In our latest Scaling Stories podcast, we picked the brains of Anthony Rotoli, a senior people leader who’s successfully scaled the HR and talent teams at companies like Karat, Assurance IQ and Quora.

Among his many successes, Anthony scaled Assurance IQ’s headcount ten times over – the insurance/fintech startup was eventually acquired for $2.3bn. He also made the transition from Microsoft to Karat – at the time, the interview tech company was a small startup, but is now valued at more than $1bn. All things considered, there are few experts better placed than Anthony to advise on how HR leaders can assess candidates, build a successful team and retain the best people.

Anthony has come a long way, but says that when he first moved from Microsoft to Karat it was a “massive culture shock”.

At the time, the idea of building a tech giant might have seemed fanciful. He thought: “Nobody has heard of this place. People are going to have to hear about it. How do I build a brand around this thing?”

A key part of the journey was about finessing an interview methodology that identified the right talent. Here are three keys to success that Anthony identifies.