We are going on with our new blog section and todays’ interview is simply amazing! Hung Lee answered our questions, and we are happy to share his wise thoughts with you.

This interview has been conducted in 2018.

We have looked through a tons of your interviews with you and luckily understood that no one had asked this question before 🙂
Speaking about career aspirations, as a kid, what did you want to be?

Fireman
Zoologist
Philosopher

Then I stopped being a kid and thought I’d better be a recruiter

How did you start recruiting? Why are you still in this sphere?

I think I am the only person I know who actually had the thought ‘I’m going to be a recruiter’.

It was around the time of ‘web 1.0’ when all of these amazing e-commerce companies were springing up and I really wanted to get in and work with one of those tech firms.

I tried to become a coder, but gave up when I realised it took me 3 days to get a single page of HTML up online. I thought the smarter move would be get into a tech recruitment company and start working with these companies, in the hope that one day I would recruit myself into one of those businesses.

As it happened, I became pretty good at the job of recruiting and have stayed in it ever since.

Why am I still in it?

Because the problems are still there. It’s still a super hard challenge to find and hire the right people for your team. Over the past 15 years, I’ve bounced around the recruitment ecosystem – as a recruitment agent, as a Head of Talents, as a ‘strategic consultant’, as a tech vendor, and now as a community builder – and these challenges are still there to be solved.

You have a really strong personal brand. How does it help/ hinder in life and business? Who are the thought leaders in HR tech that you follow?

Thank you!

You know, it is a conscious decision of mine to have a strong digital footprint. As a recruiter, and a business person, it’s important to be as visible as you can be to the audience you hope to support. I can understand those who would prefer anonymity, but truth is, who you know – and who knows you – directly impacts your effectiveness as a recruiter and as an entrepreneur.

Thought leaders…..there are so many great people out there that I learn from! I think the best approach is actually to try to be open to new voices – the most interesting opinions often come from the most unexpected sources.

What is WorkShape.io? Tell us about it in three sentences.

We’re here to kill the noise in tech recruiting. Forget about search, forget about ads, forget about apply – our way is to collect information on what a developer wants – visualise it – then instantly match to companies who have compatible job opportunities. It’s immediate, non-intrusive way to hire great developers.

How many technical specialists have you matched with the companies by now?

No idea! It must be at least several thousand I would say. Our matching engine is entirely algorithmic – we are not a recruitment agency that has human beings ‘behind-the-machine’ pretending to be automated – so volume of matches has never been a challenge or metric for us!

The most challenging thing in technical recruitment is that the best developers don’t polish their resumes, moreover they are are not looking for a job. How do you attract them into Workshape.io?

This is where our founding assumptions become super important.

We fundamentally believe that most people are ‘latently interested’ in the ideal opportunity.

This does not mean that they are ‘active’ job seekers, but it neither does it mean that they are entirely dormant either.

Most developers – most people – generally are not thinking about job opportunities most of the time. But we would probably take a call if the opportunity was infrequent and close to ideal.

That is the promise of WorkShape.io to the developer community – tell us what is your ideal opportunity and we’ll only match you if it meets your expectations. Otherwise, you’ll remain be hidden on our platform, your privacy protected from random recruiters who just trying to speculatively pitch you this and that opportunity.

How did you come up with Recruiting Brainfood? What is the mission behind it?

As an entrepreneur, you tend to read a lot. But often you just don’t have the time to read right then. So I previously saved those posts for later consumption but until it occurred to me that other people might also be interested in this great content, so why don’t I just share it openly with others?

Before you know it, recruiting brainfood was born – a weekly newsletter containing the best, the weird, the useful and the interesting for recruiters.

As a recruiting expert tell us about your three favorite sourcing tools?

I’m actually going to recommend some productivity tools — the most important tool category of any time pressured recruiter!

• AutoText Expander chrome plugin – save common messages you tend to write as a keyboard shortcut and watch your efficiency go through the roof
• TextMechanic – Recruiters need to get good at cleaning up bad data – this is one of the easiest tools to learn and use.
• Calend.ly – get rid of email chain chasing appointment slots, a total waste of time!

What makes a person a good recruiter?

You know what? I don’t think there is a ‘type’. There are so many different types of personality that have had success in recruiting, often in very idiosyncratic ways. Let a hundred flowers bloom a wise man once said. I kind of agree with that when it comes to recruiters!

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