GAYLE LAAKMANN MCDOWELL FOUNDER/CEO, CAREERCUP

I can help you create or refine your hiring process. With my deep background in both software development and hiring, I have the technical and recruiting knowhow to work with (and earn the respect of) your technology, HR, and other teams.

• Author of Cracking the Coding Interview (#1 best-selling interview book), Cracking the PM Career, Cracking the PM Raise the Bar & Interview, and Cracking the Tech Career. Hire More Tech Talent

• Software engineer at , , and Apple. Google hiring committee & top 1% of most active interviewers. My Philosophy • Acquisition interview consultant: coached dozens of companies through acquisition interview process. Hire Smart • BSE / MSE in Computer Science from University of Smart employees produce high Pennsylvania. MBA from the Wharton School. quality work, make good decisions, learn new skills quickly, and adapt My Goals for Your Company well to company growth and needs.

High & Consistent Bar Happy Candidates Hire People Who Care When desperate to hire, Good candidate experiences Your best employees will care— some teams drop their bar a matter. If your process leaves about getting things done, about little or make excuses for a a bad taste in people’s creating a great product, about candidate. Those weak hires mouths, the strong doing the right thing. can cost you in the long run. candidates won’t take your offer and the weak Hire Good Employees, Not Adaptable Process candidates ones will tell their Good Candidates friends not to. Your process If your process isn’t adaptable I’ve coached many candidates. The should make candidates want to future roles, you need to more I can coach someone, the to become employees. re-invent it constantly. This worse that process/question is. You leads to an increasingly want good employees, not those disorganized and sloppy Efciency who just look good in interviews. process. When candidates face delays and bureaucracy, they have a Know The Weaknesses bad experience, they judge Minimal False Negatives Every hiring strategy has flaws, but your company for this, and You’ll always reject some don’t simply accept those. Rather, their timeline may force them good people, but you want to understand your goals, find the into accepting other offers. minimize this. Learn how to process that matches best, and do Your process should enable prepare your candidates and your best to mitigate the issues. ask effective questions. you to move quickly. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION | PROJECTS

I work with teams and companies of all sizes. I often focus primarily on software developers, product managers, and other highly technical talent, and secondarily on other roles across the company.

The scale of the project depends on your needs. Some projects have been as small as running a single interview training workshop for a startup. In other cases, I’ve created hiring processes for multi-thousand person companies, essentially from scratch.

Timeline & Process Sample Tasks

A very typical project is to Interviewer Training Candidate Resources review a company's process, • Workshops: Lead half/full day • Interview Prep Resources: and then to suggest and interview trainings for software Create resources to prepare implement changes. engineers; product managers; candidates for interviews. other technical roles; non- • Interviewing Prep Talk: Teach Such a project is typically technical roles. periodic or regular interview done in three stages: prep talks for candidates, both • Train the Trainers: Train people • Stage 1: Information to prepare candidates and to take over the trainings gathering (reviewing source new candidates. question databases, • Online Training: Create web- interview feedback forms, option for training, with or Process Pieces: etc.) without support from L&D • Interview Process: Evaluate and recommend an interview • Stage 2: Proposal of • Interviewer Observation: process framework that can be changes (discussing my Observe existing interviewers in applied to current and future feedback with HR and action and provide feedback to roles. technology leadership), them. Select lead interviewers. • Hiring Committee & Bar • Stage 3: Implementation Selecting Candidates: Raisers: Evaluate usage of (interviewer training, • Job Descriptions: Define hiring committee and bar raiser, creating interview standards around what a job and roll out questions, rolling out description should look like, HackerRank, etc.). • Code Assessment Tools: and write examples. Evaluate HackerRank or similar Something of this sort usually • Candidate Profile: Define what tools, create tests, etc. lasts around 2 - 4 months, you should be looking. working part-time in a mix of • Question Databases: Review onsite and offsite work. • Diversity: Evaluate issues that current question database and might impact diversity. offer additional questions. Interviewer training can, in urgent cases, be rolled out • Evaluate Candidates: Evaluate quickly. actual candidates and make hiring recommendations. GAYLE LAAKMANN MCDOWELL | EXPERIENCE

CareerCup, Founder / CEO (2008 - Now)

Hiring Consulting Acquisition Interview Consulting

• Enabled companies/teams from 5 to 30,000 • Coached dozens of startups through acquisition people (including several “household name” interviews with companies such as Google, tech companies) to more efficiently hire great LinkedIn, Facebook, and Yahoo. developers and other candidates. Speaking & Interview Prep Workshops Books • Taught 2x per week workshop at Facebook HQ • Author of Cracking the Coding Interview, for its software developer candidates. Cracking the PM Interview, Cracking the PM • Lead periodic interview prep workshops at Career, Cracking the Tech Career colleges and other environments. • Books translated and sold in eight languages.

• Cracking the Coding Interview is #1 best-selling interview book on Amazon. Averages #300 on all books on Amazon.

Other Experience

Keenscreen, VP of Engineering (2008 - 2009)

• First employee of online advertising startup, joining just post-seed funding. Backend and frontend work. Google, Software Engineer (2005 - 2008)

• Software engineer on Talk/Chat Docs teams. Backend, frontend, and Windows client work.

• Member of hiring committee. Conducted 150+ interviews. Apple, Software Engineer Intern (Summer 2004)

• Software engineer on iChat. Microsoft, Software Design Engineer Intern (Summers 2001 - 2003)

• Software engineer in Microsoft Research and Visual Studio.

Education

• The Wharton School. MBA, Entrepreneurship. (2009-2011)

• The University of Pennsylvania. BSE & MSE in Computer Science. Minor in Mathematics. (2000 - 2005) GAYLE LAAKMANN MCDOWELL | MORE INFO

Contact Info

• Call/Text: 610-324-0399

• Email: [email protected]

Wr i t i n g & Mo re

• gayle.com

• facebook.com/gayle

• twitter.com/gayle

• medium.com/@gayle