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#188: Muralidharan Venkatasubramanian of Wingman on employee up-skilling, measuring work culture, and attracting talent with a 'reverse interview strategy'
An Engineering leader who turned full-time entrepreneur, we welcome Muralidharan Venkatasubramanian, Co-Founder & CPO at Wingman. It is a real-time sales coaching and note-taking tool for reps that aims to bridge the gap between coaching and action.
Prior to plunging into entrepreneurship, Muralidharan spent almost a decade as a Software Engineer at organizations such as Trilogy, Like.com, and five years at Google.
Muralidharan found the best opportunities to thrive in startups. His stint in Like.com gave him the most amount of exposure and opportunities to grow. He was a key engineer responsible for the acquisition of Like.com by Google and for the acquisition becoming successful at Google.
Episode Highlights:
- How to attract talent using reverse interview strategy
- How the responsibility of up-skilling should be split between the employee and the employer
- Impact of the pandemic on learning experiences and the workforce’s commitment to up-skill
- The necessity of re-imagining work and culture.
- How to measure work culture
- Ways to support employee growth and professional development in the workplace
Employee upskilling
According to what Muralidharan thinks, there are two significant aspects of upskilling of employees:
1. Organic growth
2. Organized learning
Organic development should always be on the horizon as it provides exposure. It looks at a broad landscape that extends to the future. Organized methods come in the form of rigid training and formal courses.
A startup offers excellent learning and provides you with the responsibilities that you are unqualified for today. It offers significant room to learn and fail, which is quite unlike working for a big company that assigns you the work you are already qualified for.
Measuring work culture
According to Muralidharan, work culture should be:
1. Less about free food, office leisure facilities, etc.
2. More about the supportive environment, focusing on solving the customer's problems holistically and ensuring effective team-building.
The team that brings the best out of themselves and will be able to enjoy the assigned roles.
3. Relevance of the work should be displayed to the people which benefits the business and customers directly.
Reverse interview strategy
A top-tier talent market remains under the radar of the recruiting companies. However, the primary message from the candidates' perspective while evaluating the companies is usually somewhat similar and doesn't allow the candidates to introspect.
Candidates usually struggle to differentiate one company from the other and determine what it would mean to work at a particular company. This thought process forms the groundwork for Reverse Strategy. This is a Two-way-interview phenomenon, where the recruiter interviews the candidate and vice-versa.
1. The process starts with interviewing the candidate and making multiple offers to let them decide the trade-off, i.e., pay and equity.
2. Candidates also get their turn to interview the recruiter in multiple conversations.
It might even be a half-an-hour-long conversation with personnel working in teams (potential peers).
3. It helps the candidates to assess the work culture, nature of the operational teams, etc., at Wingman.
4. The questions posed by the candidates are addressed by the working personnel, unlike the traditional "Do you have any questions for us?" scenario.
Follow Murlidharan on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Rohan Mankad
View all episodes
By Springworks
3
22 ratings
An Engineering leader who turned full-time entrepreneur, we welcome Muralidharan Venkatasubramanian, Co-Founder & CPO at Wingman. It is a real-time sales coaching and note-taking tool for reps that aims to bridge the gap between coaching and action.
Prior to plunging into entrepreneurship, Muralidharan spent almost a decade as a Software Engineer at organizations such as Trilogy, Like.com, and five years at Google.
Muralidharan found the best opportunities to thrive in startups. His stint in Like.com gave him the most amount of exposure and opportunities to grow. He was a key engineer responsible for the acquisition of Like.com by Google and for the acquisition becoming successful at Google.
Episode Highlights:
- How to attract talent using reverse interview strategy
- How the responsibility of up-skilling should be split between the employee and the employer
- Impact of the pandemic on learning experiences and the workforce’s commitment to up-skill
- The necessity of re-imagining work and culture.
- How to measure work culture
- Ways to support employee growth and professional development in the workplace
Employee upskilling
According to what Muralidharan thinks, there are two significant aspects of upskilling of employees:
1. Organic growth
2. Organized learning
Organic development should always be on the horizon as it provides exposure. It looks at a broad landscape that extends to the future. Organized methods come in the form of rigid training and formal courses.
A startup offers excellent learning and provides you with the responsibilities that you are unqualified for today. It offers significant room to learn and fail, which is quite unlike working for a big company that assigns you the work you are already qualified for.
Measuring work culture
According to Muralidharan, work culture should be:
1. Less about free food, office leisure facilities, etc.
2. More about the supportive environment, focusing on solving the customer's problems holistically and ensuring effective team-building.
The team that brings the best out of themselves and will be able to enjoy the assigned roles.
3. Relevance of the work should be displayed to the people which benefits the business and customers directly.
Reverse interview strategy
A top-tier talent market remains under the radar of the recruiting companies. However, the primary message from the candidates' perspective while evaluating the companies is usually somewhat similar and doesn't allow the candidates to introspect.
Candidates usually struggle to differentiate one company from the other and determine what it would mean to work at a particular company. This thought process forms the groundwork for Reverse Strategy. This is a Two-way-interview phenomenon, where the recruiter interviews the candidate and vice-versa.
1. The process starts with interviewing the candidate and making multiple offers to let them decide the trade-off, i.e., pay and equity.
2. Candidates also get their turn to interview the recruiter in multiple conversations.
It might even be a half-an-hour-long conversation with personnel working in teams (potential peers).
3. It helps the candidates to assess the work culture, nature of the operational teams, etc., at Wingman.
4. The questions posed by the candidates are addressed by the working personnel, unlike the traditional "Do you have any questions for us?" scenario.
Follow Murlidharan on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Produced by: Priya Bhatt
Podcast host: Rohan Mankad
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