Episode 29: Jeff Spector, co-founder and president of Karat

Our next guest is Jeff Spector, who’s co-founder and president of Karat, a cloud-based platform for technical interviewing. Karat conducts technical interviews on behalf of companies, making sure to align the interview process with the client’s needs. It’s designed to help companies rapidly scale their technical interviewing and, ultimately, their hiring.

I wanted to talk to Jeff because Karat recently released its latest hiring trends report, which offers a ton of insight into how tech leaders are approaching hiring right now. What are companies using to source their candidates, and how are they valuing the engineers they bring aboard? Let’s jump into the discussion!

It’s always interesting to take a top-level view of the tech industry, particularly the hiring aspect of it. Here are some quick takeaways from the discussion with Jeff:

First, when companies talk about employees that add significant value, they’re often referring to those who can solve very difficult tasks using their combination of skills and experience. These valuable employees often have a very deep understanding of a specific space. But there are also employees who are very good team members, who use their soft skills to make those around them more effective. When you’re hiring, you can adjust your hiring process to try to find employees who have some combination of these abilities.

Second, some companies are moving away from referrals as a way to source talent. This can open the door to companies creating more inclusive teams, because it opens the door to drawing talent from all sorts of places. While steering away from referrals might mean it takes longer to make a higher, it could also result in stronger teams.

Third, even though there’s a lot of chatter right now about how A.I. will impact the hiring process, it’s intensely important that human beings remain in the hiring loop. While A.I. could run a coding challenge or evaluate a technical answer to a question, you ultimately need human recruiters and hiring managers to figure out whether a candidate will fit in with the team, for example, or possess the ability to talk through concepts in an easy-to-understand way.

And that’s it, folks! Thanks for listening in. We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career. 

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