Julianna Lim: Recruitment in the Tech Industry (Senior Recruiter at Uber)

hi Juliana thank you for being a part of our podcast and so first question I want to ask you is can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your educational background and your career experience for sure so I went to the University of waterl for Bachelor's of science so I study Public Health afterwards I think after doing four years of my undergrad at waterl I real realized that I didn't want to stay in Sciences myself and then decided to Pivot I wanted to focus more on business so I decided to Pivot straight

to HR once I graduated and then I went to senica college for a postgraduate program and there was no serious thought about it I'm going to be very transparent that's just kind of like my branding I only picked CA College because I could walk there it was the closest school I got accepted to any college but I just picked the one that was physically closer and I went there and then afterwards I got a contract opportunity to work at a startup in Toronto and then that was my foot into the tech industry so yeah that's

like a high level of my background in my career experience I guess and now I work uh as a senior technical recruiter hiring software Engineers for my company Perfect um thank you for that and so talking about your current role as a recruiter can you walk us through the key qualities or skills you look for when hiring software Engineers for Uber Tech in the North American Market I think as long as you have the right experiences that's what matters I feel like there isn't one thing that we look for obviously if you're in marketing and

then you apply for an engineer role there's obviously a massive misalignment and gaps in your skills and experiences so some context here I only focus on experienced hires so I don't focus on interns or co-ops or recent grads so that is a very different thing I think what they look for definitely probably is a little bit more specific since there isn't really any experience most students can provide and that's fine we don't really expect that I think for experienced of going into Tech or becoming a software engineer or something that you aspire to be I

think putting yourself and getting inter opportunities is very important to start your career and then those internships eventually lead to your first opportunity I think what I see that's successful for people who become a distinguished engineer or um a senior staff they normally in the beginning of their career they really put themselves in areas where they can grow and get challenged talking to my peers or my friends who are in engineering I feel like if you don't get the right projects right off the bat you could be wasting a year or two years and not

doing anything impactful and then that actually hinders your opportunity to grow and move further in your career Journey so I feel like just making sure that you work on the right project things that are impactful areas that you are challenging yourself to learn and to grow I think those are the things that we generally look for in individuals and what that actually looks like we definitely encourage diversity as in it doesn't really matter what your background is as long as you one worked as a software engineer but then most importantly can you apply yourself to

what we are hiring for is most important so for example we hired someone who graduated from baru and she used to be an accountant and then decided that accounting was not for her pivoted taught herself how to code worked at La Blas digital I believe worked there for over a year and then when she interviewed she killed it like she was amazing so it wasn't your typical like went to watero did your software engineering computer science and then worked at Amazon and got like it doesn't really matter as long as you get through the interview

process and you have the right experience and you're here to learn and you did some impactful stuff I think then most companies should be open to hiring you in Tech yeah so what are some common like misconceptions candidates have about recruitment process at Uber and how can they best prepare for interviews or any sort yeah I feel like there's definitely a lot of misconceptions that people generally have about recruiting I don't think this just applies to Uber so I think I can only speak for big Tech in general I can't speak for if you are

applying to other Industries within Toronto and also I work for an American company but I'm based in Canada so there is different cultural or expectations based on policies around hiring or HR but generally for recruiting if you have a good recruiter and I'm speaking for all recruiters like I'm not just speaking for Uber only the recruiter's job is to actually help you to find alignment if you're a fit for the company so what people don't realize is we don't want to hire you and then realize it's a misalignment and then unfortunately you have to get

fired so that's actually our goal is one ensure the company and the opportunity is actually what you want and it's going to get you to where you envision yourself to be so if you want to get promoted means you need to be put on the right projects now are these projects aligned to your skill sets especially now machine learning is very important maybe that's something you want to do is that something you get exposure to or maybe you want to work only on product but the team is actually infrastructure those are two very separate things

and the recruiter needs to understand that so I find at times people could really feel like recruiting is their enemy because they're like oh they're the reason why I can't get a job like yeah that's valid but we're also looking for someone who can actually execute on the job so so I think it's more important to make that connection with recruiting so you have that relationship and then in the future they know that there is an opening they think about you and I think that's a lot of the misconceptions people have about recruiting cross Bo

you see it on LinkedIn all the time but yeah good to recruiter is here to support you and to make sure that you get all the information you need I think working in a really big company like uber there's a lot of opportunity for people to work globally too so I had a candidate she was actually based in Toronto and she really wants moves to San Francisco and I'm like oh I talked to the manager he's okay to actually have you relocate to San Francisco if that's what you want like we can do it for

you like it it's just very simple it's not that complicated as people make it sound like as long as you work with your recruiter you build that relationship our job is to really try our best to support you and work is so important your job and your career is very very important it it impacts your life and we understand that so we do want to get to know you but sometimes there's that tension that people have and then makes it hard for us like to understand what your needs are and then at times when that

happens up until the very end they're like okay actually I don't want to join this company and then we're like why they're like well you know I really wanted to do this or I was thinking about this or this circumstance and I'm like we have great benefits like if you told me earlier we could have talked about it and they're like oh I didn't know I'm like of course cuz you didn't bring it up so it's it's a lot of making sure that you work with recruiting we're not your enemies we're here to help you

but obviously you want to make sure that you can build that trust with that person and be able to open up but I think that's the biggest Mis misconception that people have that recruiting is your enemy and they're here to take away opportunities but really we're actually here to help you and build that relationship with you and just because I'm a recruiter for Uber or someone's a recruiter for Google or for KPMG or for whatever company recruiters move around like we're we're also people like we one day might work at this company for 10 years

we might move to another company so maybe I don't have anything for you here but you know we stay connected and or you stay connected with another recruiter they might think about you and then reach out to you on LinkedIn so I think just the importance of building relationships and recruiting it's definitely a really great opportunity for everyone to build a relationship with especially of going to corporate and really having a career journey I think recruiting is where you can really start building your own brand networking and getting your name out there so yeah this

misconcep is actually so big where um people are always just thinking about how to look good in front of the recruiter but in the end it's all about making a relationship with them right like being able to get them to trust you and you also be able to have this relation with them so even if you don't get the job recruiters can talk to other recruiters they might move to other companies and yeah like what if one day they think about you right and just moving on going back to the the tech landscape in general

with the tech landscape rapidly evolving how does Uber ensure its hiring process remain effective and adaptive to changing needs our Northstar is always candidate experience and what does that mean to a day-to-day person it just means customer experience just any good experience if you walk into a restaurant same thing when someone applies to Uber I think this should be the standard for every company or standard for all like you want to ensure that you provide a good experience for anyone either you're a business owner or you are a company hiring or you work at Starbucks

I used to work Starbucks they really understand customer experience so I think when it comes to efficiency and adaptive like changing needs I think our North store is always thinking about candidate experience um that is always our top priority in everything that we do at Uber especially when it comes to Talent acquisition so so in terms of evolving most of the people on my team have like seven plus years of experience before and then they're at senior and then the principal like the one level above they're like 10 years plus like these people are amazing

at what they do you wouldn't think like recruiting is a really big deal but especially for companies that they hire the top talent globally like you have some of the best recruiters that really know how to understand people how to work quickly but what is a good way for a recruiter to understand what is generally happening is just really understanding the market so we always talk about the market we always try to understand what's happening in the news so right now for example there's a lot of layoffs that are happening I don't think anyone's not

aware about that but I wouldn't say the economy isn't doing well the stock market is going up so if we are understanding who our competitors are we have to understand the stock price we have to understand where people are coming from we need to understand their pain and frustrations cuz there are some really smart people when T Twitter did the whole acquisition or Elon Musk came in a lot of smart intelligent individuals voluntarily left Twitter or X now because they just didn't align with Elon and it's so important for any company or recruiters to be

on top of what's happening so how do we remain it it's our own job to always stay up to date with what's going around the world and even though I'm Canadian and I'm in Toronto I read the news it's so crazy I in the past would never really the news and then once I started working at Uber I just naturally do it because there's just so many things happening that impact people's day-to-day life I think a lot of things that happen around you they all have this effect to our society and what happens and work

is very important so for us that means we have to work quickly how do we try to help these people too some of them are on immigration so I think it's just making sure that we stay on top of things make those connections we also have a lot of strategies on how to work effectively so I wouldn't say like the goal is to work hard we all work hard but I think it's always about working smart so if we know things are happening how do we address it reach out to those individuals it also makes

it quicker to hire someone because they are looking for a job and they're in need and some people will get deported out of their countries du to immigration reason so we try our best to move quickly and actually help people too like it does impact their lives so I think every one just has to stay on top of it know what's happening around the world and then if we have openings or we're looking for someone I did actually hire someone who decided to leave Twitter he is one of the best Engineers on the team it's

amazing it kind of worked out Stars aligned but yeah you just have to know and then action on it how we action on it that's really hard to say a recruiter's job you just get the job done you are creative you're on your feet you talk to people you make connections you move them through the process you sure that they are actually a good hire because you still have the interview um you understand what the business needs are you work with your stakeholders because I'm hiring for sell I'm not hiring for recruiters like I'm hiring

for engineering team so it's very important like okay what are you looking for what are the skills you're looking for what is the soft skills you're looking for and then keeping those all in mind and then when moments like this happen in the market you go and talk to a lot of folks when I am aggressively hiring I could be talking to over a hundred people in two weeks every day and on top of that still trying to close them negotiate offers so you just have to work efficiently and work with your teams I also

have a team of people that I learn from day today so you just need to understand what's going on understand what the pain points are where the needs are what's happening and then from there you understand how to approach it it's never the same answer so that's why it's hard for me to give you like I just send a 100 emails a day like that sometimes could be the strategy sometimes that is not what's needed sometimes it's something else so you just have to stay on top of it always see what's going on be open

to learning and just be aware of your surroundings in whatever you do so yeah thank you for covering this question and and can you share some examples of innovative strategies or approaches Uber has implemented to attract top tier engineering talents yeah so we actually have a whole team dedicated to this but I think for us day today is making sure for Uber it's actually a place where people want to go I think growth is very important to people who are very ambitious for our smart individuals they have a growth mindset so I think it's always

important to talk about the possibility of growth like compensation and making money is definitely very important we all need to put food on the table but I think when it comes to Ashley career we always talk about okay if you were to join Uber this is what sets you apart this is how you can actually evolve so for example I can talk about my own story like why I joined Uber so I used to work at a startup I hired 100 people in like six months and all I had was Google Sheets I don't know

if everyone here knows Google Sheets it's literally like Excel and I had to track everything I buil it myself I had no tools and then I had no mentors I was my Alo which seems cool cuz some people are like oh I don't want to report to anyone but eventually you're just like okay great now it's like I'm doing this like every single day nothing is changing it's the same routine thing and I made it efficient and I'm like okay like is this it for the rest of my life I don't know I feel like

this is going to be a dead end and then while I join Uber I realized there's a whole team of very intelligent folks I would be joining as a most Junior person and then I had a couple friends that worked there too and just seeing their opportunity why they join how much they have grown how much they learned I was like I'm getting paid to learn 100% so once they gave me an offer I decided to join I was pretty Junior as I mentioned and last year I just got promoted to senior and I got

promo as a senior quite young for in comparison so I feel like the opportunity to grow to learn to be motivated to have people look up to is definitely a really good way to attract top tier talent because top tier Talent cares about that a lot they're always looking for ways how they can apply themselves and be challenged themselves and have a strong impact so I think for any company that is looking to attract top to your talent it's more important to talk about that with any individual and I also encourage people to think about

that too because that is very important money will come but when you are very experienced you understand your subject matter expert you'll be making so much money like later down online and people will pay for it but until then you really have to strengthen your knowledge and your skill sets before you get there so I think that's what attracts a lot of people um places like Uber or like Google or Apple or even some really great startups like open AI or so yeah so that's why a lot of people also go to like the big

for firms too like just talking about accounting firms like they have a great opportunity for a lot of people to learn right outside the gate like when they graduate so I think those are things to definitely think about and that's how all these great companies attract the best talent in the market yeah perfect and I'm going back to a little bit about if anyone is interested in applying as someone deeply involved in the day-to-day hiring operations what advice would you give to candidates to make their application stand out I think this goes back to the

relationship piece I don't think people realize like how many standard resumés there are out there I think one you need to ensure your resume is actually proper so yes you should do that I can't speak too much on the formatting because what I care about is the content I know some Industries you can't make it colorful but then if you're working in design like you definitely need to make it colorful so you stand out but generally I'll say ensure that your resume and your application is really what it's supposed to be keep it to one

page really straight to the point like what I need to know is actually what you've done if you can't explain to me in five bullet points what you have accomplished and done I am moving on because I don't have time I get paid to work eight hours a day there is a thousand plus people that apply okay there's only so much I can do and you had one shot you could apply it you definitely want to be very clear and don't assume that the person who's looking in your resume understands so you really need to

think about if I were to write a piece of paper and give it to my friend to share what I'm doing your friend needs to understand they need to be like wow you saved the company a100 million amazing how did you do that oh I did it by working with this person then we solved this and then we did that it needs to be so clear that is how you will stand out and really wow whoever is looking at it because as much as a recruiter we learn to be experts in where we hire that

just makes it easier for anyone looking at it and you never know like every company is a little different if you work for a tech startup it could be the CEO it could be someone who literally has no idea because it's a startup it's completely new or it could be someone like me who yeah it's okay if you don't do it like if I read it I understand a lot of the Technologies even though I'm not an engineer because I applied myself but you just don't know so I think the best way to stand out

one make sure your resume is really proper there are so many tools like with AI now you can throw your full resume in chat gbt and it will continue formatting until you want it the way you want it and this is where it gets a little challenging it's not needed but I think add a little spin throw your personality into it there's room to do that on a resume but most important L it needs to make sense like in five bullet points if you're working with an employer or you worked at McDonald's or wherever you

worked for example when I worked at Starbucks I was nominated like Barista of the quarter that is already a selling point how do I do that I connected with every customer I made every mon smile I got positive feedback make drinks like this I reduce the drive-through time there's so many things in here right and that's just me at Starbucks so you just really want to explain like what you've done why you're important how you're like a team player collaboration is so important but it needs to make sense on what you've done and it's past

tense always past tense like I can go so much about resumés but just make sure it's clean don't put the wrong name wrong email I've seen that some people submit a blank resume it's crazy put your LinkedIn on there definitely put your LinkedIn on there yeah and just like have fun with it to be honest I don't think there's the need it depends on each industry but with tech I think it's more flexible but we just need to know what You' accomplished that's what we care most about so you really need to write it in

a way that makes sense like this is what I've done and this is how I got there this is who I worked with and really explain why it was important so yeah that's my tip on how to stand out yeah thank you I'm sure our students will learn out from this especially as they're building their first resumes as well and talking about after interview Uber Tech likely has a diverse range of teams and projects how do you match candidates with the most suitable team and what factors play a role in this process I think it's

important that you apply to the right rules it depends on the company right this is where I feel like talking to people so honestly if you really want to learn about a company you should really reach out to someone who's already doing that at the company and just send them a DM on LinkedIn so you're in sales or your account manager your marketing or or you are an engineer reach out to those people already doing that and then they will tell you what direction to really go and then you automatically apply for what you want

there are times where we do team matching but the truth is we are looking for the people who applied or my sourcers um I manage a desk so I manage other types of people that support me they go out there and then they find people that is a fit for their team so we have dedicated people who go out there they either look via LinkedIn or through people that they've already had relationships with if they find that there's like a particular role looking for a specific skill set so I feel like most of the time

it's more about your skill sets on what you put on your resume and then we always try to keep in mind that there are other open roles like I hire for 11 roles constantly I'm always managing 11 open wrecks so I have a lot of different Niche skill for each so even if you apply for one I do my best to okay I see that this person has a special skill maybe I can tell them about this other rle that we have open but I would highly recommend that people do their work of connecting with

the people within the company that they're interested in and then really get engaged like okay what org should I be applying for because even though everything is software engineering it's not actually just software engineering every everyone is specialized in their own category so if you are just applying to all of them or just applying to one randomly you might not be a fit and you'll just be rejected right off the bat like it's really important that you also do your work if there's actually a company that you're really interested in you can just reach out

to people to talk to you like I've done that in the past when I was understanding like the difference between working in house versus working agency I realized agency was not for me and it's like not the experience in my opinion or that's what people tell me I did not need to apply go through the whole interview process to figure that out and I didn't need to get rejected to know that I just talked to someone who worked there because they had an open role and then they just told me yeah this is what we're

looking for and then I realized right off the bat that was not for me so I didn't apply and I learned a lot from that conversation through someone who has already been there and that he gave like a more honest opinion about the company culture the team the work and then eventually I decided to apply to other roles and eventually landed at a place like uber and I would say definitely talk to the resources you can use is literally LinkedIn or people you already know in your network talk to them they will tell you exactly

okay if you're have this Niche experience working at this one type of Market or you have this one Niche experience doing this one thing then maybe this area is where you want to go and they want someone like you so right off the bat there's already alignment so that's my recommendation for people like definitely use LinkedIn and reach out do not be shy do not not be shy people are not mean like they're definitely not mean there's definitely some mean people out there but most of the time people put themselves on LinkedIn because that's kind

of the whole point of LinkedIn is to talk to people or else they won't create a profile right so definitely use that as a resource to learn more about which roles and how you can stand out and ensure that you are the best fit for the team right off the bat yeah perfect thank you for that and I'm sure a lot of our listeners and students are very interested in working at Uber so for candidates interested in Uber but unsure of where they might fit in best what resources or steps do you recommend for exploration

yeah like I just talk to people right we aren't always hiring that's just the truth and we're hiring as for something very Niche so it is quite competitive so I would say like talk to people get connected I would say reach out to the managers so it's so important to just talk to the people even if just to learn more and then when the opening comes up you are ready you have your resume you know what to put on it you know what to say you know what the team is about and you're ready to

share the right experience with some people are like the right fit but when they interview they say the wrong things it's because they just didn't do the homework on what the team is about even though I coached them through the whole process so what you can do even if there's no opening but there's a company that you want to join and if it's Uber definitely like reach out to the people and then when a role opens or their team's hiring they will think of you and that's what matters and then they can hire you like

it happens all the time you made that connection you understand what's about once the rooll is open and you have your resume ready you have the right experience you went out there to get it and then once the opportunity opens up you are the top pick because you really planned ahead and that's actually what people don't realize when it comes to career building so yes I think that also shows you're a go-getter so that's very important for a company like uber everyone's a go-getter here we get stuff done no one's waiting you are applying yourself

you think ahead those are very very important skills to have but definitely talking to people within the company it's the best way or if there's a role that is open then go ahead and apply but if there isn't a role then definitely connect with the people and reach out to them on like Den perfect and just going back to uh when recruiters are hiring for candidates how important is cultural fit when considering candidates and how do you assess this during the recruitment process yeah so I don't look for cultural fit like unless you are completely

rude then any recruiter will reject you because we're not looking for that that is not going to bring the C the business to success when people who are not team players the managers normally do those right rounds and we don't really look for cultural fit unpopular opinion there is a lot of backlash on cultural fit because you can't objectively measure cultural fit it's completely biased that's my personal opinion I will not that's not on behalf of uber that's just me Juliana's opinion but what we look for is examples of when you demonstrated collaboration with other

people strategic relationships how do you manage that that's measurable when do you take initiative why do you do it and then what was the outcome of it you have to collaborate you have to be a team player you have to think of how to solve problems like nothing is ever perfect within the lines that's drawn everything and most of the time is new on so you understand the knowledge you have your skill sets and the problems thrown at you there's no one answer you are hired because you're smart you're capable you're a subject matter expert

and then you go and tackle it for whatever Nuance situation you're in so that is what we think about when we think about the behavioral for the candidates that we're looking for I think personally that's how people should do it because if you guys Vibe on the same TV show that does nothing for the business and their team no offense like that's just my personal opinion so how you prep for that how you get those experiences doing it yourself like if you see there's a gap in your company or in the process or whatever that

you're doing if it's at school if it's like whatever you can definitely find a way to make things more efficient and push the whole team forward that shows initiatives it shows that you are on top of it it shows that a team player again and it just shows that you're smart like you are trying to work more efficiently and so our final question for you is with the rise of remote work how has Uber adapted its hiring practices to reach and engage with top talent beyond traditional geographical boundaries we are a global company so it's

not not like a concern for us however we are a hybrid company I think most companies are hybrid I would say with working at Uber though we do have a lot of flexibility so everyone does need to go in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays because we do believe in building those relationships um collaboratively with your team I think as much as meeting on zoom and working with people on Zoom works I don't think is like the best experience CU some things just work more quickly in person and it's true it has like made my

job so much easier in terms of globally like we do support relocation packages that people want are open to moving to our core cities we have almost an office in every major city especially if Uber is available in that city so we definitely have offs and sales so we have office in Japan areas in Latin America definitely in the US we have an office in Toronto but we do support relocation packages and we do provide hybrid and if they have family in other places we also have a limited you know paid vacation so if they

ever want to go home they can definitely go home we have like a month where you can work remotely anywhere in the world I'm hoping to work in Europe later this year for a whole month so we do have very flexible work packages but you do need to be in the office so that is a requirement uh that we have and you still work from home 50% of the time and then the other 50% is in office but we provide great benefits like there's like free lunches that you get some offices have like a personal

trainer you want to work out we have free parking and like in downtown of whatever the city is located the office is located in uh so we have a lot of great benefits to compensate for that so yeah thank you again Juliana for coming on to our podcast today and I'm sure our listeners have learned a lot from writing resumés to interviewing to finding the right career for them for sure feing everyone