How I tweaked Twitter by hiring a Tweeter who set a benchmark in the world of Tweets?

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Hi, there folks. I’m Rakshith Iyengar. Before you ever start reading this, let me get into your nerves. You may think that I’m a typical tech-hiring recruiter who takes care of the traditional process of hiring working at any company. But, little do you know that I’m not just the person you are thinking about, but I’m worth something more than you ever imagined.

Here’s what I mean by just that. Flashbacks are important just as you watch a movie and you go bizarre seeing a scene that jolts back into the blue – typically a hero’s journey that blasts into the past. This is not just a flashback but the story of how I tweaked the world’s greatest social media platform – Twitter and set a benchmark – mind you – a benchmark; I repeat that will resonate in the minds of the audience forever. Let me show you how I did this and how you can do it too.

The first step was that I used the power of Naukri search (Naukri is the king of job search –we all know) on LinkedIn business platform. I had attended a lot of interesting training sessions my seniors took and ideally I put the knowledge leveraged from those sessions into action finally. They had told me that before starting any search on a XYZ job portal, it is good to look into an existing database that one already has. A database that has been generated already after conducting some extensive research is a good start.

It was simple. I was looking to hire a UX designer for Twitter, India. Everyone that I would reach out would normally raise their hand and blindly say ‘yes’, but the key challenge was to find the right yet brilliant designer who can scale Twitter to great heights. The person should be of high caliber and a great artist who can change the facet of UX design at Twitter forever.

The bar was set high. I needed a game-changer. A game-changer of tremendous talent who can do it all and give his best in whatever he does. As a precautionary factor, no hiring manager should question me of rejecting a candidate without reason. Hence, I knew that I had to hire the best of the best.

Here’s how the strategy was put forth by me. The initial strategy I adopted was to understand what I should do to reach out to the candidates and I knew what had to be done. Remember I told you at the beginning that I’m worth something more than you ever imagined?

Yes – true to the word, I built a database around 50 designers from Tier 1 or Level 1 colleges, which was pre-dominantly NID’s or IIT’s. Later, I segregated the candidates based on their experience and the level of work.

The requirement was as simple as that. A Senior UX Designer: Min of 6 years was all I needed – but I need a unique road-map to surge ahead. I went on to hunt down the right tweeter for this through sparking a conversation and reaching out in the best way possible.

It was always a challenge to find the right designer, since most of the designers were above 5 years of experience, generally free-lancers. Most of them would not even accept my requests as I was just a fresher when it came to recruitment meaning - I had only less than 6 months of work experience working as a recruiter.

If you ask me about how I cracked it and what I did differently – it was just this. I used the Bleeding Edge Recruiting Strategy that I normally use to reach out to any passive talent – across the globe. I follow a set of standards for the same and I did it in this purpose of finding the right UX guy for Twitter:

• If someone says they simplified complex task flows into easy designs, they are a champion in user-centered design.

• Someone uses statistical analysis and speaks of wire frames and talks about flow diagrams to provide general and specific UX guidance, they are a stud.

• If I see hands-on-experience in a candidate it would be that they’ve conceptualized and designed web and mobile based application from scratch.

• If a candidate says that he/she has indulged in developing simple prototypes to high fidelity prototypes, then I would know that he has a great caliber.

• Collaborating with stakeholders like product managers etc., at each level of design is also something I look for in candidates.

• Of course, human factor international certified (HFI’s) from B2B or B2C background is an added advantage.

So here’s the big deal. I found a person who had all the above characteristics and I analyzed him thoroughly and knew that he is the game-changer for Twitter. True to the word, once again, he got into Twitter, made a mark there by developing the Twitter UX and now he is currently working abroad at a top MNC. I take complete pride of saying that.

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the dejected recruiters, the people who believe that they cannot accomplish something huge, the ones who see people differently, you can talk about them, quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them – the only thing you can’t do is to overlook them as simple HRs because they can bring about a change to push the right talents forward & while some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius because the recruiters who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do”