{"id":594,"date":"2019-11-20T19:07:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arc.dev\/employer-blog\/?p=594"},"modified":"2025-06-11T12:27:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T04:27:44","slug":"help-scouts-hiring-process-megan-chinburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arc.dev\/employer-blog\/help-scouts-hiring-process-megan-chinburg\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look Into Help Scout&#8217;s Hiring Process: Megan Chinburg of Help Scout"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>What I believe is different at Help Scout and having a remote first company is that there\u2019s a lot of energy that we put into being successful at doing asynchronous work. So there\u2019s a lot of diligence around being clear and concise with your communication, loop closing and most importantly, trust.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today on Outside The Valley we have Megan Chinburg, VP of Engineering at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpscout.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Help Scout<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We talked about Help Scout\u2019s hiring and onboarding process from start to finish, with a discussion around the \u201cvalue screening\u201d stage, and how Help Scout makes sure to reduce biases in the interview process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Megan also shared the one thing that Help Scout did in the early days that made them grow solidly, and her top two pieces of advice for engineering managers everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re enjoying the podcast, please consider leaving a review on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/outside-the-valley\/id1481937930?ign-mpt=uo%3D4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">iTunes<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The podcast is also available on your favourite players:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/outside-the-valley\/id1481937930?ign-mpt=uo%3D4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">iTunes<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy50cmFuc2lzdG9yLmZtL291dHNpZGUtdGhlLXZhbGxleQ%3D%3D&hl=en-TW\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Google Podcast<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/castro.fm\/podcast\/5a2c6978-e8e7-4f02-a47d-ca3474778329\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Castro<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/overcast.fm\/itunes1481937930\/outside-the-valley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Overcast<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/5qzXgcHzieXIRtXglSmUE8?si=rMPobXZtQwSU0wQ3grTAxA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.stitcher.com\/podcast\/outside-the-valley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stitcher<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/player.fm\/series\/outside-the-valley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Player.fm<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/tunein.com\/podcasts\/Technology-Podcasts\/Outside-The-Valley-p1251704\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tune In<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Follow us on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/arcdotdev\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0to get updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Looking for top talent fast? See how <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/arc.dev\/\">Arc<\/a><em> can help you:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u26a1\ufe0f Find developers, designers, marketers, and more<br>\u26a1\ufe0f Freelance or full-time remote + fully vetted<\/em><em><br>\u26a1\ufe0f Save up to 80% with global hires<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arc.dev\"><strong>Hire top talent with Arc risk-free \u2192<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"topics-also-covered-on-the-podcast-episode%3A\">Topics also covered on the podcast episode:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>02:31 \u2014 How Megan started her engineering leadership career<\/li><li>08:40 \u2014 The differences between managing a remote vs co-located engineering team<\/li><li>18:06 \u2014 How Help Scout screens for value alignment and technical competence<\/li><li>35:38 \u2014 Help Scout\u2019s onboarding process for new hire<\/li><li>40:10 \u2014 Why documentation is important when onboarding new engineer<\/li><li>41:00 \u2014 One of the best things Help Scout did early on to grow a solid remote team<\/li><li>43:35 \u2014 How Megan sees her responsibilities as a VP of Engineering<\/li><li>49:30 \u2014 Top two pieces of advice Megan would give to other engineering managers<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"mentioned-resources%3A\">Mentioned resources:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpscout.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Help Scout<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nickfrancis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nick Francis<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dennyswindle\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Denny Swindle<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/arc.dev\/blog\/podcast-ep5-angellist-andreas-klinger-7wk48zsyiu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Andreas Klinger: Normalizing Hiring Outside Silicon Valley<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/angel.co\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">AngelList<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/basecamp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Basecamp<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpscout.com\/blog\/how-to-hire-remote\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Help Scout\u2019s 12 Step Remote Hiring Process<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/leahisknobler\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Leah Knobler<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpscout.com\/blog\/remote-job-interview-best-practices\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">How to Knock Your Virtual Job Interview Out of the Park<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/helpscout\/status\/654058032624726017\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Help Scout \u201cFika\u201d<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/arc.dev\/blog\/podcast-ep1-taxjar-mark-faggiano-7r9ktngad2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mark Faggiano: Creating Remote Employee Culture<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/taxjarmark?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mark Faggiano<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/engineering.helpscout.com\/i-me-we-us-creating-team-ownership-with-better-language-e508a7d9cfdb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">I, Me, We, Us \u2013 Creating team ownership with better language<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/chinburg\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Megan\u2019s LinkedIn<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.helpscout.com\/blog\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Help Scout Blog<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"full-transcript%3A\">Full transcript:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Hello world, welcome to another episode of \u201cOutside the Valley,\u201d the podcast where we interview remote startup leaders, remote work advocates and CEOs of distributed teams who thrive outside of Silicon Valley. They share insight on what works and what doesn\u2019t so you can learn to do it right. \u201cOutside the Valley\u201d is brought to you by Arc, the remote hiring platform that helps you to hire remote software engineers and teams easily. I\u2019m your host Jovian Gautama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today on \u201cOutside the Valley,\u201d we have Megan Chinburg, the VP of engineering at Help Scout. We talked about Help Scout\u2019s hiring and onboarding process from start to finish with a specific discussion around how Help Scout screens for value alignment and culture fit and also how Help Scout make sure to reduce biases in the interview process. Megan also shared the one thing that Help Scout did in the early days that made them grow solidly as a remote team and her top advice for engineering managers everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, we are 11 episodes strong and if you liked the show, we\u2019d totally appreciate it if you can go to iTunes and leave us a review, hopefully, five-star. If you have any feedback about the content of the podcast or if you have any recommendation for guests, feel free to hit me up on email at jovian@arc.dev. It\u2019s jovian@arc.dev. Without further ado, here\u2019s Megan Chinburg of Help Scout. Here we go. Hello Megan, welcome to show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Hi, Jovian, glad to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Awesome. So Megan, so let\u2019s start off with yourself first and where are you based now and can you share a bit about your background and work experience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, of course. Right now, I\u2019m living in Turin, Italy. I am originally from Oregon. I was in Portland, Oregon for about 11 years. After getting the job with Help Scout, I decided to try international living. So I\u2019m living here in Italy now and I love it. In terms of my background and work experience, I kind of got a late start in tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My first job in tech was as a junior in college, I worked for the tech support at my university. We supported students, staff, faculty with anything that they needed. I had recently switched my major from violin performance to randomly taking classes that sparked my interest. So I stumbled into a C++ class and instantly fell in love with programming. And from there I decided I needed to get a job in this realm, and so\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0What sparked like, I need to get a job, is what sparked in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, exactly. And so I tracked down the folks who ran the computing center and basically banged on their door in the dark basement and said like, \u201cHey, please give me a job.\u201d They were like, \u201cWho are you?\u201d And I finally convinced them to give me an interview and it went terrible from the get-go. Like they were asking me questions I had no answers to and they asked me like, \u201cWell, what Mac OS are you most familiar with?\u201d And my answer was, \u201cWhat does OS mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But eventually, like I convinced them that I could learn anything and they gave me the job probably to get me to shut up and go away. And really like those, I do partially credit the folks who hired me there for a lot of the success in my career. I learned a ton about Linux and Unix system administration, networking. It kind of kickstarted everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And from there I got my degree in computer science. I moved on to a small startup and I was doing kind of like, you know, low level or I guess, you know, junior entry-level coding there. And after a couple of months, the CEO came and talked to me and was like, \u201cHey, I want you to start a new team here at the company. We need a white box QA team.\u201d Like, okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At that point, like I just graduated college and my leadership background consisted of a three-month stint as a coach for a fifth-grade girl\u2019s soccer team and I was currently the captain of the local rugby team, so it was definitely trial by fire. But I found that I really loved building teams and coaching and so this was a great start to my career in engineering leadership. I\u2019ve realized that I have always enjoyed empowering a team of brilliant folks just to be the best that they can be. So it just sort of fits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From there, I moved on to another startup this time in Portland, Oregon, a Jive software. I joined them when they were about 35 people and I moved from individual contributor pretty quickly to manager of the QA team and built out a pretty large organization there. After about four years, I moved on to another startup, even smaller. My previous boss had started a new company and he had tapped me to be the VP of engineering. It was a bit of a leap from QA manager to VPE. But the CEO believed in me and it\u2019s kind of all I needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there we grew the team from 6 to 17 engineers. I was there for about three years. That company eventually had a successful exit. And prior to that, I did leave after sort of I\u2019d gotten them to a point where, you know, they could run on their own. I needed to take a break from tech and I decided to take a brief hiatus and pursue a career as a professional mountain biker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0So a slightly different twist, but I really enjoyed the break. And eventually, my desire to get back and work with engineers outweighed my desire to win bike races. And at that point, a long-term mentor of mine introduced me to Nick Francis and Denny Swindle, two of the cofounders at Help Scout. And it was seriously love at first video chat. I was enamored of the product and the company, the culture, it just really spoke directly to my heart. So I\u2019ve now been at Help Scout for three and a half years and just recently in April stepped into the VPE role and I\u2019ve really enjoyed the honor of working in this capacity with this great team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0So Help Scout is your first remote role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0First remote-first role. In every company I\u2019ve been at, there\u2019s been some aspect of remoteness, you know, working with teams overseas, working with individual contributors in different countries. But this is the first remote-first company. Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. I just wanna say just before I forget. You mentioned that you\u2019re super grateful to those first companies that give you the break because they\u2019re crossing you. And I\u2019ve found there\u2019s some parallel in Help Scout when it comes to hiring remote workers. So from as far as I know, right, even though Help Scout prefer to hire someone that has remote experience, but it\u2019s not really a deal-breaker because a lot of companies, a lot of remote companies, they actually put like heavy emphasis on you have to have an extensive experience in working remotely before, almost a deal-breaker for them if you don\u2019t have that. So I just found that like, probably interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, so Help Scout basically, yeah, if you don\u2019t have a lot of remote experience is kind of fine, then we will help you do that. So yeah, I just want to say this out loud before I forgot. So in your previous companies, you already work with remote engineering teams, am I correct?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0So at that time, was there any\u2026did you encounter anything new in terms of, you know, managing engineer\u2019s status on the same\u2026not on the same location, or I\u2019m not sure if there\u2019s on the same time zone or not. Is there anything unique that, oh, it\u2019s like this and then I need to learn something new?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Sure. I mean, working with remote teams, there\u2019s always similarities and parallels. The biggest one being, there\u2019s always a communication time lag, you know, between different time zones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>What I believe is different at Help Scout and having a remote first company is that there\u2019s a lot of energy that we put into being successful at doing asynchronous work. So there\u2019s a lot of diligence around being clear and concise with your communication, loop closing and most importantly, trust.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>So this challenge of communication, time lag and asynchronicity definitely makes us all better communicators, but it also means that it takes longer to get things done or make large decisions. And I think that, you know, this isn\u2019t a challenge that any remote company or any people with remote teams needs to overcome, but the fact that Help Scout was remote-first from the beginning, it\u2019s just part of our DNA and it\u2019s just infused in everything that we do. And I think that that is something that it gives us a unique leg up in surmounting this challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Awesome. I\u2019d love to get back to asynchronous communication topic a bit. So about yourself, so Help Scout is your remote first remote role. So personally, what positive impacts has working remotely brings to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Sure. I mean there\u2019s the obvious positive benefits of having a lot of work-life flexibility, control over how I spend my hours significantly, reduce commute times. I have a five-minute walk to my co-working space. And you know, provided I can be online when my team needs me, I can really work from anywhere in the world. So it opens up a lot of travel that I wouldn\u2019t necessarily have access to if I had to work in an office. There\u2019s also like those are the obvious benefits that I think anyone would have. Like if you got to work from home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>But one thing that I find most delightful is that working remotely, like we work remotely but we still work with people. And it takes significantly more energy to cultivate and maintain positive, trusting, successful relationships, especially when we interact over Slack the majority of the time. So remote work has made me, and I think a lot of people that at Help Scout a better communicator and a better listener and definitely more thoughtful and empathetic. And so, I mean, how often do we get to say that, that like, my job makes me a better human?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Not often. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0That seems pretty special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. That\u2019s interesting. Because this is the first time I heard about this, like the fact that you have to be better communicator or a more empathetic person in your remote job actually makes you a better empathetic person as a whole. And okay, let\u2019s get to the negative side of this. Like, I mean, remote work is not always, you know, butterflies and rainbows, right? Any challenges that you\u2019ve found either when you first started and then you overcame it or even right now that you are still struggling with?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Beyond the communication challenge\u2026and I mean, there\u2019s like, just simple communication challenge of asynchronicity, but also like, as we\u2019ve grown, you know, the number, the points of communication increase so, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>So that means that it really requires a lot of intention around aligning people with goals, giving them the right information to make good decisions, and also just leaning so hard into transparency and trust.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I would say really communication ends up being the biggest challenge. And I could imagine that people who are not used to that sort of transparency and trust because you don\u2019t need it as much in a co-located office. It could be a challenge to build those sort of relationships when a new person joins, but we do tend to hire for people who have high degree of empathy and humility. So generally, that doesn\u2019t end up being a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. It\u2019s funny that you mentioned about intention and being deliberate about stuff. So I had this chat with Andreas Klinger, the head of remote of AngelList, and he was also mentioning the same thing. It\u2019s when it comes to engineering management in remote team, you have to very intentional when it comes to communication and you have to maximize or supporting every team members to be able to do great things by themselves, you know, like, but not isolate them, but it\u2019s more like, like you mentioned, as the way the team grows, there\u2019s a lot of different points of communication. And how to decrease dependencies, you know, so they can move forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So yeah, this is something that comes up a lot in this podcast, like being deliberate and in a way, you kind of see your company as a product, you know, and what is wrong and how I can improve and iterate or what can we test on this? I wanna move on about Help Scout as a company. You already touched this a little bit. How would you describe Help Scout culture?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Sure. Our culture from the beginning has been built on three values: helpfulness, ownership and excellence. And this hasn\u2019t changed since the beginning of the company. These principles are woven to the fabric of every practice at Help Scout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>We hire people specifically for whom these values resonate and we hold each other accountable to practicing them in our day-to-day work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I would say like beyond everything, this is what enables us to trust each other and have the transparency and vulnerability that is required in order to make remote work work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Exactly. And how many people is in Help Scout now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Right now, and I\u2019m sure as soon as I say this it\u2019s gonna change, but last week we crossed over the 100-person threshold. We are now at 101. Yeah. Actually, didn\u2019t know that until I looked this morning. I thought we were still under 100. And of that 101, roughly 65 are responsible for designing and building the products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0So there might be a bit of overlap with my previous question about Help Scout\u2019s culture, but I want to ask you about the culture within the engineering and product team itself. Maybe something that is pretty different from your previous jobs or what you see from other companies. But really specifically proc and that\u2019s something that you can say, oh, only Help Scout engineering teams has this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Sure. I mean I don\u2019t wanna be pretentious and say that like we only do this because I\u2019m sure lots of other companies are focused on these things as well. But I will say that one thing that I\u2019ve noticed unique about Help Scout compared to other companies I\u2019ve worked at is our team, what we do, everything is built on a culture of quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s a quote from Nick that I like to share with all of our new hires. I give a little presentation about the engineering and product team and it goes basically, \u201cWhen prioritizing for quality, cost and speed, I want to put quality first, quality second and cost third.\u201d So it\u2019s a little bit tongue-in-cheek because obviously we do care about timely product releases for our customers, but speed is never the star of any conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>So quality comes first before everything. We simply just wanna build products that customers love, that delight them, and we have a very healthy test NPR culture across the engineering team in order to support this value.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. Yeah, it\u2019s interesting because this is just my hypothesis because I feel like remote companies has, I mean most remote companies, they actually optimize for the health of the team members, the health and or balance of the team member. It\u2019s not about growing exponentially bigger. Like most of remote companies. I mean this might change a bit in the near future. But if you\u2019re familiar with company like Basecamp, right, it\u2019s about just building the best thing for the customers and not about growing 10X from year over year. So I personally think this is an approach that every company should have, not only remote companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0So I wanted to hone in a bit on Help Scout\u2019s hiring process and onboarding process for new hires. Can you share a bit about Help Scout\u2019s hiring process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, absolutely. As with everything that we do at Help Scout, we\u2019re never satisfied with a current process. And so even though I think that our hiring process is probably the best I\u2019ve ever seen, we\u2019re always trying to make it better and higher so that we can make the process as good as possible for the people doing the hiring, but also for the candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>We tend to hire people with very high integrity. And so, we want them to come away from the process feeling like this met their expectations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I would say that one place that listeners could go to, you read about our process is this wonderful blog post written by Leah Knobler. She is on our people ops team and is very involved with the engineering hiring process. So I recommend reading that to anyone who wants to better understand our process. And while you\u2019re there, there\u2019s another blog post written by a former team member about how to nail your first remote job interview. She leaves a lot of tips and tricks in there that would probably impress us if you practice them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But generally, I do think our process is unique. I have the honor of doing the last interview for all of our engineers in the entire process. And so I always ask them, \u201cWhat did you think about our hiring team and the interview process?\u201d And without fail, every time people say something along the lines of, this is the best interview experience I\u2019ve ever had. I recently had a candidate who\u2019s now a Help Scout employee tell me, \u201cThis is the interview process against which all future interview processes will be judged.\u201d I felt like that was a win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in summary, we spend a lot of energy sourcing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>So we care a lot about diversity and inclusion on the engineering team, but also across our organization. And so we put a lot of better energy into direct outreach for underrepresented folks in tech.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>And then once we\u2019ve done all of the sourcing that we feel good about, we post the job and we start letting the resumes come in. As you can imagine, Help Scout is a very popular place to wanna work. And so we tend to get hundreds of resumes for any application. I believe our customer support team, whenever we open a position there, we actually get on the multiple thousands of resumes for every position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it is hard to do the resume review and it is very competitive. But once we go through the resume review, you know, we pick the people that we wanna talk to. We move them through a multistep interview process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>First, we have a value-add screen where we\u2019re really looking for the qualities I talked about before, helpfulness, ownership, empathy, humility, those sort of values.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. How do you screen for that? Sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s a good question. I\u2019m always changing, you know, trying to make these questions better, but I\u2019m looking for self-reflective folks, so I\u2019ll ask questions that might seem very unrelated to a job. But what I\u2019m trying to get at is how do you think, how do you see yourself in the world? How do you relate to other people? I want to hire people who think outside themselves and think about other people first who default to helpfulness. So most of the questions are focused on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. That is super interesting. Any particular answer that astonish you in a positive way? Of course, that, yeah, this was pretty good or something that just very memorable on that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, that\u2019s a good question. I would say there are a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>One of my favorite things to answer or to ask is: when was the last time you had a positive effect on someone?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>So if someone doesn\u2019t have a good answer or if someone\u2019s like, \u201cOh, I don\u2019t know,\u201d then I\u2019m definitely raising eyebrows. But most people have a really good answer and it\u2019s usually something along the lines of mentoring a teammate or, you know, some conversation that they had with a more junior person, ended up changing that person\u2019s career and life path and they didn\u2019t realize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it\u2019s that combination answer of like humility plus helpfulness, but also having a large impact. Those are the key qualities that I think are gonna make someone successful at Help Scout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0All right. So that\u2019s like this first screening process on the value screening. Sorry, any other questions that you previously asked that you think is pretty quirky in a way or pretty special?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0I mean, I don\u2019t wanna give away all the secrets to nailing an interview, but let\u2019s see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0I see, I can imagine like a lot of listeners that is like Help Scout career page in front of them and then just scribble down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, exactly. I mean I\u2019m trying to think of one that would\u2019ve had like a really unique answer off the top of my head. But nothing\u2019s really coming to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0That is not a problem. I really like the question about when was the last time you being helpful to someone. I think the best is, you\u2019re not like, it\u2019s not that we have low self-esteem, like, \u201cOh, I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t think what I did was really helpful.\u201d But you also don\u2019t want people who, \u201cYeah, I did this and I do that,\u201d like in a really arrogant manner, kind of one, the people that, \u201cYes, I did this and I am aware that it\u2019s helpful,\u201d but not really over the top about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it\u2019s kind of like you mentioned this, self-reflective, right? And I\u2019m very aware of this and I don\u2019t really think it\u2019s a big deal for me, like genuine thing is not a deal. I just find it interesting because everyone is talking about hiring for culture fit, right? Whatever that means. I just founded that this value screening is basically just not a step forward when it comes to specific word is culture fit. And I think this question really embodies it. Okay. So yeah, we got value screening and then what\u2019s next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. So the next step is a tech screen. And this is an interview, like whether if it\u2019s on the engineering team, then the interview is with an engineer. It is definitely technical. We\u2019re asking questions like about their actual knowledge and decisions that they\u2019ve made and real things that they\u2019ve done and accomplished in their career. And trying to get at answering the question, could they do the job?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>One piece of it, one thing that we\u2019ve added to the interview process recently that I like is prior to this tech screen, we send out a piece of code. It\u2019s not very long, it\u2019s just a little snippet of code and we ask them to be prepared to do a live code review during the interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>So one, we get to see like how well do they, you know, kind of pick apart a piece of code, which hats off to the people who created the snippet of code. It\u2019s got a lot of things wrong with it. But we\u2019re also looking to see like how thoughtful are they, how do they deliver feedback because I think being able to deliver a good feedback in a code review that is helpful, critical, but also not rude is definitely a skill. And then following that, then they just go through the regular technical screen with that engineer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Live code review, super interesting because I can definitely see that for every listener here. You probably need to, if we\u2019re building a remote engineering team, probably wants to apply that because again, it\u2019s doubled down on remote teams is all about communication angle. And if you\u2019re in a live code review, you can feel, \u201cHey, this guy is, you know, not really good at communicating what he meant,\u201d then he or she, it can be like disaster down the road. You mind me asking like for the next, so after the life code review thing, what was the technical screening looks like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Sure. There\u2019s a handful of questions directly related to the technology that we\u2019re hiring for, you know, whether it\u2019s Java, or PHP or JavaScript or, you know, operations. And then there\u2019s a handful of questions around, I guess you could call them behaviors. You know, given an example of this problem that you would have to solve, how have you gone about this in the past? What sort of decisions, what brought you to that decision?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So kind of unpacking how someone addresses a large problem, how do they break it down? And how do they approach the development process for something large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Got it. What\u2019s the timeline for the technical review, sorry, the technical screening itself? Is it like two weeks, three weeks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, from start to finish, we do try to get the whole interview process done within two weeks. The value screen is, you know, 45 minutes to an hour. Tech screen is 45 minutes to an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the tech screen, we do what we call a logistics call where the candidate gets on the phone with someone from our people ops team and we go through just a handful of logistics, you know, benefits package, discussions around salary. But it\u2019s an interview as well. Our people ops team definitely has a say in who we bring on. And then following that call, we do send candidates project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, sorry. So basically, the conversation about benefits and salary and whatnot is before the real project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0So that is quite unique. I need to do more\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah. I\u2019m not actually sure. I think we\u2019d really care a lot about our candidate\u2019s time. We do not want to waste it. And so, you know, if we have discussions with them around benefits and salaries and kind of like what it means to work remotely on this team and they\u2019re like, \u201cNope, this is not gonna work for me,\u201d fine. We save them the time of doing the project. So that\u2019s why we put it before the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then the project itself, we\u2019ve iterated on it a lot over the years. The goal is to figure out, you know, what can the candidate actually do, what\u2019s the code that they can write, the quality of it and avoid\u2026we want to avoid them spending a lot of time on project setup. So we try to give them something that is, you know, foundationally set so that they can just start coding. And then we do ask them to limit their time. Like we don\u2019t want someone to spend more than eight hours on the project. And so if they don\u2019t complete it in eight hours, then we\u2019d like them to write up a, you know, a description of like, okay, well, you\u2019re gonna hand this off to a coworker or you\u2019re gonna complete this later. Like what else would you do? Like what are the next steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, okay. That\u2019s interesting. So this is like an eight hours project. Okay. I think yeah, I was going to ask like if there\u2019s any, like on this project, was there any requirement that, you know, you need to communicate often with the team members, like to get the information, but I feel like based on what you said, like on this eight hours, I really like that approach. Like, if you don\u2019t finish this and then what else would you do next. I think that\u2019s a really smart way to kind of like condensate, make everything compact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Exactly. Because we wanna be sensitive to people\u2019s time. We know that not everybody has an entire day to spend on a project. We do offer, I mean it\u2019s definitely not a full day\u2019s worth of pay, but we do offer a gift. I believe it\u2019s a gift card to Amazon for their time. I\u2019m gonna have to check on that because we\u2019ve changed like what we actually give and so it\u2019s some monetary amount that we do give as a thank you for spending this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I realized that it definitely does not cover someone\u2019s actual like billable hours, but it\u2019s a gesture and we do try to be as sensitive as possible to, you know, people putting time into this application process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay. Awesome. So let\u2019s say the project is finished, and how do you assess it? Is there any particular process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, there is. We have two people who will independently do the code review on the project. They have not been involved in the interview process so far, so they don\u2019t know who the candidate is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>We anonymize the project, so we\u2019ve got candidate one, two, three, etc. So they don\u2019t know the name of the candidate, anything about the candidate. They\u2019re just looking at the code and they\u2019re assessing it on several different factors like, you know, following good standards and practices, documentation tests, solving the problem, that sort of thing. And then we compile all of their scores and we end up with a weighted score at the end of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>And that\u2019s the candidate score. It\u2019s definitely not the, like, it\u2019s just one piece of data that we use to make decisions. And so each piece of the process, you have value add, tech screen, project and then, you know, goes into the decision of whether we hire the candidate after the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes, people just submit like amazing projects and we don\u2019t have any follow-up, but sometimes we wanna ask the candidate why they made certain decisions. What they would do better if they had more time. So we\u2019ll schedule a call to do a follow-up walkthrough of the project, which is always really insightful, because we get to see how do they take feedback, you know, how is their thought process in decision making? So we find that part very valuable as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I think the candidates appreciate it, too, because they likely feel that eight hours was not enough, you know, to deliver what they want to deliver. So it gives them a chance to talk through it. Following that if we move them forward, we just have one final interview usually it\u2019s with the head of the department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I do the final interview for engineering. And the heads of each department typically do the final interview for the other candidates. And my interview is mostly to test the process. Like I wanna hear how they did and what they think of the process, etc. Like usually, by the time I talk to a candidate, you know, the team has mostly made a decision about whether they wanna hire them or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. So just going back a little bit, so if we\u2019re talking about the whole, from, you know, the first test to the offer, so you mentioned two weeks. Is it like from first contact to offer made or?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0No. That\u2019s usually a much longer. From the time someone submits their resume to the time they actually like get the offer can be several weeks. Our median, sorry, our average is pretty long, but that\u2019s because we have a couple positions that are really hard to fill and so they kind of throw off our average. But we try to get people through, you know, in less than a month, you know, from end to end and sometimes that runs over just given the difficulty of some positions to fill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0So less than a month. But is this something that you guys have been working on, like the duration of making a hire? Like since you first joined, because I remember probably, just imagining, because I remember Nick Francis, your CEO, just wrote about like a fantastic article about how to build a remote team. And I remember like this one part of them he\u2019s basically saying, yeah, it can take like one or two months to hire and then they accept that just because it\u2019s really not easy, you know, for remote to find the right fit. And now you mentioned that you aim to finish all of this within a month. So are you guys, oh, sorry, are you all working on that collectively?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0I should clarify because sometimes, yes, it will take two months. Sometimes it takes three months to find the right hire and that\u2019s okay. In terms of like two weeks to a month, that number is more of a commitment to the candidate. So if we want to get them, you know, a yes or a no as soon as possible. And if we think it\u2019s gonna be a no, we wanna let them know sooner than later because we don\u2019t want to waste their time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So yes, it might take three months, two months, three months to find a candidate, but we like to get the candidate the information they need as soon as possible so that we don\u2019t waste any of their time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, it makes sense because you\u2019re also hiring for quality. Right. The same mindset when you\u2019re hiring for product. And then was it ever happened that, because your hiring process takes a bit longer, you know, than the normal conventional company and then the candidates will just bounce off in the middle of the process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0It has happened for sure. It\u2019s part of the process and we accept that there\u2019s lots of wonderful humans out there that we can work with. So I don\u2019t wring my hands too much about losing a great candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0And just like you mentioned, optimize for quality, not for speed, same as people. Okay. Now, let\u2019s say someone is hired and what\u2019s next for the person? I guess it\u2019s onboarding now. What does the Help Scout\u2019s onboarding looks like?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, first we ask them what computer they would like so that they can have a choice over, you know, what machine they\u2019re working on. Most of our engineers work on Macs, but we do have a handful who like to work on Linux. So that\u2019s an option. We get their computer ordered. We get them a flight to Boston and they have their first week in-person in our Boston office, which has\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0You have a physical office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0We do have. We actually have two physical offices. One is in Boston and one is in Boulder. So the candidates come to Boston for the first week of onboarding. They spend a lot of time talking to people from our people ops team. We have three people on the people ops team that work there. And so they\u2019re able to get a lot of in-face, in-person time with them to walk through culture, process, values, all the good things that they need to know and everything is very well organized into Trello cards. So every new hire has a handful of Trello cards they need to get through in order to complete the whole onboarding process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0So this new hire now it\u2019s in Boston now and then there\u2019s just a list of tasks that he or she has to do. How long is this onboarding thing going on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0So the in-person onboarding is one week. Typically, on the second week, they are gonna be working with our support team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>So everybody at Help Scout does a week of in the queue support talking to our customers, learning our voice, learning how the application works, learning how we want to talk to customers. Everyone finds it one of the most valuable parts of the onboarding process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I was gonna say we also practice whole company support and so this sets people up to be able to participate in support as they go on with their time at Help Scout. Generally, everyone in the company spends roughly two hours a week working in the support queue, talking to our customers and answering questions about the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Is there any, you know, some kind of buddy system or something?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Indeed, there is, we have what we call a work best friend for everybody. And so this is someone usually on their team, but sometimes, you know, if people are in the same town together, we might pair them up. But this is just someone that a new person can go to with any and every question. Like, I don\u2019t understand where I should find this information, or is it okay if I post in the, you know, the big on-topic channel with everybody in it in Slack. So just kind of like help them feel comfortable moving through their onboarding process. And so that\u2019s one piece of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also have a very strong practice of holding\u00a0<em>fika<\/em>. If you\u2019re not familiar with\u00a0<em>fika<\/em>, it is a Swedish word that means get coffee with a friend and talk. So we have a automated bot in Slack that pairs you up each month with a different person at the company. And so we encourage folks to set up a 30-minute chat with this person and talk about anything other than work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So starting that from the beginning gives you a really good chance to meet a lot of your team members and feel comfortable joining the team. And of course, people are allowed to, you know, reach out and say, \u201cHey, can I\u00a0<em>fika<\/em>?\u201d At any time. You don\u2019t have to wait for the bot to pair you. So this is also, I think a big part of onboarding that kind of keeps going throughout your time at Help Scout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Was there any like some particular vivid or memories about challenges or problems that you find during either the hiring process or the onboarding process or any other process that related to hiring new remote team members that you feel like, \u201cOh crap, this didn\u2019t work,\u201d and then either you or someone from the team saying that, \u201cHey, this gotta change?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Because everyone is so thoughtful, and kind of this company, we don\u2019t tend to run into like massive problems like that because we do try to think through our process pretty well and make sure that our practice is aligned with our values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, definitely, as we grew, if we had a lot of situations where we\u2019re like, \u201cOh, crap, that\u2019s not documented anywhere.\u201d Or, \u201cOoh, we totally forgot to tell you about that.\u201d You know, probably it comes up more often, you know, with new engineers stumbling through like old parts of the codebase. You know, things that are like entrenched institutional knowledge that maybe were never documented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Legacy code and whatnot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we definitely run into things like that, but we do have very active support system. When new engineers joined the team, you know, they have someone on their team that\u2019s helping kind of explain the history. And our CTO always goes through history and architectural deep dive with every new engineer. So, you know, we try to account for things that come up like that as best we can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Yeah, that\u2019s amazing. I guess also like having a people ops can also kind of help because there\u2019s this one person that kind of owns like, if there\u2019s a problem, even though it\u2019s within the engineering team and then this person, and then this can take notes and probably give some advice for improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Yep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>And I would say one of the best things that Help Scout did as we grew, actually before we even really grew, was to over-optimize for people ops.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>So we had three people on the people ops team when the company was still less than 40 people, which I think a lot of startups do differently, right? They usually like HR people ops is kind of like, \u201cOh, we\u2019re at 50 people now,\u201d or \u201cOh, you know, we have enough people that we need to hire this person.\u201d We did that from the get go and it was an invaluable decision because it did give support to new people and it allowed us to, you know, really embed the culture across the team as we grew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. Yeah. And also, this is the thing about remote companies, like it\u2019s about the people, this sounds super clich\u00e9, but the other company that I found out also put a lot of emphasis on people ops or explain employee experience is TaxJar. So I chat on the very first episode of \u201cOutside the Valley.\u201d It was Mark Faggiano, CEO of TaxJar. TaxJar is a similar size with Help Scout or at a hundred plus people. And what I found really fascinating is that Mark as the CEO, he personally onboarded every new hire until it hits like 20 something people. Like it super intrigued because usually at this early kind of stage, like founders will either focus on product or focus on sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Mark personally onboarded like 20 new hires for training and then he realizes, \u201cOh, I cannot do this like anymore because, you know, capacity and whatnot.\u201d And then he hired up some people ops, one or two, in which around like 30 or 40 something. So I just found it fascinating and I felt like it only happened at remote teams. I\u2019m probably wrong. I\u2019m probably wrong actually. But yeah. Cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And next thing. Okay. We\u2019ll talk about the hiring process and the onboarding. So let\u2019s talk about the internal, like whole team specifically engineering and product team. So Megan, as a VP of engineer, let\u2019s get back to the basics, how would you describe your responsibilities and does being remote somehow makes it more challenging to finish just responsible, not necessarily like super challenging, but it\u2019s like the difficulty is slightly higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I would say the bottom line, I am responsible for enabling people to do their best work. That means I am facilitating a team that is empowered and focused, making the right decisions. I feel successful if everyone understands what their priorities are, has the right access to information and people to make decisions and to get their job done.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>And lastly, probably most importantly, I want the team to feel like they can do their best work at Help Scout. I want them to feel satisfied with the work they\u2019re doing. I want them to feel like they\u2019re growing their career and they enjoy working on our team. There\u2019s obviously hundreds of details that go into making that a reality, but at the end of the day, that\u2019s my responsibility is, you know, empowering the team to do their job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I think in a remote environment, in terms of challenge, I think it takes a lot of empathy and good listening and good communication. And there\u2019s nothing specifically unique about remote. I think just, that is what allows leaders to work with their teams and empower them to do their best work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I can say that, you know, in remote, the challenge is you must be intentional with all those things. Because anytime you make a mistake, it\u2019s a little bit harder to recover because you have to, you know, set up a video call. You can\u2019t just like grab someone and, you know, go for a walk and chat about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But yeah, so there\u2019s some intentional work that needs to be done there. But otherwise, I would say being able to build that trust between, you know, me and my team and between each of the team members really goes a long way to overcoming those challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. What are some workflow or processes that you think is either quite unique to you or Help Scout as a company that you think makes you take for the engineering team or the product team? It can be anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, you know, I can always go back to our values, right? Helpfulness, ownership, excellence. It is really infused in everything we do. And this is very clear with how we get work done on the engineering team. You know, from test cases to documentation and code reviews, working with customers. We put a lot of care into everything we do and we really honor the craft of software development. Again, I don\u2019t wanna come off as pretentious, but you know, we consider it very important, what we do, and that practice of excellence really, it\u2019s an organic fallout of our passion to take care with everything that we create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, you mentioned about code review. So, when I was doing my research, this article written by one of your team members. Okay. Let me just out read out the title. I, Me, We, Us: Creating Team Ownership with Better Language. Can you share a bit more about, especially code reviews, right, if you\u2019re literally in a way \u201ccriticizing\u201d other people\u2019s work? How did this come about? Like when did you decide or your team decide, \u201cHey, we need to write an article about this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0The engineer who wrote the article, Craig, has been with us for many years. He was one of the original engineers on the team and he wanted to write a blog post and this was near and dear to his heart and most of the engineers on the team. And so it seemed like a good topic for blog posts, this practice of using, you know, inclusive language in removing the first person when we talk and when we leave comments on code reviews has been a practice of ours since the beginning. So he felt it was important to share and I\u2019m glad that he did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I think if we all could move through the digital life with a bit more empathy and inclusiveness, that would be a better place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I did forget one piece of our onboarding that has been really helpful in helping us work better as a remote team. When everybody is hired, they go through this process of generating an Arc profile? A-R-C, this is a company that does sort of behavioral pattern analysis. They ask us a bunch of questions that seem relatively like innocuous and then they come up with this gigantic description of our personality that is scarily accurate. And then we share those with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And one of the things that comes out of it is we learn who on our team is a contextual communicator, who just wants the information and then wants to move on. And that definitely helps us be more thoughtful and mindful when we communicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0So Megan, so you are the first VP of engineering in this \u201cOutside the Valley\u201d podcast. So any piece of advice that you will give to engineering managers or everybody around the world when it comes to helping your team to do their best work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0I think if I had to boil it down to one thing, it would be, I guess this is kind of two things, be vulnerable and trust. I think the more trust you have between yourself and your team members, the easier it is for anything to get done. And that trust comes from being vulnerable and, you know, bringing your full self to work and seeing everyone that you work with as full humans with lives outside of, you know, the Slack room. And yeah, I think that\u2019s kind of at the heart of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes. Awesome. So yeah, I think that\u2019s a good end to this episode. Megan, thank you so much for the time today. I really learned a lot and I really hope the audience can learn a thing or two from this conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Thank you, Jovian, this was great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. And how can anyone find you online or where can anyone read more about Help Scout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0Definitely on our blog. There is a ton of wonderful content there that\u2019s not just about Help Scout. So I would highly recommend digging through that. In terms of finding me, probably the easiest is LinkedIn. I\u2019m horrible at Twitter and yeah, I think that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0Okay, awesome. Again, Megan, thanks so much for your time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Megan:<\/strong>\u00a0You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jovian:<\/strong>\u00a0And that\u2019s it for another episode of \u201cOutside the Valley,\u201d brought to you by Arc. We created this podcast with the hope that in each episode, you can learn something new from other remote startup people. So if you have any feedback or suggestions, please don\u2019t hesitate to reach out to me at jovian@arc.dev. It\u2019s jovian@arc.dev. Or you can find us on twitter at @arcdotdev. See you next week with another episode of \u201cOutside the Valley\u201d and ciao.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>You can also try <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/arc.dev\/\">Arc<\/a><em>, your<\/em><em> shortcut to the world\u2019s best remote talent:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u26a1\ufe0f Access 450,000 top developers, designers, and marketers <br>\u26a1\ufe0f <em>Vetted and ready to interview<\/em><br>\u26a1\ufe0f Freelance or full-time<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arc.dev\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/arc.dev\"><strong>Try Arc and hire top talent now \u2192<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Help Scout VP of Engineering Megan Chinburg shared about Help Scout&#8217;s hiring process, company culture, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thought-leadership"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Look Into Help Scout&#039;s Hiring Process: Megan Chinburg of Help Scout<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Help Scout VP of Engineering Megan Chinburg shared about Help Scout&#039;s hiring process, company culture, and more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/arc.dev\/employer-blog\/help-scouts-hiring-process-megan-chinburg\/\" \/>\n<meta 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