And here I was, thinking that I was pretty good at productivity, and that my work experience of 10 years had allowed me to establish some stellar ways of working... But then (plot twist!), when I joined the startup life 4 months ago, I realized that there were still plenty of opportunities to take my productivity skills up a notch. Whether it had to do with making it a habit to challenge status quo, finding more elaborate ways to manage my time and projects, or even learning my way around...

As a practical follow-up to my very first episode on how to answer Behavioural Interview Questions (and nail pretty much any interview), I thought I’d bring up some additional “Interview Prep 101” pointers. Because preparing for your interview from a content perspective is extremely important, but understanding interview etiquette and avoiding some blatant faux-pas is just as crucial. Listen in to find out what top mistakes you’ll definitely want to avoid when going into any kind of...

Feedback - feedback everywhere! Most companies these days are all about the fast feedback culture. There’s many reasons why - mostly because instant, situational and well-delivered feedback is helping individuals to grow, develop and learn from their mistakes. In order to foster this feedback culture, many organizations make a point to teach employees the art of giving feedback. However, we’re not putting enough emphasis on how to actually receive feedback! So in this episode, I want to help...

Pre-Screens (also known as Screening Calls or Introductory Conversations) are the first touch-point between a candidate and a recruiter, and they are a crucial step to select the best candidates for any given role. The more efficient your pre-screen technique, the more efficient your filtering is. And the better you filter, the better your funnel ratios become - which saves your hiring manager a lot of time on the interviewing front! In today’s episode, we’ll dive a little bit deeper into...

Whenever there’s a talk about professional growth and development, there’s almost always a talk about wanting to get that next-level promotion, the fancy title and/or becoming a manager. And according to where one stands in their career path, those are absolutely fair aspirations. However, while we’re always hustling to climb that career ladder, we sometimes forget to check ourselves and to evaluate if those targets are actually compatible with who we are, how we’re doing and which...

This week’s podcast guest, Anna Stimamiglio, is – like many other previous guests – a friend and former colleague I met at Amazon. She is a young recruiting professional who – to date – has worked in no less than 3 countries, and is about to conquer her 4th country, after having recently moved from Canada to Switzerland for a Recruiting role with Deloitte. In less than 5 years, Anna has had a taste of many working environments from start-up to big corporates, and also given many different...

When I joined Facebook, I first found it rather funny that recruiters would refer to candidate rejections as “candidate break-ups”. But come to think of it - it’s very fitting, and acknowledges the fact that every candidate rejection involves feelings. Therefore, “break-ups” need to be handled with care and courtesy, and without ghosting! So in this podcast episode, we’ll explore both sides of the story. First we’ll talk about what it’s like to be a candidate who is on the receiving end of a...

I love nothing more than to exchange with people who are equally as passionate about the world of talent acquisition as I am. So for this episode, I am especially thrilled to welcome guest speaker Roman Zhilyakov, who is a Senior Technical Sourcer at Facebook Israel. His job involves finding and approaching highly passive senior engineering talent across very niche pipelines such as Machine Learning or Android or iOS. He is literally one of the best sourcers I know and had the pleasure of...

In Episode 13 about Briefing Meetings, I let you in on a little (not so secret) secret of mine: preparation is half the battle. One ultra-essential part of this preparation when kicking off your recruitment process should include driving your own understanding of your target universe. In other words: where are you going to start searching for viable talent? In order to drive this understanding in an organized fashion, my absolute favorite thing to do is to draft a Company Target List (or...

In a society where humility is mostly key, and where most corporate cultures tend to overindex on their employees’ development areas and shortcomings, celebrating successes becomes harder and harder. It’s especially difficult considering that the nature of the brain has a preference for remembering the bad things over the good ones… When all of this culminates, some of us are prone to experiencing extreme low self-esteem and the feeling of utter incompetence. This phenomenon has been coined...

Personally, I could spend hours talking about the all the right ways to unearth talent as a corporate recruiter, or about how to best approach candidates, and how to get them sold on a new job opportunity. But all this technical know-how wouldn’t even mean a thing to the best talent hunter on the planet if they don’t really know what profile they are looking for and if the value proposition of the role they are hiring for is unclear. Whether you are a recruiter or a hiring manager – both...

If you’ve ever told yourself things like "Now’s not the right time for that" or "I’ll never be good enough", then this episode with Anxiety & Procrastination Coach and Time Hacker Vikki Louise will be perfect for you! Vikki is helping people to regain back control when their biggest enemy (their own brain) is bringing them down and keeping them from achieving their goals. In this episode, we’ll talk about Vikki’s career and her coaching program, but also about anxiety, guilt, impostor...

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your work week didn’t feel like you have to scramble to get everything done in time? How wonderful would it be if we had an extra day a week to get everything done? Or even better – wouldn’t it be great to simply get the hang of getting more work done in less time, so that you could use the time you ultimately save on more value-creating tasks? What if I told you that increasing your daily productivity is actually not that difficult? It takes just a couple of...

In the last two episodes, I told you everything you needed to know about Job Offers and Salary Negotiation. Those episodes actually prompted quite a number of questions around stock-based compensation, a.k.a. Equity. So in this episode, in order for you to feel more confident with this topic, I’ll try to cover everything you need to know about Equity Compensation, including the wonderful world of Stock Options, RSUs, ESPPs and SARs – and which fine print is associated with each of those...

It takes recruiters less than 7 seconds to decide whether your CV will be moved on to the next stage of the recruiting pile, or whether it will be thrown to the proverbial bin. Needless to say, a well-formatted and well-articulated resume is a real must in order to secure the job you want! But many candidates still underestimate the weight of the CV in the recruiting process, and they often have to learn that the hard way! That’s why I’d like to dive a little deeper into the 8 worst CV...

In this second part of the Job Offer Guide, I will be taking you through how you - as a recruiter - can successfully close a candidate at offer stage. While in the first part (which you can access here) we covered how candidates can best negotiate with recruiting teams, it’s time to talk about the other side of the story! We will cover when exactly the closing process starts (hint: it’s not just right before you make an offer to your candidate) and how to best earn the candidate’s trust by...

In this podcast episode, which is the first part of The Curious Recruiter’s Job Offer Guide we will be covering everything you (as a candidate) need to know in order to confidently approach your next job offer negotiation with your future employer. And of course: get the result you hoped for! First, I will be covering what to expect from the offer process. Afterwards, I will give you advice on how to best prepare for conversations around sensitive subjects such as current compensation and...

In this episode, we will be talking about “Building your personal brand” with Guy Carmeli - a Senior Android Developer at Wix, but also the creator of the Android-based app Clippit. Early on, Guy’s “extra-curricular” activities and personal interests actually helped him land his first job, and they then became part of his personal brand. That personal brand has since opened many more doors to him, hence why he is a fervent advocate of showcasing all of the cool stuff he does beyond his...

‘Tis the season, folks! The end of the year usually brings about all kinds of festive feelings, as well as the joys of putting together the Christmas dinner menu and (online-)shopping for those last remaining presents. But for most of us out there, there is a Grinch looming behind the freshly decorated Christmas tree, and it has the potential to ruin your entire holiday unless you work hard on ignoring it. I’m talking about the dreaded performance review (also known as self-review)! Maybe...

As the Human Resources and Staffing functions are evolving, and as companies looking for ways to catch the best talent they can, we’ve seen the emergence of new recruitment specialisations, such as Sourcing. So in this episode, I’d like do discuss what the deal is with sourcing and how a sourcer position differs from a recruiter position. However – don’t let the title mislead you: the two roles are not competing. Both roles co-exist (for a good reason), and each role has its own...

In this episode, we are featuring The Curious Recruiter’s very first guest, Brian Ballantyne: accomplished product/marketing/programs manager, diversity advocate, published author, public speaker, mentor and of course: great friend an JUN3 duo partner of mine! Brian and I know each other from “way back when” in 2013, when we started different roles at Amazon on the same day – but our paths kept crossing at the intersection of diversity! After 5 years, I moved on to Facebook, but Brian is...

Getting your e-mail or InMail approaches to passive talent right is a crucial step of the recruiting process! Whether you are headhunting executive talent or looking for niche profiles, it’s important to understand how to approach a passive candidate in order to increase your chances of getting on the phone with them. After all, they might not be looking for a role change at all, not really bought into your company/brand, or getting way too many messages from recruiters on a daily basis! So...