Coworking with Georgina Salamy

On Wednesdays, we schedule our weekly 1:1 with HR Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Georgina Salamy is director of talent acquisition and insights at Zoox, an autonomous vehicle company, where she’s worked since 2016. Initially trained to be an educator, Salamy recently told HR Brew why she thinks former teachers make great people professionals.

How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in HR? My job is leading Zoox’s recruiting and talent acquisition. In my role, I’m responsible for not only helping attract top talent, but also developing the end-to-end process of bringing new crew to Zoox. I also have a hand in our employer brand, communicating Zoox’s brand, mission, and values to our candidates.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked? One of the best things we’ve done recently is adjust our interview process for senior engineering leadership. They’re still technical, but different from individual contributors. We’ve started giving [candidates] a potential problem a team may be or has been facing, and ask them to explain how they would help the team work through it. We even recently had a candidate come in for a working session as part of the interview, where we gave them a current problem statement and they worked through it as if they were on the job.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job? People assume because I’m in charge of hiring people, I also handle all facets of employment. In reality, we are truly a team-based organization. I help hire the right people for the roles and work with them to ensure they have the tools they need to strengthen our company as a whole.

I understand you initially went to school to become a teacher. Do you think that teachers have certain qualities that make them effective recruiters? I think the main thing is empathy. There’s a service-oriented aspect to being a teacher. People who become teachers are destined to serve or help. You usually have a roomful of 30 kids, and they’re all very different from each other. They have slightly different needs, but you’re there to serve one purpose, which is to help them and teach them. It’s kind of like that in recruiting.

What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why? A lot of companies in Silicon Valley get criticized for having math and problem-solving interviews. These interviews can be a little controversial with some candidates, but I think they are extremely informative and help our recruiting team tell if someone can problem solve and think on their feet. At Zoox, we don’t see math and problem-solving interviews as a pass/fail data point. Rather, we look at how folks handled the process. Critical thinking is so important in this field.

What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why? I’m not a fan of making counter-offers to individuals resigning to try to get them to stay. While it seems natural for a business to want to hold onto a talented employee—and tempting for the employee to stay in a comfortable environment for more pay and perks—counter-offers generally have poor short- and long-term outcomes for both sides. It’s something we’ve moved away from, and I think a lot of other companies will as well.

Tell us one new or old HR tech product or platform that’s made your life easier, and why. Though the platform has been around for awhile, LinkedIn has continued to develop in a way that remains useful for recruiting today. I remember when I first started my recruiting career, LinkedIn had just come out as a social media platform for professionals, and it wasn’t yet a place where people could learn about job openings. But now, it’s become a great product that intersects social media and recruiting, offering analytical and other tools to help our recruiters find the best candidates.

Want to be featured in an upcoming edition of Coworking? Click here to introduce yourself.