Speed & Creativity in Recruiting with Farhan Thawar, VP Engineering @ Shopify #10

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Farhan Thawar (@fnthawar) , VP of Engineering @ Shopify shares the hiring framework he’s built where 15-minute interviews result in both faster placements AND better fits. You’ll hear how to find talent in non-traditional ways, what happens when you leverage creativity, and how speed in hiring is a massive competitive advantage.

“The problem with interviews in general are they're very biased to either things you've done before or they're biased to some other signal...like school you went to company, you worked for, GPA in some cases, right? Google used to use that... And it excludes a wide swath of people. That's my number one problem with interviews. Not that good candidates can pass an interview. It's that non-traditional candidates will likely fail your interview”

ABOUT FARHAN THAWAR

Farhan is currently VP, Engineering at Shopify via the acquisition of Helpful.com where he was co-founder and CTO. Previously he was the CTO, Mobile at Pivotal and VP, Engineering at Pivotal Labs via the acquisition of Xtreme Labs. He is an avid writer and speaker and was named one of Toronto's 25 most powerful people. Prior to Xtreme, Farhan held senior technical positions at Achievers, Microsoft, Celestica, and Trilogy. Farhan completed his MBA in Financial Engineering at Rotman and Computer Science/EE at Waterloo. Farhan is also an advisor at yCombinator and holds a board seat at Optiva (formerly Redknee).

SHOWNOTES

• Farhan’s origin story being recruited to start Helpful.com by Daniel Debow. (1:28)
• Impact and examples of going above and beyond in recruiting using unusual ways to reach potential candidates. (8:30)
• Using speed as a competitive advantage, especially when you’re small. (12:44)
• How to prevent speed from backfiring by thinking about decisions as “one-way” or “two-way doors.” (14:36)
• Critical structures to best assess candidate fit. (15:17)
• How Farhan starts from first principles to leverage creativity in recruiting. (20:38)
• Farhan’s MOST IMPORTANT indicator of performance, and how to uncover it in an interview. (25:49)
• Results of speed in the hiring process - 15 min interview (31:36)
• How the 15 min interview works. (33:47)
• What’s different in hiring an engineering leader. (35:41)
• How to increase your pool of potential candidates through “backward promotions,” interim titles, and recruiting people who haven’t “done it” before. (42:41)
• Examples of what happens when bias is removed in the interview process and people are given a shot. (48:03)
• Farhan’s most terrible leadership mistake & how to turn underperformers into extremely high performers in 30 days with Performance Improvement Plans (PIP’s). (49:36)
• Farhan’s most impactful leadership action: the power of personalization. (53:56)

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