Hiring is one of the toughest challenges startups face in today’s global economy. They are competing for talent not only against “name brand” companies, but also the incredibly rich and robust startups from around the world. Our guest today has seen that struggle both as an operator and now as an investor, Michele Delcambre, is the operations partner at Felicis Ventures, one of the greatest venture firms to form in the last decade. Prior to Felicis, she led HR and Talent divisions at some of the fastest-growing technology companies like Atlassian, Okta, Databricks, and Stripe.
This is a great conversation with a ton of insight for founders at all levels.
About Michelle Delcambre:
Michelle is an Operating Partner at Felicis and leads Talent and People focused initiatives. In this role, Michelle leverages over a decade of experience in high-growth companies to advise and assist companies across the portfolio on their People and Talent best practices.
Prior to joining Felicis, Michelle led Talent and People Operations functions for a number of successful technology companies building and scaling hiring practices, People strategy, and People technology solutions during incredible growth periods. Michelle has seen various stages of scale, as the first US-based recruiting leader for Atlassian scaling from a few dozen to a few hundred employees, and growing organizations from 500-2,000 as the Head of Talent at Okta through their IPO. Additionally, she helped Stripe to operationalize the People and Recruiting functions as they scaled from >2,000 to over 5,000 employees.
Michelle is a native of Louisiana and attended Michigan State University.
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In this episode we discuss:
02:41 Michelle’s journey into Talent/HR
04:20 How Michelle’s view on talent was shaped by her time at Atlassian
06:22 Lessons she learned from her time at Zenefits
09:56 How she helped Stripe transition to remote work during the pandemic
12:16 What resources needed to shift when Stripe went remote
12:59 How Stripe’s culture survived and thrived during the pandemic
14:31 Why remote work has increased the available talent pool and how startups can win the war for talent
18:40 Why good employees leave companies and how remote-only or in-office only is more complicated
20:31 Policies that founders should consider to attract talent
24:44 Why Gen Z wants in office to find mentorship
26:50 How DEI efforts help companies become stronger
29:25 The use of data in recruiting and HR
30:48 Tools Michelle recommends to track HR data
31:30 How to build a talent pipeline
33:18 Common mistakes that hiring managers make
36:15 Balancing moving candidates through the pipeline versus rushing bad candidates into a role
38:37 Michelle’s role at Felicis and how she helps its portfolio
Fast Favorites:
🎙- Favorite Podcast: The Trojan Horse Affair, Things You’re Wrong About
📰- Favorite Newsletter/Blog: The Tedium
📲- Favorite Tech Gadget: Apple Watch
📈- Favorite New Trend: Tiny library rooms
📚- Favorite Book: To Kill A Mockingbird, The Changing World Order
🤔 - Favorite Life Lesson: All people have more in common than you think
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