Alana came to our shop to do a two day workshop on recruiting a few months ago. Going into the session, I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect or what was going to come out on the other side. Plus, it was over a weekend, so I wasn’t super thrilled, but hey, I’m not in charge of scheduling, so I tried to keep an open mind going into the weekend. Anyway, the sessions were fantastic. Alana was the catalyst for putting structure and a methodology behind our recruiting efforts. Where there used to be three people asking the same questions in slightly different ways was a process where each person had specific targets of information to try to cull from the candidates. Alana helped us sharpen our follow-up questions so when a candidate would say “I want an open culture with work-life balance”, we can recognize the situation and immediately follow up and ask for specifics rather than making an assumption that the candidate’s definition of work-life balance is the same as mine. It was shocking how many assumptions I used to make when interviewing candidates. Also, Alana taught us that in order to recruit for any position, you need to know yourself and your company values or else you are essentially extending offers and hoping for the best. Our sessions turned unspoken commonalities amongst all employees into a tangible list of traits we now actively seek out along with a questioning methodology to ensure any candidate we extend an offer to is going to be a culture fit with exactly the skills we require. Coming out of the sessions, there was also a new cohesiveness amongst the group which was completely unexpected going into the weekend, as everyone contributed to putting down on paper our culture and values. It was fascinating to see people that were previously not into recruiting get on board with the whole process in a significant way. Alana got relatively introverted engineers psyched up to talk to candidates by giving them a way to ask the right questions to the point where they now take a leadership role in the process. How cool is that? It is not an understatement to say the workshop with Alana was a turning point for this company, and she comes with the highest recommendation.
Scott Schrems
