, and come back refreshed. It all comes down to our people and how we network and talk to each other. Over 90% of the people who work at DoorLoop say that it’s a place where their best friends work with them every day, which is really cool.
Lydia: That brings me to my next question. As we mentioned earlier, there have been many shifts in talent acquisition and a need to keep up with them. There’s also a rise in different forms of work, such as contract work, remote work, and hybrid work. Additionally, there’s a need to build more connectivity in the workforce with all the initiatives that you’re doing while ensuring productivity. So, what do you look for when searching for top talent? Are there any specific criteria that you consider?
Ben: I believe it all comes down to taking a core value approach.
A core value approach involves creating 5-10 things that make your business unique. From these core values, we generate scorecards to identify personality traits and attributes of candidates that reflect those values.
The second thing is identifying hard requirements and implementing assessments, such as technical or coding assessments, to validate the talent. It’s also important to have an unbiased interview process that focuses on the candidate’s skills and what’s important to them.
At DoorLoop, we make sure everyone is aligned. If someone thinks a candidate is not the right fit, we identify the reason why. We want to make sure it’s a unanimous business decision.
The Challenges and Opportunities of AI in Global Recruitment
Lydia: Automation and AI technology are transforming many aspects of business, including recruitment. As you mentioned earlier, there has been a significant shift. In your experience, how have these technologies influenced global recruitment?
Ben: AI has had a significant impact on global recruitment. It’s here to help us by taking out the monotony of general tasks. For example, if you’re still writing job descriptions from scratch, you’re behind the curve. You should be using tools like ChatGPT to build the core of your job description with top SEO features for the Google search engine. Then, you can fill in the requirements.
My bold prediction for recruitment in the next 10 years is that it will be heavily focused on marketing and support. There will be a recruiting architect behind the control panel, making everything happen quickly and efficiently. This will be amazing for hiring, but it may also make the war for talent even harder.
Lydia: I like your vision and can picture it in a recruitment sci-fi film. We had a guest who gave an example of a recruiter who didn’t know how to hire for a specific tech role. He wasn’t sure about the technology, so he used ChatGPT to train him on how to speak to a candidate from that background. The technology trained him.
Ben: That’s super interesting. I have a funny story. A young, early-career recruiter came to me and asked how to approach talking to an engineering principal. I suggested using ChatGPT to ask what questions to ask an engineer with that type of experience. ChatGPT gave him seven different things to ask, and he used them. At the end of the day, the engineer, who had been doing this for 15 years, said it was one of the most technically sound interviews he had ever had.
Lydia: Can you imagine the things a recruiter would go through seven or eight years ago? What advice would you give to someone starting out in TA or recruitment today?
Ben: If you want to get into recruiting today, be ready to stay ahead. Do a Google search and ask ChatGPT what you should be looking at. If you’re not ready to pivot and adapt, you’ll get left behind in this market. If a hiring manager is stuck in the past, push back and give examples of companies that failed for not thinking about the next big thing. Use your expert knowledge to influence the business.
AI and automation are cool, but never forget that you’re talking to a human being at the end of the day. People have different needs and necessities, and you have to make sure those align with your business. Don’t let AI remove the human element that makes things personal.
Lydia: Thank you, Ben, for your time and insights. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show and hearing about the creative ways to attract niche talent that may not be accessible otherwise. I’m sure the audience would like to know where to find and connect with you. Please share your contact details.
Ben: You can find me on LinkedIn under the name Ben Otero or follow me on GitHub under the same name. If you can’t find me there, you can email me. Please follow me on LinkedIn. I’m here for everyone. Thank you for having me, Lydia. This has been super exciting.
Lydia: Thank you, Ben. We’ve been in conversation with Ben Otero of DoorLoop. Thank you for joining us and remember to stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All-In Recruitment.
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