Thread by @GergelyOrosz

I never understood how many roles - and often people - are involved in the hiring process until I was a hiring manager for some time.

Here's a short overview of all the personas in a typical hiring process at BigTech. And why you should care. A thread.

1. The sourcer. A specialized recruiter who searches & reaches out to people to convince them to start interviewing. Getting an InMail from a recruiter? They are acting in the sourcing role. "Facebook contacted me, offering a job" - actually, it was the sourcer reeling you in.

2. The inbound sourcer. When you submit a job application on the careers page, a human could look at it: the inbound sourcer. They go through the huge amount of applications - often hundreds/day -and they do short & efficient scan of resumes, sometimes doing a short call.

3. The recruiter. They own the recruitment side of the process, working closely with the hiring manager. Their goal: fill the headcount the hiring manager has. They take over promising looking profiles from sourcing, and will guide candidates from there, through interviews.

A note on the recruiter: they can (and often do) fill in for sourcing and recruitment coordination roles. But for BigTech like Google, Facebook, and the like, these are almost always separate people.

4. The recruitment coordinator. From the point you've passed the recruitment screen, they take care of the logistics of you being on the interviews with the right people. They schedule through the busy calendars of interviewers, manage changes of plans and travel bookings.

5. The interview panel. Usually engineers at the company, or on the team. They will interview you from technical phone screens, to looking through coding challenges and onsites. At big companies, this can be a large pool of people in the office.

6. The hiring manager. The person ultimately responsible for the hire. They managed to get the budget/headcount approved, and they actually run the show. They came up with the requirements, they work with the recruiter on their preferences, and they setup the interview panel.

You'd probably meet the hiring manager only on the onsite, as they're typically your future manager. For larger orgs, who hire lots of people, you sometimes won't talk directly to your future manager, but to another hiring manager. Here, there might be a team match round later.

7. Why you should care. It's to build empathy &realize that
a) Recruiters are on your side. They want you to be hired.
b) Sourcers think you have a shot at the position.
c) There's a lot of people in this process, with different goals and constraints. Be kind, and stay positive.