What makes someone a truly remarkable talent evaluator — Nadia Singer, Figma’s Chief People Officer 

 Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us.

 I thought a fun place to start might be kind of when you zoom all the way out, what do you think Figma does differently that attracts folks to the company or to your culture?

 I think we do, there are so many things, so it's hard to, it's hard to just pick one. Um, but I think we have just a really unique culture and it really starts with, I would say, our community and the fact that we are this SaaS product that has such a strong, core of users. And when you are going through.

the process with us in an interview or when you're already working here, you feel that every day and it really gives fuel to working here. So I would say that's one of the unique things about us, um, from the outside for sure.

 How does that kind of tangibly express itself? Or let's say I'm an engineering manager and I'm talking to Figma and three other, you know, at least from the outside companies that people think are amazing and I'm going through that process, or I'm, I'm interacting with you all. How, how does it express itself?

 We always say that our interview process is not just about us interviewing you, but it's about you interviewing us. And when you ask your interviewer, you know, what do, what do you love about working at Figma? Why do you work at Figma? Almost every single person, um, I would say, you know, they talk about, obviously the work that they get to do.

They talk about the people that they get to work with, but then they start talking about the community and the product, and it's such a natural manifestation. Um, and anybody that does. You know, their diligence, if they talk to a designer, if they talk to a friend, they get this like unbridled love Oh my gosh.

I, I mean, this happened for me when I was interviewing, you know, all of my designer friends were like, I couldn't work without Figma. And that's such a huge testament to the product, uh, that we're building. When you have people in their professional space say, you know, they couldn't do their job without the thing that you're building.

 how do you sell a candidate or when you think back to a candidate, I, I'm sure you can kind of bucket people, right? There's a, a group of candidates that you're excited about that out of the gate, this is their dream company. They've been a member of your community, they're super passionate. They're not even really considering anything else. Then you have another group that, for whatever reason, they're not passionate about design. The culture isn't right, and they kind of self-select out. But there's always this group of like insanely talented people who either aren't sure whether they want to leave their great current job, or they have four other offers from, equally as exciting companies, just different dimensions. How do you go about, building this relationship around the offer. What are your strategies and tactics to, to close the person?

 Yeah, we'll I think you get it right in that you can bucket people in these like really large buckets. But then at the end of the day, what makes, the best recruiter is. knowing that every person is such an individual. And this is where, you can't apply a framework to closing a candidate because every person has a different set of needs, a different set of desires, a different set of wants.

And so as a recruiter, as a hiring manager, as a c e O, no matter what your role is in the process, um, how are you digging in with that candidate to really understand, what it is that they're looking for? And that starts with the very first conversation. What matters to them, what drives them? you have to start asking those questions.

And then, reiterating that throughout the process, if someone says to you, I wanna work on the hardest technical challenges. Well, great. you then know that that is what your conversation should be around throughout your entire recruiting process, from the very first call to the very last call.

And you can only sell what is true to your company. I always ask, a lot of our new hires, um, did we lie to you? Is like anything that we told you in your interview process not true now that you're here because, um, very quickly, if you, if what you're selling isn't true, someone will self-select out pretty quickly.

And so, um, , it comes back to every candidate being an individual and, you know, not, you know, not applying the one size fits all, but rather you know, what drives you, what motivates you, and, uh, you know, how can we match those things?

 Do you ask those specific questions explicitly or back when you were doing maybe a lot more interviewing yourself? are there ways you're getting at that, or other questions you're asking to start to build this picture or portrait of the candidate and, and what drives them?

 it has been a minute since I've been in the trenches of interviewing, you know, 10 candidates a day. But, um, you know, sometimes it is explicit and sometimes it is implicit. I can't believe I'm gonna share one of my favorite interview questions, but one of my favorite interview questions is, you know, as you think about what's next for you in your journey, uh, and the next opportunity that you're looking for, what's something that you hope is the same, and what's something that you hope is different about the next place, the next opportunity, the next culture That really starts to tell me both about how much the candidate has self-reflected and what they actually are looking for, and, and do they know what they're looking for?

Are they running away from something? Are they running towards something? Either one is okay as long as they know, and then it helps me understand are the things that they're telling me, things that Figma can offer. . And so, I have a, a long list of interview questions, but uh, that's one that I think always tells me so much about a candidate and whether or not there's gonna be a potential match.

 And so once you start to build this portrait of the candidate, can you give some examples of how you then use that information in the nurturing and sales and closing process?

 it's just about building that relationship. I always used to say when I was doing this that, this is only gonna work if what's best for you is actually the company. And, making sure that those things really align and that what you're telling a candidate is truthful about what their experience might be.

for me it was always about just super honest and open and transparent with every single candidate. And never using their words against them, but always coming back to, you know, Hey, you had mentioned that this was really important to you. and, now you're saying this other thing.

let's talk about it. Let's unpack it, so that you can really get to what they're thinking and what they're feeling.

 On that point, what are your thoughts on stated versus revealed preferences? You know, in all the hiring you've done in your career, do you think most people actually know what they want and the conditions that enable them to do their very best work? Or, there's some notion of, of revealed preferences, right?

Like the classic Netflix thing, you ask somebody, what do you like on Netflix? And they tell you, you know, these documentaries and then you look at their viewing history and it's too hot to handle or, or whatever else.

 Have you been in my Netflix history, Brett? Um, you know, I think that, uh, I, I think it's a combination. I think people think they know what they want and then typically as they start in a process, more unfolds for them. a lot of people that I talk to haven't done job searches in a few years, and so when they enter the job search, they think that they are looking for one thing, and a lot of times it's like I've stopped learning at my company.

And so they're looking for a new learning opportunity. . but then when you start talking with them and they start interviewing it actually starts to turn out that, you know, not that they're not learning at that environment, it's that they're not learning what they wanted to, or it's that they don't have the freedom to operate and execute on their own.

or, any number of other things. And so, I always try to think about when I'm talking to candidates, how can, I help show them, um, a little bit more of what they might be looking for and how, Figma. Could be the place for them to find those things. for candidates who feel like they don't have ownership, will, one of our values is run with it, and that gives people the ability to, hopefully have a little bit more freedom in making decisions and executing on their work and moving quickly.

And that's when people tell me like, I'm not learning anymore. It, when you start to unpack it, it's has more to do with that than truly not learning anything.

 When you think about the role of an interviewer, you know, you're wearing a few hats. One is this theme that we're talking about, which is how do you get someone that, that you think would be amazing to join your company? That's like a discreet sort of set of skills. The other, obviously big one is this role of talent evaluator, and I think, that's, that's like a highly underexplored topic,

Who makes for great interviewers? Can anyone be a great interviewer? And I'm interested in that. And when you think about that talent evaluator hat, what's the interplay between someone's own taste and, and just intuitive judgment about people versus. Things that are teachable or frameworks or they can watch someone else interview and they can learn how to be excellent.

What kind of comes to mind for you in this bucket of talent evaluation?

 it's both. I do think that with time anyone can become a great talent evaluator. but at the same time, I think that so many people who think that they are great talent evaluators, aren't, they've maybe gotten good at pattern matching.

and sometimes pattern matching can be quite helpful. Sometimes, it can be quite harmful though, uh, because. Every person is an individual. just because two people worked at Google doesn't mean they're of the same quality. Or just because two people went to Harvard doesn't mean that they're both brilliant.

because your company is unique, uh, and in a moment in time. And so when I think about myself and, I tend to want you, I always go into an interview first. You gotta check your biases because every single person has them.

I believe deeply in structured interviewing and making sure that you're asking the same questions to the people interviewing for the same role, so that you're giving them the same experience and same opportunity. Um, obviously I ask deep follow up questions depending on, on the answers that I get from them, but always starting with the same structure.

And I think that, that's the beginning of being a good interviewer. Then comes just time, of doing it and understanding that it's not just about, what people say, but how they. Say it or how they approach the problem. it's not just about getting the right answer. sometimes there is no right answer, but how did they get there?

How did they get to the solution that they got to? I think these are the things that you can actually really learn and observe as you do. Interview training, I believe deeply in interview training, um, and giving everyone, the, the basics of, of starting that off and shadowing and reverse shadowing. But, interviewing as much as we want it to is not a perfect science.

you could be the best interviewer, but there are gonna be, you're gonna have false positives and you're gonna have false negatives. And that is the reality of humans. , there's no perfect prediction model someone could get all strong yeses and then start, and for a number of reasons, it ends up not working out.

Or you could pass on someone who goes on to be, you know, the next founder of, of X, Y, Z company. Like we've heard all of the stories of, you know, people being passed on and then going on to start their own companies and having huge success. Um, it doesn't mean that they were bad. Um, it means that they weren't, um, right for your company at that time, or maybe that your interview did have a flaw in it.

And so it's about learning over time and adjusting your interview process as you scale and need different things, for your company.

 you mentioned something as you were sort of sharing there that I thought was super interesting, which is how does an individual become a better talent evaluator? could you expand on that a little bit? Like, let's say you have an engineering manager who's starting to join Interview Loops, for example, and they have really good taste, and they want to be a top 1% interviewer and not just go through the motions and whatever, and they wanna be truly excellent.

what practice should they be doing? What are the rituals they should be executing to inch their way towards that?

 Yep. Well, one thing I would say is, taste, depending on how you define it as subjective. So, having good taste might not actually make you a good interviewer and a good talent evaluator. but I would say there's a few things. there are people that you do know are good talent magnets and talent evaluators, and you can see that in.

the success of the people that they have hired. And so I would always start with those people and I would ask them, you know, the questions, what are you asking? How are you asking? What are you looking for in your responses? What's a good response? What's a bad response?

I would then think about the questions that you're asking themselves and how do they actually tie back to the job. I think part of what is so broken about talent evaluation is that we're not asking the right questions. We're asking things that have nothing to do with what does true success look like on the job.

And when I think about engineering specifically, we're really starting to understand and debunk, all of these lead code type questions and interviews that aren't actually what a real engineering job looks like. And so, I'd really hone in on your questions and think about what makes a great engineer and are your questions getting at the root of that?

and then, I would say to, throw a lot out the window of what you think. , you know, or believe to be true. because talent evaluation, and this is where, you know, I would say pattern matching can be really harmful because of what I said earlier, which I think is that talent evaluation is broken.

that means that historically when we've said that engineers from feig companies are great. Well, if you think that one of those companies is fundamentally flawed in how they're evaluating talent, then just because someone worked there doesn't actually mean that they're good. everybody always talks about we wanna hire the best.

Well, of course, nobody wants to hire the worst. but what does the best mean? For your company, what do we need at that point in time? And then go build your interview around that.

 you touched on this a second ago, but what, makes a great interview question?

 There's a lot of components and it's different for different things. There's situational questions, there's behavioral questions, so I think it, it depends on what you're trying to understand. first you have to define the competency that you're evaluating. So if you are evaluating someone's ability to collaborate with others, especially when.

they might disagree. you start to break it down and think about the components of that question that get you an open-ended answer from someone about how they've collaborated, how they've worked. when it does come to that topic in particular, one of my favorite questions to ask people is, tell me about the last project that you worked on with a group that you didn't get over the finish line, that didn't come to completion the way that you thought it would.

And what I'm really trying to understand there is not only how they worked with the group, but how was the decision made to not ship the project or ship the product? And, thinking about how you made that decision, how you came to the conclusion, how you worked with others. Are you, were you happy with the outcome?

Were you better about the decision? All of these things help you identify, whether someone might be a strong collaborator. that's a huge part for us and at Figma of values questions. And tying it back to, again, those competencies that you have, the values that you have of how you want people to operate and work.

you start to build questions around those skills.

 there's a lot of different ways if I were to ask your coworkers about working with you, what would they say? What are you really good at? What are your growth areas? you can start to sense how someone talks about themselves and what they're good at.

And then you have the opportunity, if your company does reference checks, which, Figma does, you then have the opportunity to actually check on that and see are the things that someone is saying about themselves that their coworkers would say. is that? What their coworkers actually say about them.

I always ask people, what are they hoping to learn? What can they get better at? And you get a sense, and this is where practice of evaluating talent comes in. You can get a sense if someone has actually given deep thought to it or if it's the first time that they're ever really thinking about what they could be better at, um, or what a growth area is for them.

self-awareness is such an, an important skill, and an important area for people especially in hypergrowth environments, to have so that, they can grow.

 when you think about your own growth in kind of the last chapter of your career as an interviewer, all the way back to all the in the trenches recruiting work that you did, when you looked at the mistakes that you've made, maybe type one or type two errors, right? Error type one would be you hire somebody and they weren't successful in the, constraints of the culture.

And type two is maybe you passed on somebody who ended up being great. That's probably harder cuz maybe they were great at another company, it wouldn't have been great for you. But are there big things that you've changed about what you look for or how you evaluate talent based on those kind of mistakes you've made along the way?

 my style has changed for sure. I've been doing this a long time. when I first started out, I stuck to my script because I didn't have. comfort in what I was doing I probably believed in my early days that there was a right answer and a wrong answer to things.

but now I think I'm so much more focused on open-ended questions versus, very black and white questions. Hearing about how do people approach problems, how do people talk about, the work that they're doing Gives me so much more insight than, Where you have already a predetermined answer in your mind.

So that would probably be the biggest shift for me. I've been able to embrace ambiguity with a bit more confidence, after realizing, my own journey has been complex and, and interesting and taken turns in my career. And so when I think about interviewing other people, there's no longer a set of specific answers that I'm looking for, but rather the reflection, the self-awareness.

The, the ability to grow, is kind of where I now focus a lot of my, a lot of my efforts

 How does that interview style fit in with your worldview about structured interviews? Because my guess is it dovetails in some way, but you're not just question, answer, question, answer. And I think a lot of people, maybe, maybe when they think structured interviews, they think of a mechanical sort of workflow that they're going through.

 so I typically give myself in a 30 minute interview the three questions that I wanna ask every candidate. But with each of those questions comes the follow up and the what an interviewing is called tunneling.

and I think that's what actually ends up making a great talent evaluator and a great interviewer is your ability to stay structured, but tunnel into what the person is saying to get more information. Because when you ask a question, you get the first response. It's just like, what makes a great podcast interviewer?

you've asked me a series of follow up questions to the things that I've said instead. Brett ask a a question. Nadia answers. Brett moves to the next question. It's the tunneling. And the tunneling gives more information. I think it's important that candidates get the same opportunity to put forth, their work and put forth their answers.

And so, like I said, I, I always tried, you know, those three core questions and then my follow-ups and my tunneling based on, you know, what the person has said, but always tied back to. , what's the competency or the value or the behavior that I am responsible for evaluating. And so, um, if I am responsible and each of our interviewers is generally responsible for a competency, and that's where the the structure really comes in, it always comes back to that for me.

And so if I'm in charge of collaboration, my follow up questions, dig in more on collaboration I always tie it back to that original competency though.

 shifting back to this topic of culture I'm really interested to learn more about how you think culture evolves as a business scales and matures. I think a lot of people have explored the topic of what culture is, what culture isn't, maybe even hiring for culture and and things like that. But there's this interesting sort of thing that happens when a company scales and scales particularly quickly as Figma has

so I'm interested to kind of have you explore the topic of culture as a business scales and if you were nurturing or developing culture through scale in a really effective way, what that looks like or how you think about it.

 culture is not a static thing and it never was. culture is always evolving. Even the definition of of culture is evolving. And I think that's where we have to debug a little bit of like, well, what do you even mean when you say culture?

but the way that I've thought about it and, you know, I think I've been at Figma now for almost three years and, there's a lot that is the same, but there is so much that is obviously different. And, we talk a lot. Uh, and on the people team, what got you here won't get you there. And so you have to think about, what are the core tenets of the culture that you wanna keep?

What are the things that need to evolve? And maybe what are the things that just don't make sense anymore because, um, they'll no longer make you successful. So that's kind of how I, that's how I think about it

 On that topic of what you want to keep and what you want to evolve, do you do that in some sort of formal exercise from time to time or, or you mean it more implicitly?

 both. for instance, at Figma we have something called make, or week, twice a year, which is a week of, uninterrupted meeting, free exploration time with the ex, with the only goal. Build something that will make Figma better. many, many of our products, and features have come out of maker weeks.

it's hard. It is hard when you are moving as fast as we are as a business to stop to say, we're not doing interviews for a week, we're not doing meetings for a week. we're taking a break from our day-to-day to explore, to have fun, to tinker. we constantly check in on are we gonna keep doing this?

And the answer is yes. it is so core to. our culture. and, maybe there will be a point that it has to evolve from what it used to be, um, or what it is today. But for now, we are absolutely keeping it just the way that it is. So it, it is implicit and an explicit conversation.

 Can you give more examples in the context of Figma, in, in this sort of umbrella of culture, maybe a few of the things that you've been really intentional about keeping, like the example you just gave and maybe what are some examples of where you decided to evolve and change and what that actually looks like?

 Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the things that we have evolved, Over time is something called three things. Three things was introduced, uh, long before I started at Figma and was an opportunity for a fig mate to get in front of the company and talk about the three things that make them who they are.

And it's not I like dogs and I play basketball. it's really, these are the things that shaped me to make me, me, the things that make me who I am. And they're deeply personal and sometimes they're funny and sometimes they make you cry. but it was such an unbelievable window into.

Who your teammates were. And so when I started in 2020, I joined the company remotely, uh, cuz it was two weeks after the pandemic started and it was something that we were still doing, uh, albeit remotely over Zoom. And I was able to see about four or five, three things in my time, maybe a few more. And we realized that, what made it so powerful and this intimacy was something that we couldn't keep given the pace that the company was growing at and we couldn't give every single person the opportunity to do it anymore.

And so, we've evolved it and it's evolved pretty naturally actually. So it's not something that we do at the company level anymore, but it's something that. many teams do at the team level in their more intimate environments that our offices do. So I know that, um, you know, the New York hub that we have when leaders or when folks, um, visit, they love to have people present their three things.

And so it's still a part of Figma and still something that we talk about a lot, but isn't done the exact same way as when it started.

 On this theme of rituals, what are the other things that you might be able to share that you've noticed? It doesn't necessarily even have to be cultural. It could be meetings, the way the company operates, the way that you run your team in the sphere of, of people and talent are there other rituals that you think have had kind of a surprisingly positive impact on the company?

 I think our level of transparency, which starts at the top, starts with Dylan, but is something that, had an incredibly positive impact. And what I mean when I think about our transparency, we have a board meeting and then right after that board meeting we present.

most of the content from that board meeting to the entire company. And I say most because it's really hard to take a three hour board meeting and condense it into, a 60 minute all hands. so it's rapid fire and a lot of the content, you know, has already been shared with the company in, in prior meetings anyways.

But we talk so openly about our metrics. We talk so openly about what is going well, what's not. I think that, like I said, it start starts with Dylan, but it's also how I operate with my team. And I think a lot about how we can over communicate, um, and sharing.

When, sometimes no update is still an update. And so telling people, Hey, you know, this is top of mind. It's something we're thinking about, but we don't have an answer yet. and really making sure that people know where and stand gives a sense of security, builds trust. And so I would say that is, really core for us.

 On this topic of transparency, you just sort of mentioned a little bit about this, but why do you think it's so valuable?

 I think, I'll speak for me personally because I think that, I probably operate with. A level of candor and openness with my team that really works for me and it's authentic to me. So it's why I do it. But I think it breeds trust. I think that when you can inform people of what's going on, it helps them understand the circumstances in which we're trying to operate.

if you tell them when you don't have the answer, it shows that level of humility and that growth mindset of we're gonna figure this out together. I think about, the people landscape in 2023, and we're all operating in a world in which. we could have never imagined. And so when you are able to be transparent about that, when you're able to be open, when you're able to be honest, I think you get more, um, out of yourself and out of the people around you, to solve, to think through and to work together.

 How do you figure out the line of the things that you aren't willing to be transparent about? So, for example, I mean, I don't know how you do this, but when you exit someone from the company, I assume you don't send an all company email that says the reasons they were fired. Maybe you do. But that, that would be one form of transparency. Um, if there's, if you're thinking about buying a company or you're in, you're in a transaction to buy a company, you may not tell the whole company about that. Um, I'm sure there's lots of examples. And so how do you figure out where the line is?

 Yeah. I mean, I think there's obviously, the, the easy way is like there's a legal line typically and a confidentiality line. And, you have to figure out, well, what's the risk of something being made public? And so I always think about, the decisions that I make and what I share. And I think to myself, okay, if I share this with my team and it leaks to a different team, or if it leaks externally or if it leaks to the press, how comfortable are we with that?

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Nadia Singer, Chief People Officer at Figma, shares why she believes anyone can become a skilled talent evaluator, her best interview questions and how Figma leverages transparency across the org. 

What makes someone a truly remarkable talent evaluator — Nadia Singer

Nadia Singer, Chief People Officer at Figma, shares why she believes anyone can become a skilled talent evaluator, her best interview questions and how Figma leverages transparency across the org.