Career change best foot forward: Jennifer Shappley

(upbeat music) - Finding the right talent is the key to building successful teams for all companies of any size, today I'm talking to Jennifer Shappley. Who is the senior director for recruiting the best engineering talent for all of LinkedIn. I am so thrilled to have her expertise working for us, because Jennifer loves finding the best talent and building highly engaged teams. So Jennifer, you've been at this for quite awhile. You are head of recruiting for all of LinkedIn's engineering which is amazing! I would love to know how did you get to where you're at, how did you start off and what are you doing today? - Yeah so I've been in recruiting about 15 years but the first two years before I got into recruiting I was in just kind of a general HR role. I did everything from 401k administration to benefits and onboarding new employees, and through that figured out recruiting was actually what I was really interested in. The head of recruiting for the company I worked for at the time happened to be in town and offered to let me spend a week with his recruiters. Got the bug and really never looked back. But that time doing other pieces of HR did give me an appreciation for what all of our partners do in HR and how within recruiting it's really important we all work together. (upbeat music) - What makes a great interview? - I think there are a few things that make up a great interview, I mean first you want to leave the interviewer with a feeling of you could do the job. So first and foremost you want to get across that you can do the job really well. And then you've got to remember there are a lot of things going on in the day of an interviewer. - Very true. - And the time that you are interviewing should be of the utmost importance but there are a lot of other things that are going through somebody's mind. They go to an interview they go to another meeting et cetera and so what I think is so important for candidates to know is anything you can do to be memorable is important and will turn that into a great interview. So how you answer questions, how you share information doing it in a way that is unique to you, so that that interviewer remembers you really is the hallmark of a great interview. - Give me some examples of maybe an exchange of why would it be memorable for somebody? What does that look like? - Yeah so when you talk about stories and the ability to tell a good story. One of the reasons stories are so important is because we know they're more memorable. You're going to remember if I tell you a story way more than you're going to remember if I spit a bunch of facts at you, and also let's not forget when interviewing you're most likely being compared to other candidates. - All the time. - All the time, right? - Part of the progress (laughing). - Usually how it works, and so you're not the only person under consideration, and so if I ask you a question about you know tell me about your leadership style and you say oh well I really I make sure that I talk with my teams regularly and I cascade information and I support them in all their career goals. Well you've answered the question-- - You've answered the question but ehh it sounds pretty basic. - Yeah that sounds like sure what we would expect you to do. But if you say let me tell you about an example of one of my employees. - I like that. - And I had this employee and they were really struggling in the new role and I could tell and so here's what I did to actually help them with that, and I think that kind of exemplifies how I work as a leader. That is inherently going to be unique to you, 'cause it's your story so they're going to remember it and it helps differentiate you and so just the difference between answering with facts versus answering with stories can make a huge difference in the interview. (upbeat music) - A one on one interview is an interesting dynamic. - I think it's so important to think about an interviewer as a two, interview as a two way conversation. So it shouldn't be the interviewer just talking the whole time which is a common mistake that interviewers make, and it also shouldn't be the interviewee just talking over and over, and so as an interviewee it's important to think about making sure you're allowing for that rhythm of the back and forth, creating more of a conversational style. Most people don't interview all the time and it's a really nerve wracking thing-- - a lot of people are not great at interviewing. - No. - It's a skill set. - Absolutely. - It's not like you're in your job most of the time and all the sudden now you need to interview after five years-- - And now I've got to prove I can do it, yeah. And that's scary, and then maybe you're completely capable of doing the job but it's scary for you, how do you show that in an interview? And so my tips to candidates are really think about it, the back and forth conversation. If you're interviewing for a role, most likely you are an expert in this space. So think about it as an opportunity to have a conversation with someone and a back and forth and explaining why you are great for this role. Not so much I am sitting here and being judged and we know there are techniques that make a great interviewer. A great interviewer will ask questions that are open ended, that are situational, they'll probe with more detailed questions. So some candidates give more generic answers, and a great interviewer will know how to probe to get the details, there are on guarantees that when you go to interview for a job that you are going to get a great interviewer. - No that's true, that's true some people are also not great interviewers. - Exactly so you know there's only so much as an interviewee that you can control. So a great interviewer knows to probe and ask for those details, a great interviewee knows to lead with them, so don't let the assessment of your ability to do the job fully rely on the quality of the interviewer. Make sure you're thinking about being specific, using stories, being concise as a way to kind of balance that out. (upbeat music)