Competing for AI talent when your brand is smaller

On this episode of the show, I have with me Chris Casaba, and we're going to be talking about brand recruiting and funnels. And we're going to talk to Chris about how he actually handles each of those. Might not have the same brand as some of the big tech firms that he is competing against, but he does come from Tesla, so he knows what it's like to get some inbound that does help out his recruiting team. And we're going to talk to him a little bit about that AI space and the competitive nature of talent right now and worrying about people coming in for your coveted AI and engineering talent, other people as well, and see how much we can get in with Chris.

But I do thank you for taking the time to do this, Chris. Thank you. Thank you for having me. We are taking a very different approach from other warehouse automation solutions.

We've built a completely new robotic and software system basically from the ground up. We're really simplifying how hardware and software are combined to automate the material flow process in real time. We are focused right now on the material flow industry and segment. We launched, I think, with about $78 million in total financing.

We have a pretty decent customer pipeline right now focused really, I would say, on that top Fortune 100 companies right now. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, you guys are definitely in a pretty amazing space and this episode will kind of tie into that.

And obviously I mentioned, you know, you do come from having worked at Tesla. So you do have an overall experience just this recently of working at a big tech firm and obviously a startup and even have some agency days to you as well. let's talk about I guess the top here like when we're talking about and this episode is about competing without necessarily having that brand when you think about your days at Tesla and obviously you post a job you're going to get a lot of people and right now most companies post a job they get a lot of inbound the problem is is at companies like what Mitra is doing there's very specific talent that could come in to level up and help the engineering team what's been your experience of that inbound talent is it hitting the mark for you and the team is it still below and requires you guys to do other things to to fill roles yeah i mean we've been very fortunate in terms of the inbound talent that we've seen has been actually really beneficial to us um i wouldn't say that that is that that is our main source of of new talent um you're absolutely right.

A lot of people didn't know who Mitra was a year and a half, two years ago. They still probably don't know exactly who we are or what we do. And because of this, we've leveraged other sources of candidates because that inbound can be fairly limited. So something that we've done in the past is, and still continue to do today, is leverage our employee referral program.

and it's a very hands-on employee referral program. We try to meet with employees, go through their LinkedIn networks, go through open jobs, remind them on a monthly basis of terms of what we're hiring for, the different types of skill sets that we're looking for in each of these roles. We've also leveraged our VC network. Of course, they have a vested interest in us, but they also just have a wide network of professionals.

So we've leveraged them as well. And then just my own personal network, especially for roles, I think that could span different industries. I don't come out of the warehousing space. And so if there are positions that have skill sets that can sort of go across different industries, I think that's also been a really plentiful pool of candidates for us as well.

So I guess, you know, interestingly, you know, If we look back, AI has exploded in the last couple of years. If you were early, you could say you did AI and people would wonder if that was where they wanted to go. It was heavily different industries in the rotation at the time. Now, there's a lot of AI companies and big tech is obviously looking for very similar talent.

I guess when you think about reaching out and going to market, looking for the right people to bring in, and you guys do have a robotics component, which makes it slightly a different wrinkle as well. And you're trying to compete for that talent. Is it enough to just say, hey, we're in AI robotics? Or has it gotten so saturated that there's got to be something else because there's so many AI and robotics companies out there now?

Yeah, absolutely. I think, especially when it comes to sourcing on platforms like LinkedIn Recruiter, making sure that your company and your message stands out against all of the other dozens of messages that candidates are getting, especially within the AI and the robotics space, is going to be really, really key. There's definitely a balance there in terms of making sure that the message that you're sending out is tailored and allowing your company to shine, but not so much text and information that the candidate gets tired and sidetracked while reading your message and then moves on to another task Myself specifically, I've been able to leverage our commercial deck, actually, in a lot of how we reach out to candidates.

Our commercial team does a phenomenal job of explaining what we do, why we do it, the impact on the industry, and a lot of the value adds that Mitra brings to prospective customers. Using that information and translating that into the candidate perspective, I think, has been really helpful in terms of educating folks who may not have known Mitra before I reached out to them. And then as I'm getting on the phone with them, educating them continuously to say, hey, this is who we are and this is why we exist.

So that partnership with the commercial team so far and helping me craft that message has been really, really beneficial. Joel. Interesting. When you are working with the team and you mentioned referral program, because you know, if you are in the robotics space, it's small.

If people thought AI a couple of years ago was a hard market, we actually do a lot of robotics work right now because it, I love technical areas because I'm an engineer by background. So I kind of geek out on the more technical it gets. So it's my little personal thing and the company goes where I go. But when you look at robotics and how small the market is and the intersection of people that know AI and have worked with a robotics component that gets even more narrow.

So when you work with hiring managers who obviously would love that intersection, how do you work with them to help them keep the pool as wide as reasonably possible? But also, if you wanted something very specific, I mean, we could maybe find 50 of them. And if you don't like one of them, then what? Yep.

This conversation that we're having right now in this topic reminds me of this term. It's called finding the purple squirrel. And it's just a term that we use in recruiting a lot because oftentimes when you meet with a hiring manager, they'll list 12, 15, 20 specific skill sets or attributes that they want in their perfect hire. And it is.

It's this perfect squirrel. There may be like one or two that exist out in the world. And, you know, trying to identify them, engage them can be very, very challenging. Something that's been really helpful for us in terms of just utilizing our employee referral network to find top talent is our managers do an amazing job, not only looking at the existing skill set that a candidate has, but also thinking about sort of their potential and what they can grow into, what can they accomplish in the next six, nine, 12, 15 months of their career.

I think that it's really important to not only find talent on the team that can get the job done today, but also build the team for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. And I think a lot of that comes from finding talent that may not necessarily have proven themselves in specific roles, but shows the potential, the technical curiosity to continue to learn and absorb things so that, you know, you do end up opening up that pool past that, say, 15 purple squirrels to maybe 30 or 40 individuals who could absolutely do that job with some training and some mentorship.

Absolutely. You know, I think the purple squirrel was hard enough to find. I think now we're looking at bionic squirrels and stuff like that because some of these roles are, you know, people would have only done them for a year or two sometimes now and you're looking at it and going, you know, there's no one who has enough experience to even be called an expert and, you know, trying to convince a hiring manager who needs that expertise. expertise is really becoming interesting.

And when we talk about the flip side to this, right, and you guys are obviously hiring very distinct talent, as mentioned, there are now tons of companies who are competing for said talent, especially big tech. When it comes to going head to head, obviously don't have RSUs, that's, you know, it is the name, you have equity. what are some what are some things that you've seen help because i think a lot of people previously had seen well actually no that's not true i don't think a lot of times you'd see google coming in and making an offer to the same react a javascript full stack dev that uh you'd see working at a startup once in a while it happened every blue you know whatever but now it's really common where we have we have big tech two 10 percent startup mid-size startup all in the same the AI space and the person has to decide their future on, you know, a lot of different factors.

What have you seen in tactics wise that have helped in this specific instance? So first and foremost, in my experience, I do fully believe that it starts with the recruiter. And I think making sure that as a recruiter or a member of the people team that you select a role at an organization that you truly believe in that you really can get behind the mission and the values and the culture of that company It is, I think, very surprising to folks as how much sort of BS can be translated through conversations when you're trying to just sort of make it till you make it when you're selling a role or extending an offer.

So I think making sure that you truly have an interest in the organization is going to be, I think, step one. Fully understand in certain markets, that's not always going to be the case for folks, but I definitely think that that's a huge component to that. But once we get the candidate engaged and to the offer stage, and we're now competing against other organizations, something that has been very positive for us, proven very positive for us, is a focus on the impact somebody will have within the industry, the scope of roles, so the things that individuals will get to work on at a smaller startup, and then just the ability to continue to grow your career.

In my experience, startups, tend to attract a younger demographic. And I think this is primarily due to the risk level that comes into joining a startup. Typically, individuals are less risk averse when they are younger in their career. They can take that risk and say, hey, I'm going to join this organization.

And if it's not here in three or five years, that's OK. But because we have this younger demographic on our team, focusing on career development, manager training, showing these, I would say, younger individuals that they're going to have direct contact with leadership, with our executive team. You're not just this number in the system. The fact that you're going to work on a large scoped project versus, let's just say, like a small little button within a UI design or, you know, just let's say the hand of a specific humanoid robot, they're actually going to get exposure to almost the entire pie has been a huge selling point for us.

And something I think that sets us apart from a lot of those larger organizations where, you know, younger individuals, they do kind of just feel like, hey, I'm employee number, you know, 100,001. It's, you know, what type of scope am I actually going to have? How much career growth am I actually going to get from this organization? Will there be a focus on my career development?

And will I be able to interact with a lot of the executives? And oftentimes a lot of that is lacking in those larger companies. That's very true. That's actually really good insights.

And I guess, you know, when you are running a team and obviously in spaces where you're innovating. I think not enough is talked about when it comes to people leaving because yeah, you can transition, you can hand off, especially if it's a niche role and that backfill can not only just take time, but also you lose that IP. I guess from a people perspective, what do you do to with, I guess, your people manager, obviously, but with your technical managers, what do you, or how do you approach them so that they're aware that that's potentially inevitable for almost every role and they should be prepared to, you know, account for that?

Is there something that you can do to promote best practices there? Yeah, I'm, are you referring to being in a startup with limited resources, you in a sense have single points of failure across the team where you have one individual doing one job who may be the only person in the company that knows how to actually do that job. And if that person were to leave, you now have this gap there. Absolutely.

Yeah. We definitely see that. I don't think that that's any surprise from anyone. We do leverage tooling in-house that helps bridge a lot of that knowledge to other individuals.

We use things like our Notion tool, something as simple as, you know, Google Docs to make sure that not only is the information and the skill set in someone's brain, but a lot of the information is being translated to an actual document, not only for future reference should that individual leave, but also just to educate folks around that person, right? It's, I think, important to understand that people want to learn what other people are doing, what their role can impact in terms of other teams.

And so I think being part of an organization that is very transparent, being part of an organization that has a high level of communication, that is open to sharing what they're working on, being honest around what's working and what's not working is really important. We also allow pretty much any employee to join any meeting We don feel like oh this meeting has to do with this and so you not able to join Obviously of course you know there are specific meetings that have a confidential nature And so someone just can walk in But in terms of, you know, product development, engineering standups, if there is something that you want to learn about, if there is something that you want to be a part of, we don't really see an issue of saying, hey, yeah, come and join us, learn what we're doing, get exposure to this.

If you have a different viewpoint, if you have a different solution to this, we are all ears. By no means do we walk into this process saying we are all experts and we know exactly what we're doing. We are always in this mindset of continuously learning and taking on new skill sets. Absolutely.

Yeah. And it is really tricky because I think the more technical your company, you know that cap becomes even harder when someone leaves um as mentioned you know if it's a if it's a role that you can commonly go identify and acquire that that's one thing but especially with ai robotics people who can train you know uh do inference do motion on the robotics side you know perception these are all roles that are commanding top dollar and i mean that's that's just the reality. And what's interesting is we're not even in an environment where, you know, we are really with venture capital, I think at full potential, because obviously the rates have been what they've been.

So I still think there's so much more that could be invested in, you know, a lot of these companies for growth. And I guess we'll kind of just see how things go. And maybe final question, just out of kind of curiosity, when you are working with hiring managers and, you know, speed is one thing where I've come to realize is very crucial at times. You have to, you have to move on some of these key candidates quickly, but also you have to do your due diligence.

It's, it's a bit of a balancing act or more art than science. What, what have you seen work so that you guys are moving as quickly as possible, but also thoroughly enough that you're not going to hire somebody incorrectly? Yeah. I think a lot of that will be just in terms of process.

From a recruiting perspective, when you get a candidate on the phone or start to engage with somebody, the more information you can provide at the beginning of the process, I think, will help educate and prepare the candidate to go through the interview process. That then, I think, translates into an interview process that is very robust, an interview process that allows your employees to get the information from the candidate that is required for the role. Our employees will try to spend as little time selling the role and selling the company, because hopefully that is done on the front end so that they can really focus on, you know, the meat and potatoes of the role and the requirements.

We do want to make sure that there's enough people on the panel that we get a really good signal as to whether or not that person is going to be successful here. But you're absolutely right. There is this balancing act where we want to do a very comprehensive and diligent search process, but we don't want to take six to 12 months to fill the roles. And so I think a lot of that comes down to the skill set of the actual interviewers, their ability to identify skills, like I mentioned earlier, identify potential in candidates and then make informed decisions quickly and not second guess yourself to say, oh, I'm not quite sure about this or, oh, nobody was able to cover that.

We really want to make sure that the interview panel has a good understanding of what they need to cover and that they have enough time and resources to get that covered. Absolutely. Love it. Chris, I appreciate your time.

Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing. I know this is a good episode for even engineering leaders to hear and founders. So I think this is a good episode.

If somebody does have a follow-up question, I mean, we covered some ground, but I'm sure we didn't cover it all. Is there a good way of connecting with you to ask you a follow-up? Yeah, absolutely. Individuals can add me on LinkedIn.

I'm more than happy to jump on the phone and connect with anyone who has a question or also can maybe teach me something. I am in no way saying that I am the be all end all of this topic. I love it, Chris. Fantastic.

Again, thanks for your time. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely.

All right. Be back again. Different guest, different topic. Until then, two things.

One, I think Chris did a fantastic job walking us through a couple different areas. And from, you know, managing, finding candidates, obviously dealing with inbound, dealing with having to go to market in a competitive environment such as AI slash robotics and combination thereof. And also dealing with bigger companies. And how do you account for if somebody does leave?

Where's that redundancy come in? We covered a bunch of stuff in there. So if you would share this with somebody else who could benefit from it, I would definitely appreciate that.