I had the pleasure of interviewing Samuel Lebel, the Corporate Recruitment Team Lead of Dialogue, Canada’s leading virtual care provider. Dialogue is dedicated to delivering exceptional health and wellness programs to other businesses that wish to improve the well-being of their employees and their families. It was created to provide a high-quality, humanized care experience to elevate the health and happiness of millions of workers across the world.
Thank you so much for joining us!
Samuel: Thank you for having me! I’m always happy to share some insights on what it is to be in the recruiter’s seat.
What motivated you to choose technical recruiting as your professional career?
Samuel: After getting my Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources, I got my first job as an HR Advisor, and I quickly realized that something was missing. I’ve always been a bit of a geek. Back when I was a teenager, I remember playing around with my PC, disabling things, playing on the terminal, learning about the different OS, and getting introduced to Linux. Growing up, my interest shifted a little more toward design and human-computer interaction.
After a year in this role, I clearly knew I wasn’t where I should be, and I made a move into consultancy. I worked on my very first technical recruitment projects in the following months.
Why have you decided to stay in the field since then?
Samuel: I always had trouble accepting incoherent processes. I like debating and pitching ideas that defy standards, and I’m known for my ability to find opportunities everywhere I can.
I was raised in a rather conservative family, so you bet that those qualities definitely got me into some trouble! While it kept my mind sharp, I never got to really be who I wanted to be. Start-ups and technology companies embrace an approach based on agility and trust. This culture made me realize that my ideas matter and made me feel safe enough to be my true self.
What is it that excites you about tech recruiting?
Samuel: While sometimes tech may be depicted as the villain tracking you down and stripping you from your right to privacy, we shouldn’t forget that technology in the hands of the right people can be used for the greater good.
There’s one thing that makes people want to join Dialogue, and it’s the desire to have an impact. Working in tech and helping your engineering and product team deliver awesome products for the greater good is rewarding, and I’m grateful for that every single day.
Learning continuously is also one of the top perks of the field. My never-ending curiosity is also well fed by the teams I work with. Whenever I’m discussing with a candidate or a colleague, my goal is to make sure I can deliver a high-fidelity portrait of our business, and becoming a functional partner for my stakeholder really helped me level up my game.
Talking about challenges, how hard was it to become that functional business partner?
Samuel: They don’t call it a programming language for fun. The technical field is vast and you will get lost in a sea of buzzwords. My advice: ask questions, you won’t look dumb, and you’ll be perceived as genuinely interested.
Learning takes time and you should accept that there are things you won’t understand from day one, or even on day 90. However, it will give you the biggest edge ever over all other recruiters:
- You’ll have the benefit of gaining the trust of your candidates who feel like they understand your product and technology way better than anticipated after a first screening call with the average recruiter.
- Your hiring managers and stakeholder will trust in your ability to find the right person with the right skills given the depth with which you understand software-based products.
- You will augment the quality of your candidate pool at every stage of the recruitment process, which means you are maximizing every minute of your time.
Which roadblocks are the most common for tech recruiters?
Samuel: I honestly think that companies and their recruiters are, most often than not, their own roadblocks.
- We’re annoying.
Software engineers, architects, agile coaches, DevOps, all of them really, just can’t deal with the number of cold and un-personalized messages they receive every single day.
If your in-mail subject line includes the word “opportunity” or a variation of “Secret Client I Can’t Name But Who Is Really Cool,” stop, you gotta go back to the drawing board.
If your reach-out messages have no personalization and include either (or a combination of):
- A copy-paste of your company’s bio;
- Half the job description;
Stop, and take a moment to think about how the person you are trying to reach out to would like to be addressed. The ROI you’ll get from catering your message to the right audience is, and by far, way higher than the one you’ll get spamming the hell out of 10 000 software engineers.
2. We have overcomplicated our recruitment process, and in an era of talent shortage, less is more.
Our recruitment processes aren’t efficient, and we have to adapt them to the people we are aiming at hiring. Your mission can be resumed to one simple thing: bringing in the right person, at the right place, at the right time. Your team supports the business objective by making sure we bring in the right talent, and therefore our processes should be built to measure exactly this.
3. We should aim at being better business partners.
We are market experts. As technical recruiters, we develop our ability to be functional within our engineering business units. You know the language of the people you are recruiting and have a strong grasp of the business strategy and the structure of the product.
As recruiters, we are strategic thinkers. We have a global vision for our organization, and we multiply opportunities for both our candidates and our stakeholders.
Finally, we are thought-leaders. We open the mind of the people you work with in order to build better, stronger, and more diverse teams.
If you had to share “words of wisdom” with a tech recruiter who’s about to start their journey in tech recruitment, what would they be?
Samuel: You should never accept to adopt values and actions that you do not want to endorse. Do not accept undue pressure and listen to your own moral compass. It will be your strongest ally when comes the time to make decisions.
You will also need to find purpose in what you do. Finding purpose in what you do is fundamental, and you should walk away from situations and people that push you away from your right to fulfillment.
Finally, follow leaders and companies that are courageous. A company that knows its purpose and respects itself, whose values and mission are inspiring. Follow leaders who are creativity catalysts, unafraid to take risks; fearless in front of challenges. Above everything, celebrate and value your “wins” and forgive yourself for your failures.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Samuel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-recruits/
Thanks, Samuel for joining us! Your realistic yet relatable take on the ever-changing tech recruitment is refreshing. Really enjoyed your approach to personalized, uncomplicated & functional ways of tech hiring.
