Many companies typically centralize their hiring processes within their Human Resources department, leading to a single team handling recruitment for the entire organization. This approach often allows for a broad overview, streamlining processes, ensuring compliance with regulations, and assessing the cultural fit of candidates. However, Verkada, a cloud-based tech security company, has adopted a unique strategy. Since its early stages with under 100 employees, Verkada has embedded recruiters into each department of the organization.
This decentralized approach has proven successful for Verkada, as it has allowed each department to have its own dedicated recruiters, enabling them to tailor their recruiting strategies to specific team needs. For instance, the engineering recruiting team hosts hackathons, while the sales recruiting team organizes events at baseball games. Verkada's CEO, Filip Kaliszan, emphasized that this approach helps each team quickly identify and recruit the talent needed to scale the business.
Kelly Larson, who oversees hiring for Verkada’s engineering team, highlighted the benefits of this close relationship with a specific department. The recruiters can better showcase the company and role to job seekers, providing insights into the culture and projects, as they spend all their time with the engineers. This personalized approach has not only enabled Verkada to hire faster but has also allowed it to keep up with smaller startups that typically have quicker hiring processes.
Despite its success, it's important to note that Verkada is still relatively small, without the complexities of recruiting for larger organizations. Larson mentioned that her proximity to company leadership allows her to act as a business partner and ensure that the recruiters align with the company’s overall strategy. She emphasized the minimal layers between decision-makers and the recruiters, allowing for swift and effective candidate sourcing.
Overall, Verkada's approach of embedding recruiters into individual departments has proven effective in developing tailored recruiting strategies, fostering closer relationships with candidates, and supporting rapid growth.