On Balancing Autonomy and Alignment

Have you ever thought of using the reverse recruitment model? This is a strategy where the recruiter hands all the power to the candidate.

In this episode, Jenny speaks with Rohit Gupta as he explains the reverse recruitment model that he prefers to use where he provides a space for the recruiter and the job candidate to have meaningful conversations. He is the head of product at Honeypot and leads product management, product design, and a large part of the engineering teams. Honeypot is Europe’s developer-focused job platform.

Listen in to learn how to create a theme around an OKR and assign a team to take responsibility for achieving that particular objective. You will also learn how you can measure lagging metrics.

“When something moves numbers either really positively or negatively, that’s a good thing because you’re focusing on the right areas.” — Rohit [38:52]

Show notes

• (0:54) Intro
• (2:01) Rohit explains the overwhelming times that the Coronavirus has presented- the pros and cons of it and the conversations they’ve been having around the subject
• (5:34) The company culture they have created at Honeypot makes people associate with them as a company and a brand
• (9:45) The challenge of finding the perfect people for the job and those they match with as team members
• (11:50) How they have conversations around the present, the future, and the challenges with interview candidates
• (15:13) Rohit describes how his vision resonated with Honeypot when they were looking for someone like him
• (17:27) The reverse recruitment model- putting the power in the candidate’s hands instead of the other way around
• (20:52) How they create a theme for every OKR and then assign it to a particular team that works around to achieve the goal
• (23:45) The major challenges they faced at Honeypot trying to execute OKRs and how he has learned the importance of understanding OKRs before taking action
• (26:47) The retention lag metric and how to measure a proxy like particular actions performed by retained clients for expected increased retention in the future
• (28:18) Why the quality of the objective makes the difference by balance alignment with the team
• (32:22) How they hold team meetings to make sure they’re making progress with the OKRs although not very structured and are still learning
• (35:20) Learning from OKRs failure and accepting both positive and negative outcomes

Relevant links

• Honeypot.io Website