EP85: Uber Freight - How to Balance Potential and Experience in Hiring

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.

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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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 Jennifer Rakow of Uber Freight. Welcome to the show, Jennifer, and thank you for joining us.

Jennifer: Thanks, Lydia. It's great to be here.

Adaptation and Success in an Ever-Changing Industry

Lydia: So, tell us a little bit about yourself. I see that you’ve had an extensive career, first and foremost, in tech recruiting. You started off in core tech recruitment and then moved on to different roles. What inspired you to stay in the talent space?

Jennifer: That’s a really good question. I think for me, starting off in this industry, technology was always where recruiting was going to have its biggest gamble. So, its biggest risk is for its biggest reward. It was one of the areas that I just thrived in when actually getting into the space and I didn’t start in recruiting. I actually started as a coordinator. So, having sat in a recruiter’s seat, having sat in a recruiting coordinator’s seat, I’ve seen different angles of how this industry has changed.

I think for me, it’s about the connection that drives recruiting candidates to recruit hiring managers, ultimately to offer acceptance. That’s kind of, I think, for me, what’s the most exciting part of being in this industry.

Lydia: You’ve done core tech recruitment, I mean, in that role of recruiting people in the tech space for some time. Then you moved on to Talent Acquisition and also leadership roles in later years. So, in your observation, how has the landscape of tech recruitment changed specifically?

Jennifer: It’s changed a lot from when I was first in recruiting. I love this question. People always ask, ‘What was it like to recruit in the 90s versus what’s it like to recruit now?’ I always tell people, especially young recruiters coming up into this industry, that back then we were cold-calling people at their desks at their office. Now, fast forward almost 30 years, we’re texting people their schedules. It’s just incredible how much this industry has changed. From our initial reach out to how we reach out to candidates now.

For me, that’s been really interesting. Our industry is so cyclical by nature. I think it’s kind of an ‘adopt or die’ type of industry. For the ones that were able to harness that change, I think they’ve done really well and been really successful. But, I think for others that had a tougher time coming around to the new technologies and the new way of doing things, they’re probably still in this industry. They probably realized that this isn’t for me anymore, because it’s changed so much. But for me, it’s always been a passion.

Lydia: It's interesting that the change didn't just affect the way recruiters do things, but also what the recruiter would know about the roles that they're recruiting, tech itself is changing.

Jennifer: Absolutely. I mean, we’re so used to, back then we were looking at a resume and checking boxes. Does the candidate have this and this and this?

Now, I think the recruiters are so much more advanced in the technology space. They’re really, truly embedded with their leaders and with their hiring teams within these technical spaces.

They know more about the ins and outs of these teams and these roles than most of the people on the team. So, it’s been an interesting evolution to see.

Lydia: So, what areas have you prioritized in this role at Uber Freight?

Jennifer: Within TA, specifically at Uber Freight, we’re focusing on excellence. It’s the year that we want to focus on how we communicate, how we track our progress with data, and how we use that data to drive business decisions.

It’s important to understand that there’s still a very big human element of our job, that sometimes we forget because in this space, there’s so much technology and there are so many tools at our disposal. But this is still a very human job.

So for us, prioritizing how we communicate with our candidates, how we communicate with our hiring leaders, and not forgetting that we still have that human connection has been really important to our success. It’s been crucial to drive accountability and excellence in everything we do.

Achieving Consistency Across Recruitment Roles

Lydia: Now, Uber Freight operates at the intersection of technology and logistics. Does this unique position influence your approach to tech recruitment?

Jennifer: I would like to say that it does. But at the end of the day, recruiting is recruiting. Do you have the skills for this job? Do you understand the compensation for this role? There’s consistency in how we recruit. The consistency in how we recruit should never be different.

Yes, we’ll use different technologies, we’ll use different tools, and we’ll use different understandings of what success looks like from a successful person’s standpoint. But at the end of the day, I do feel like we still want that consistency in our process, from recruiting to recruiting.

So, whether you’re recruiting technology, or you’re recruiting non-tech, GNA, Biz Ops, whatever it is, I think the success lies in how consistent we are from role to role. So for me, that’s the most important part of when we look at how technology and logistics intersect.

The Technology and Logistics space alone is very interesting to be in. You come from Uber, that’s very tech-focused, and then you go into logistics, but we’re actually building and integrating our technology into our logistics platform. So, I think that’s also a part of how we recruit, and who we recruit.

Lydia: You spoke earlier about making sure that communication with the candidates and also with your internal stakeholders is a priority. Are there any best practices or measures that you put in place that might be useful to the audience listening in, in terms of how you streamline that process? Or how do you get the most efficient process out of all these communications?

Jennifer: I think the efficiency lies in our consistency and you’ll hear me say that a lot. I always ask a recruiter, ‘You’re really successful with hiring this leader, can you go and duplicate that success elsewhere? Do you have a consistent process in how you do things?’ If you can be successful over here, and you’re successful over there, and you’re successful in another place, then I can plug and play people.

I know that the hiring leader is going to have the same process and the same experience with every person. That shows a level of consistency and from a growth perspective, that helps the recruiters understand, ‘Okay, this is how we want it. We want to have a consistent process across each role.’

The hiring managers are never getting a different experience every time. They know what they’re getting going into it.

Lydia: And the expectation is already set from the get-go.

Jennifer: Exactly.

Integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) in Talent Strategies

Lydia: Now, in terms of diversity, what might be some ways to integrate DE&I into talent efforts or the overall talent plan, especially in the tech sector?

Jennifer: When I think about DE&I, I think that the biggest key is understanding. Companies are always saying, ‘We’re going to sit back and let candidates apply and hope we get some diverse talent.’ We have to go where the talent is, we have to understand where those communities are. What’s important to those communities and how we infiltrate those communities?

So yes, our conferences are important, of course, Afro Tech, Grace Hopper, Nesby. These are all important.

But then we have to get more creative and involve ourselves in our communication around these untapped areas. Universities, referral programs, and certain media channels. How do we infiltrate some of these other untapped areas that maybe companies aren’t thinking about? Especially if you’re a newer company, versus an older company.

I worked at Google for a while. One of the biggest things that Google did that I thought was brilliant was they got into the universities very early. They wanted to tap that talent early. Even if they weren’t hiring those people right out the gate, three or four years later, they always knew who Google was. They always said, ‘Oh, that’s a company I want to work at.’ So, they were making that play for talent three or four years before that talent was even ready.

That’s the untapped areas that I think companies don’t spend enough time and energy on. Because they’re always looking for more experience versus potential.

Balancing Potential and Experience in Hiring

Lydia: We will talk about experience vs potential right now. How do you see hiring for potential vs experience?

Jennifer: I think it depends on time. It’s kind of similar to DE&I. We all know DE&I is going to take longer to hire for. We talked about that with executive leadership all the time. Do you have the time it’s going to take to invest in DE&I talent? Do you have the time it’s going to take to invest in potential versus experience?

So, it really always boils down to if we find somebody with potential, does that leader have time to really harness that potential with that person? I would love to say that it’s an easy, quick fix of something that we can adjust as TA professionals, but it really relies on the leaders of those groups to really understand what potential looks like and take the time to harness it.

Lydia: Would you say that the time taken to harness the actual contribution or the actual potential, even with an experienced hire versus potential, is about, let’s say, both of them are new hires coming into a brand new company? One with potential perhaps without the experience, the other with experience, but without the cultural adaptability just yet. Would that take about the same amount of time? Does that make both these hires, both these types of hires, require enough time for a leader to nurture their performance in a team?

Jennifer: It’s a good question. I think it depends on the leader, to be honest. I’d like to say yes, but I think ultimately, it depends on [whether] you’re hiring somebody with potential, you’re probably going to spend more time with that person. That person is probably going to interact with other parts of the business versus an experienced person who’s going to come and be able to hit the ground running.

But then there’s also the cultural aspect that they have to understand, learn, and harness. So, I think it might be a different subset of time, but I think ultimately, it’s still significant time spent. It’s how you’re harnessing one versus the other that I think makes the difference.

Lydia: In terms of building a high-performance team, especially in a team or in a company or an organization that has a direction, that knows where it’s going in terms of where it wants to be in terms of growth, perhaps. So, building a high-performance team is definitely crucial for an organization’s success.

What might be some aspects to look at in terms of building a high-performance team from a Talent Acquisition perspective?

Jennifer: When I think about how I have built teams in the past, trust is the first thing that comes to mind. I’m always a trust-forward leader versus a ‘you have to earn it’ kind of leader. Harnessing everybody’s abilities that are different from your own is also key.

I have five leaders on my team, and all of them are so distinctly different from each other. When we get into meetings, we challenge how we think, we challenge decisions. Everybody has a different perspective, everybody has a different approach to either how they’re solving problems or how they’re addressing challenges. That makes me a stronger leader to understand and hopefully, it makes them stronger leaders to really build off of that.

Just like recruiters, when I build recruiting teams, it’s very similar. They have different levels. You have different levels of teams, you’ve got seniors, you’ve got juniors, you’ve got people in their mid-career. Understanding what’s special or different about each one of them that stands out makes a difference for them and for you as a leader.

You can always tell a leader’s success by the amount of people that follow them. For me, that’s been one of the things that I specifically look for when I’m looking at a new opportunity. How many people have you worked with in the past? How many of those people are here? That tells me, that if you’re willing to follow this person, then that trust has already been established.

You understand how this person works. You understand the ins and outs, you know how to harness their strengths and their weaknesses and I think that in itself helps them want to perform for you.

Impact of Recruitment Technologies on Tech Talent Acquisition

Lydia: In your experience, going back perhaps to your days in recruitment, and now looking at recruitment technologies from a leadership perspective. So, what kind of impact do you think recruitment technologies have shown or have made in securing or even hiring the best tech talent?

Jennifer: There’s so many out there. Obviously, you need a solid ATS. I like to say that tech can either be really sexy or not and I think it’s the attractive tech that draws a certain amount of people, whether it’s applied machine learning, AI, or robotics, versus your run-of-the-mill, full-stack, back-end, front-end type of engineering tech.

I think it’s the technology in itself that is becoming more and more appealing to people, and how they get more and more specialized in the areas that they want to be specialized in, like robotics and AI and others, especially on the hardware side. Do they want to build consumer products? Do they want to build the software that goes in it from a user experience perspective?

So, it’s hard to pinpoint when I look at technology as a whole, and what tools we use, because there are just so many out there. But I think a solid ATS is important [and] obviously, LinkedIn, you need to have a solid CRM tool, and you need to understand the different sourcing or channels, and models that help build pipeline. So, all those encompassing, I think I couldn’t nail anyone down because I’ve used so many, and each one is really great, and each one has its own set of problems.

I think when it comes to building out a usable, functional tool that can really build a framework for recruiters’ daily tasks.

Lydia: That would mean integrating that tool into the different tools that you have for other purposes, such as ATS into HRIS systems that you have. That might give you a seamless flow. But yes, you’re right. There are so many technologies out there, each one with its own unique ability to get you what you want to see in terms of data. And finally, to wrap this up, what is your favorite or most memorable recruitment story, Jennifer?

Jennifer: I was thinking about this question, and I remember, I spent many years at Apple. I had a candidate who was in a completely different industry, was not in consumer products, was not in tech. I remember having a conversation with this person. After about 20-30 minutes, I was convinced I had to find this person a place at Apple. I remember her drive and her passion. It’s exactly what we needed.

So I remember having a conversation with the head of applied machine learning. I said, ‘Hey, you have to meet this person. She’s not qualified for anything from a technical perspective, but I just want you to have a conversation with her. Just indulge me.’ And he did. They ended up talking for four hours into the night. He called me the next morning and said, ‘Yes, we have to find this person a role.’

We ended up hiring her as a technical project manager, working within an engineering team where she had never touched anything before. She spent four years there, just dominating the space. So again, we talked about potential versus experience. It’s one of those diamonds that when you find, you’re like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’

I remember she sent an email to Tim Cook, and basically said, ‘Hey, I had this amazing experience with this recruiter. They convinced me to leave my sales job to come over here and be a TPM.’ It was a dream job for her. So for me, that was memorable.

Lydia: In this case, it’s potential versus experience, and then right in the middle, you’ve got this nice sweet spot of transferable skills, adaptability, and all those little nuanced elements that will make a hire really successful in a place that they’ve never been or in a scope that they’ve never handled before.

That’s great. Thanks so much for sharing, Jennifer, and, again, thank you very much for your time and all these insights. So, if there’s anyone who is listening in and wants to pick up a conversation with you, where can they find you?

Jennifer: You can find me on LinkedIn. You can also email me at jrakow@uberfreight.com. Happy to answer or address any questions. I think for me, this was really fun. Thank you so much for having me. Leadership is my passion these days. I love seeing the next generation of recruiters and leaders come into this industry and really make a difference. Obviously, you don’t think of TA as being at the forefront of anything but we really are. We’re essentially changing people’s lives. So, happy to always talk about that as well.

Lydia: Thanks again. We have been in conversation with Jennifer Rakow of Uber Freight. Thank you for joining us and remember to subscribe to stay tuned for more weekly episodes from ‘All-In Recruitment.’