Karat blog

For years I’ve been hearing tech leaders talk about an inability to find and hire diverse talent. This sounded foreign to me as I knew we existed, but for some reason the pipeline of diverse talent was invisible to hiring managers. Larger tech companies have been implementing various Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) programs since the […]

Technical interviewing is something that every company does when hiring software engineers, but often with mixed results. Mis-hires are unfortunately common. Team members tasked with conducting technical interviews will likely use an approach that they are comfortable with, but that others don’t have visibility into and hasn’t been tested for ability to predict performance. What […]

All too often, the technical interview is used to find flaws in candidates. When in fact finding their strengths is actually more effective in identifying their potential. Karat Director of Interview Engineering, Lus Mendel, recently presented a workshop revealing the best practices of technical interviewing for software engineering roles. Co-hosted by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, this […]

University recruiting season is a stress test for your recruiting and hiring engine. Your recruiting team and software engineers will need to conduct hundreds or even thousands of technical interviews in just a few short months. Right now you might be optimistic, but still wondering: are we going to reach our recruiting targets? According to […]

Fall recruiting season is in full swing. Every campus is buzzing with the excitement of back to school, new course loads, and of course, career fairs. As Director of Talent Acquisition at Karat, I’ve recruited dozens of students and new grads into our software engineering team over the years. Prior to Karat, I spent four […]

On October 2nd, more than 200 talent acquisition, HR, and D&I leaders gathered in New York City for Indeed Explore. The theme of the event was the “Search for Greatness.” This is particularly relevant as many companies are starting to remove tangible barriers to great careers and career growth — such as the college degree requirement which […]

“The software developer job interview doesn’t work. Companies should stop relying on them. The savviest teams will outcompete their peers by devising alternative hiring schemes.” — Thomas Ptacek, founder of Matasano Security and writer for Krebs on Security Our data indicates that Mr. Ptacek is right — the typical technical interview and hiring process fails to get […]

Our recent Karat summer offsite started off with seemingly innocuous ice-breakers: If you could have any superpower what would it be? Who is your hero and why? What was your earliest memory of the internet? In response to the last question, one of our engineering interns, Sabrina, paused briefly before telling me matter-of-factly that she did not […]

A 2017 PwC study showed that 77% of HR directors felt that failure to hire tech talent would be a threat to their business. Any recruiter or hiring manager will tell you: software engineering roles are painfully difficult to fill. The demand for this skillset shows no signs of slowing and the supply shows no signs of […]