Covey’s how-to-hire series offers unique insights from people ops professionals on the front lines of tackling the challenges of talent sourcing today.

Tech layoffs jumped 417% from November 2021 to November 2022, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. With so many cuts, there’s an overwhelming number of candidates for startups with open roles. 

A full candidate pool might seem like a blessing. But the reality is a large pool of candidates doesn’t mean they’re all qualified. You might be vetting thousands of applicants a week to fill a single role. That’s a lot of work—especially if you’re the only person at your startup handling hiring. 

Today, we hear from AppLovin’s Vice President of Talent Anand Bheeman, on how he’s hired some of the best technical engineers through sustainable recruiting practices.

With nearly two decades of sourcing and recruiting experience, I’ve seen my fair share of ebbs and flows in the hiring market. Whether hiring for highly technical roles like an offensive security engineer, machine learning engineer, or entry-level positions, there are a few essential steps to building a sustainable talent pipeline.

1. Prioritize hiring for roles based on your product roadmap

One of the biggest mistakes I see organizations make in building a talent pipeline is going on hiring frenzies when times are good—only to have to lay off thousands of people when times are lean. 

Sometimes layoffs are unavoidable. It’s a hard balancing act between growth and sustainability. However, mapping talent needs alongside your product roadmap can help you avoid a lot of layoffs. 

We didn't hire engineers in bulk when AppLovin started planning for certain product growth stages. Instead, we determined which types of engineers would be most significant at each stage of product development. We gradually hired engineers as our product and needs evolved, so the team stayed lean.

The key to success in this approach is staying closely aligned internally so your talent team knows what roles to prioritize hiring for. I am in constant communication with our CTO, VP of Engineering, and technical leaders, so I know what the need of the hour is and how to prioritize accordingly. 

We define priorities by asking, "if we don't hire for this role in the next three months, will our business suffer?" If the answer is yes, it becomes apparent that role is our priority. On the other hand, there are other roles we're hiring for that are more of a long-term scaling issue. We may already have people in that role, but need to add to the team to increase volume. These roles won’t be our top priority, but we’ll continually source for them to maximize growth opportunities down the road.

It's hard to strike a balance between overhiring and underhiring. But when you get it right, it's a win-win.We see high retention because employees have a sense of security, and the organization as a whole still has the capacity to produce at the level needed. 

2. Define what you need in an engineer

Once you’ve determined your hiring priorities, it’s time to define what you need in an engineer. Complete this step early in the hiring process to reduce the trial and error of finding the right candidate. 

At AppLovin, we define these needs by looking at our current teams’ gaps—the skills we need to get to the next stage of product development. From there, we review professionals in the position we’re trying to fill at similar tech companies. And our search begins with the top 10-35 candidates at those companies.

Our team also refines our criteria once the hiring process starts and we begin meeting candidates. After each interview, we debrief to determine if a candidate is a fit or not and why. This feedback loop helps us narrow our ideal candidate profile, reducing the amount of trial and error.

For our machine learning engineer, we quickly realized through the interview process that we needed someone with a few years of experience, not just technical aptitude. We could find many people with technical skills, but we needed someone with experience applying those skills at companies in the adtech space. 

We also needed someone with an entrepreneurial mindset who understood the business impact of their work. We met with many technically strong engineers—they could build models and code—but they didn't understand the big picture of our work. And as a lean team that operates much like a startup, we needed someone who was scrappy, and had a sense of ownership over the outcome.

3. Decide what your deal breakers are in a potential candidate

Along with identifying your role criteria, you’ll need to determine the fundamental role deal breakers for your organization. For AppLovin, there were a few things we defined as red flags that would prevent a candidate from moving forward in the interview process. 

Some of those deal breakers were:

• Not collaborative - At AppLovin, we value working together to produce dynamic results. If we talked with a candidate who was arrogant and didn't seem open to anyone's help or collaboration, we quickly disqualified them from moving forward in the hiring process.

• Not interested in working on a small team - We're a small team, and it became apparent to us that several candidates preferred working for a large company where they didn’t need to be so actively involved. 

• Not Interested in the big picture - We needed someone who was excited to think more globally about the work they were doing. Some of the candidates we interviewed made it clear they preferred being focused only on their role and didn't care how it contributed to the organization as a whole. 

Every interview process is imperfect—sometimes you may miss these underlying dealbreakers in a candidate initially. To check these traits, we love having local candidates meet our team in person if possible. It’s a great opportunity to get to know them personally and gauge how well they connected with our existing team's way of working.

4. Differentiate your organization

One of the key ways we attract the right talent for our organization is by showcasing what makes AppLovin unique in our job descriptions and interview process. This transparency quickly weeds out the candidates who aren’t passionate about the problems you're solving or your team’s way of working.

While AppLovin has been a publicly traded company for over a year, we still operate very much like a startup. We are well established, and yet our engineering teams are lean and have the opportunity to make a big impact on the company’s mission and vision. We create an environment where there is a lot of collaboration as well as autonomy in shaping the future of the work we do. Our engineers don’t have to go through several layers of leadership approval to do impactful work. 

This type of environment may or may not be a fit for every person. But for those that like the high-impact energy of a startup in combination with the stability of a well-established team, we provide the best of both worlds.

Power your hiring with Covey's full-stack talent acquisition tool

When hiring for highly technical positions, the challenge is finding qualified candidates. When hiring for more bread-and-butter roles, the challenge is wading through the onslaught of inbound candidates to find the right ones. Either way, it's easy to get overwhelmed and off-course. The hiring team can get inattentional blindness if there isn't a clear process with checks and balances. 

That's where an AI-powered talent acquisition tool like Covey cuts through the noise. Rather than using several disjointed systems to manage different parts of the hiring process, Covey has become the through-line in our recruiting process. We use Covey to:

• Efficiently identify a pool of qualified candidates by conducting highly calibrated candidate searches

• Reduce the busywork of outreach by automating outreach and constant communication with candidates

• Centralize our candidate pipeline by incorporating network referrals and sourcing in one tool

Learn more about how Covey can help you source the best engineering candidates using AI for your organization by booking a demo now.