Joining us on this installment of Talk Talent To Me is the Head of Talent at Amplify, Natasha Katoni. Prior to Amplify, Natasha was one of the very first technical recruiters at Segment, where she went on to become Technical Recruiting Manager. In today’s episode, she shares her somewhat unexpected career journey and what she has learned about talent, scalable processes, and interesting problems along the way. We discuss the importance of really listening to candidates without bringing your own biases into the mix, why building strong relationships with external agencies and platforms is an essential part of the recruitment process, and why there is no one pathway in talent. Natasha speaks candidly about some of her personal motivations, successes, and shortcomings as she has progressed through her career. She even turns her own processes back on herself as a candidate and shares her advice for those currently on the job hunt: be thoughtful and process oriented, but don’t forget to trust your gut!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Natasha shares her journey at Segment, where she was one of their early recruiters.
• Some of the scalable process that were implemented as Segment’s talent operations grew.
• Learn more about Segment’s focus on pre-selling, candidate motivations, timing, and tools.
• How Natasha decided whether or not a candidate was worth the time spent on them.
• Questions to ask technical talent that is in high demand, like what is motivating their search.
• What Natasha has noticed about how candidates express their motivations or priorities.
• The importance of listening to candidates without bringing your own biases to the table.
• The value of taking a step back and reassessing your systems and potential problems.
• Three golden metrics: onsite to offer, offer to close, and top of funnel interested rates.
• Where these processes can break down and the value of building strong relationships with external agencies and platforms.
• Natasha shares what she loves about working at Amplify; how her personal interests align.
• Hear about her transition from an internal operator role at Segment to VC with Amplify.
• Why there is no one pathway in talent; more on Natasha’s less than traditional journey.
• Natasha weighs in on how talent partners can be most useful to early-stage companies.
• Her personal motivation for accepting her current position at Amplify: interesting problems. 
• Natasha emphasizes the importance of trusting your gut while also being thoughtful and process oriented when looking for a job.

 

Tweetables:

 

“One of the mistakes that companies constantly make is they talk about moving as quickly as possible. That’s not always helpful. You don’t always want to move as fast as possible. What you want to do is capitalize on the recency bias.” — Natasha Katoni [0:07:18]

 

“When you want to experiment, when you want to build, when you want to fix a system that isn’t working how you want it to, I would try to speak the language of the person that you’re trying to convince.” — Natasha Katoni [0:16:14]

 

“Spending time building those relationships with external people to be able to support and add to your internal recruiting team when you need it – but also not bloat your recruiting team so that it’s so big that you have to lay people off – that’s the key.” — Natasha Katoni [0:22:07]

 

“You should be very thoughtful and process oriented when looking for a job and use the checklist process on yourself as a candidate as well.” — Natasha Katoni [0:36:25]

 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Natasha Katoni on LinkedIn

Amplify

Hired

Triplebyte

Connery Consulting

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