EP 20: Building a Global TA Engine: Lessons from Remote’s Hyper-Growth

[00:00:00] Anastasia: It has been fascinating to see how much you can do when you have the entire world as your talent pool. I think in the first 12 months, we hired more than 750 team members, so it truly felt like flying the plane while we were still building it. I think that I’ve seen this positive change in terms of moving away from just quantity and the number of hires and “butts in seats” that you put in place, but being very intentional about the quality.

We introduced a TA Digest bot that is powered by AI, which means that whenever there is an important announcement, no matter in which channel it is — it could be company-related, it could be specific to the People team or to the Talent Acquisition team — we just react with a special emoji, which is “Key Digest.”

And so, we basically introduced AI interviews as the first step of the hiring process, and after that, the recruiter would step in and interview the top-scoring candidates. It was a really interesting and successful one, and I believe that this is something that we will continue experimenting with.

[00:01:15] Adriaan: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of The Leaders in Talent Podcast. And I’m very happy that today Anastasia is with me. Anastasia and I go way back, even to the period when she was still at GitLab. But currently, Anastasia is the Director of TA at Remote — one of the fastest-growing unicorn companies in the world. Before Remote, Anastasia built and led the global sourcing team at GitLab, while previously driving recruiting initiatives at Fortune 500 companies like Uber and Dell.

Anastasia is extremely passionate about people and how technology can bring positive change for people, and this is driving her career in recruitment. Anastasia, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me today.

[00:02:01] Anastasia: Thank you. Thanks for having me. After all this time that we’ve known each other, finally we are recording this together.

[00:02:08] Adriaan: I know, I know, I know. And the funny thing is that you are in EMEA, and I’m in New York, right? What are the odds that we can’t do this in person? And that is well planned. Yeah, I know — well planned — but I’m happy that we get a chance to speak.

What’s actually fascinating is that at our first TRC — The Recruitment Conference — that we organize at the beginning of November each year in Amsterdam, our first speaker, our main opening speaker, was Job, the founder of Remote.com. And I remember at the time Remote was still like a 100–150 person company, but blowing up — super rapidly growing. Now, many years later, things look very different.

Can you paint a little bit of a picture: what Remote does, how you’re set up, and what hiring looks like in a fully remote company like Remote.com?

[00:02:58] Anastasia: Yeah, that’s a great question, and I love going back this memory lane because, yeah, I joined Remote when the company was 200 people. Now, four years after, we are almost at the 2,000-people mark. I have a funny feeling that my team has something to do with that. So, it’s been an interesting time. We know how to keep ourselves busy at Remote.

Speaking about the nature of our business, I would say that we position ourselves as an HR platform. So, basically, we help companies to hire, manage, and pay their team members no matter where they are in the world.

And when it comes to the Talent Acquisition team, we truly live the mission that we have at Remote. We always say that talent is everywhere, while opportunity is not. So when we were building the team at Remote, we were really focusing on making sure that we tap into the global talent network and bring individuals from all different locations on board.

Right now, we have team members in more than 80 countries, and we hire remotely. That’s quite impressive. I would say that something that makes our hiring very different from traditional approaches is that usually, whenever we open a role, we never know where we will end up hiring a person. So it’s always a crazy gamble that we do. And definitely, there are some roles that have time-zone requirements or are more location-specific — for example, in Sales or Customer Support — but those are still the minority of the roles we are working on.

And yeah, it’s been fascinating to see how much you can do when you have the entire world as your talent pool.

[00:04:49] Adriaan: I have so many questions. It’s funny — we wrote down a couple of questions to ask; Remote is a fully remote company, right? Not many at your size. So many of the things you’ve been able to overcome — I am personally super curious how you’ve been able to solve them. So let’s go back through memory lane. Employee number 200 — currently 10x that. Tell me about that journey.

How do you build your team? How do you decide where you want to have what people? How have you been able to have a strong, cohesive culture while scaling up? Tell me more — so many questions.

[00:05:28] Anastasia: Yeah. I would say that it was definitely an interesting moment in time because when I joined Remote, we were about to announce our Series C round of funding. Crazy growth. I think in the first 12 months, we hired more than 750 team members — so it truly felt like flying the plane while you were still building it.

I would say that the first year for me as a leader was all about building the foundations of the team. It was definitely hiring for my own team while the business was also growing and scaling. And I think it’s always a hard choice you need to make as a leader — whether you run and hire for the business or first you staff your team. And we were really trying to do this in parallel.

So the first year was all about building the foundations and the processes that were designed to support us and help us move further and help us scale.

After that, the next years were more about finding efficiencies and investing into building out our own tech stack and really taking hiring to the next level.

Looking back at the past four years, I think that I’ve seen this positive change in terms of moving away from just quantity and the number of hires and “butts in seats,” but being very intentional about the quality you bring to the team and really raising and keeping the hiring bar very high.

When it comes to the setup of my team, all the recruiters are aligned to support a specific division. There is no limitation defined by their location. So, let’s say you’re a Go-To-Market recruiter — you work across all the GTM roles no matter where they are.

[00:08:45] Adriaan: Across all time zones, too?

[00:08:47] Anastasia: In the majority of cases, yes. It’s funny that you used GTM as the example — maybe it wasn’t ideal, because indeed in Sales, for example, we have roles in Americas, EMEA, and APAC. There, of course, we apply common sense — it makes sense to have a Canada-based recruiter work on Americas hiring just to give more availability to candidates and hiring managers.

But in the majority of cases, recruiters are hiring across all territories, across all time zones, no matter where they are based. The key goal for me when building the team was to almost mimic the business that we have.

APAC is definitely a smaller market for us, so currently we have only one team member there, but the majority of recruiters are based either in Europe or in the Americas time zones. And it works really well when it comes to collaborating with our hiring teams.

[00:09:50] Adriaan: On one hand, it’s amazing that you can hire anywhere in the world. But we’ve also experienced that it’s overwhelming for a variety of reasons. One: whenever we post a job online and there’s no time-zone or location specified, the level of inbound — the number of candidates — is overwhelming. We get over a thousand applicants within the first 24 hours. And unfortunately 95 percent are not the right fit.

Then secondly, having people in different time zones — communication and alignment became very difficult. I’m doing this call at 7am. Today we have a company meeting — West Coast has theirs at 7am, and we have people in Asia dialling in at 9 or 10pm.

How have you seen that, and have you done anything differently now compared to the beginning?

[00:09:50] Anastasia: So starting from the last point — the time-zone differences — the way we organize all the get-togethers, whether team calls or social time, is very intentional. In a remote environment, you must intentionally create avenues for people to connect outside of day-to-day responsibilities.

For live meetings, we rotate our schedules. So this week we have an APAC/EMEA-friendly call, and two weeks after it’s Americas/EMEA.

And we are very big on a culture of documentation. There is nothing that is said in a meeting that you can’t find anywhere. We take exhaustive notes. Now AI is helping with that. We post all call summaries to the team channel. Async remote work is the way our company operates. We rely heavily on Notion — our go-to place for all process questions — and Slack is our main communication channel.

Something that we recently introduced, which we find really helpful, is an AI TA Digest bot. Whenever there is an announcement — company-related or People-team-related or TA-related — we react with a special emoji: TA Digest.

Then on Friday, the team receives an AI-summarized digest of all things that happened throughout the week. It has been really appreciated because of the noise and Slack fatigue they’re facing. At the end of the week, you can read the most important updates — usually just one line per update — with a hyperlink to dive deeper.

This helps us stay up to date and ensures one channel of communication that every team member checks.

Regarding application volume — you mentioned seeing 1,000 applications in 24 hours. You’re not alone.

[00:12:52] Adriaan: A few months ago, we were hiring for a Senior Tech Recruiter. Within 24 hours we passed 700 applications.

[00:13:04] Anastasia: We receive — our average — 30,000 applications per month, which pretty much aligns with what you shared. So yes, it’s definitely about filtering through the noise sometimes.

Right now we are experimenting a lot with AI tools designed to help us. We recently ran an experiment with AI interviews as the first step of the hiring process, and after that the recruiter interviews the top-scoring candidates. It was really interesting and successful. I believe we will continue experimenting with it.

[00:14:05] Adriaan: I remember us talking previously — is that something you built yourselves or an external tool?

[00:14:11] Anastasia: We are relying on something that we are developing ourselves. I believe we’ll be sharing more in the upcoming months. But as always, dog-fooding is key at Remote. You first need to try it yourself. It brings nice pressure to internal teams — if you are frustrated with your own product, you really want to fix it and do better.

So we always test everything we build ourselves within the People team. AI interviews are very interesting. We’re yet to see the impact — how it influences capacity planning for the TA team. I’m curious to see the results over the next few months.

Going back to application volume — we are very big on application questions and definitely on knockout questions that auto-reject candidates. We use questions to create certain categories and “buckets” within applications. In the majority of cases, recruiters go and source within the applications we received rather than traditionally clicking through one by one.

[00:15:49] Adriaan: Interesting. You also mentioned the culture and social elements within Remote. I remember when you spoke four years ago at TRC — there were specific channels for hobbies, board games, etc. It felt very voluntary — if you join, you join — but not mandatory. And time-zone wise, it won’t always line up.

How is that now, and what do you do in your team for people to feel connected to each other and the wider organization?

[00:16:33] Anastasia: Great question. You can never force people into socializing — whether in-office or remote. When it comes to building social connections, as you said, at the company level we have tons of social channels — pets, parents, hobbies, gaming, etc. I can’t even give you the number — there are plenty — and you’ll always find something that resonates with you.

Speaking about intentionality — during the standard onboarding process at Remote, one of the days is fully dedicated to socializing. Out of the five days, you spend one exploring social channels, connecting with strangers. That’s one of the biggest challenges of remote work: you talk to people on your team, but connecting with someone from Accounting if you’re in Recruiting might be challenging.

One of the onboarding days is specifically for connecting with Remoters outside your direct team. It helps build the habit and normalizes that talking to strangers within the company is helpful and beneficial.

Within my team — recruiters are on calls all day long, so seeing another call on your calendar may not be something you want. We have our monthly social call, in two time zones, to connect and talk about random things. We also spend some time at the end of team calls on social activities — the host proposes the topic or game.

But something I truly enjoy is our Friday Slack bot — it’s almost like a stand-up bot, but focused on personal things. We just share one highlight, one lowlight of the week, and what we call “random personal sharing.”

That’s my favorite Friday routine — going through the sharings. Over time, people get comfortable with sharing — sometimes oversharing — and it gives a glimpse into their lives and what’s meaningful to them. It sparks discussions, recommendations, and creates belonging without forcing it.

[00:20:34] Adriaan: For the monthly socials — how do you structure that? Prompts or free flow?

[00:20:42] Anastasia: For the monthly social — unstructured. And I think that’s where we found our joy. We tried different approaches — prompts, topics — but sometimes you just want relaxed, chill time to talk about random stuff. Maybe someone steps out of a disastrous call and starts venting — and we share recruiting stories.

For the biweekly small social activities, those are structured and led by prompts — book recommendations, this or that, etc. But for the big session — it’s free flow, and that’s most enjoyable.

[00:22:25] Adriaan: And during onboarding — “connect with strangers” — how is that set up?

[00:22:37] Anastasia: We have a Slack channel — I think we call it “Do Not Be Strangers.” If you join this channel, you’ll be paired with other team members. Sometimes your manager or onboarding buddy (everyone gets one) guides you to specific teams, channels, or people.

I remember once someone on my team was paired with Job, our CEO. They were wondering how to prep for that coffee chat. But it was a very nice one — though something I would stress about.

[00:23:29] Adriaan: Switching gears — hiring globally. How do you decide where to hire? Are there specific countries you favor? And second — compensation. What’s the strategy?

[00:24:00] Anastasia: When it comes to time-zone requirements, that’s only for certain roles. There might be a language requirement attached. But it doesn’t mean we go to specific countries. For example, in Sales, we have Dutch speakers based in Spain — same time zone, speak the language, but enjoy sunny life in Spain. It works perfectly for us — and it resonates with the mission of allowing people to work where they feel they belong.

When it comes to hiring strategy, whenever we can, we try to make the most of our global approach when it comes to cost efficiencies — because this can really make long-term financial impact. When hiring for a global role, we start with what we call “cost-efficient locations” — without discriminating people from other geographies. It’s truly about hiring the best no matter where they are.

Regarding pay philosophy — we use a geo-tiering approach, meaning every country has a certain tier defining pay. It’s based on cost of living, cost of labor, and market rates. It ensures we are competitive in each market, and we also look at compensation from a value perspective.

Beyond salary, we benchmark total rewards — mandatory benefits and competitive benefits in each location. Countries differ significantly, so we look holistically at what a team member receives and aim to keep the value added similar.

[00:27:26] Adriaan: What happens if someone relocates — say, from a lower-cost country to a higher-cost country? Do you automatically adjust salary?

[00:27:53] Anastasia: There is a general policy — and it took us years to get there. Four years ago, relocations were free-flow. But relocation is complex — dealing with authorities, and we underestimated the actual cost to the business.

So we put guardrails — you need to be working at Remote for at least two years. We saw cases where people joined Remote to relocate countries — and that’s not the motivation we want.

We look at performance, whether supported, and whether it makes sense to the business. We never ask anyone to relocate — our locations are employee-driven, not company-driven.

Compensation is always adjusted to the new location. If you’re moving from San Francisco to Cape Town, there is no way compensation remains US-level. These are not always pleasant discussions, but we are big on treating everyone fairly. It comes down to internal equity.

[00:30:32] Adriaan: We’re experiencing this now — people moving. Those conversations are harder when they go from higher-paid to lower-paid countries. We had to articulate this well so people understand why and how.

[00:31:03] Anastasia: Exactly. Relocations, especially employee-driven ones, always have emotion attached. Hard to put aside personal stories. Implementing policies — even though needed — I’m never a big fan.

[00:31:25] Adriaan: You’ve worked in remote companies for years. What’s the biggest misconception people have about working fully remote?

[00:31:40] Anastasia: The biggest misconception is that when you are working remotely, you’re lying on a beach sipping a cocktail and replying to a few emails. I think remote work is as demanding as in-office work — defined by company culture and stage of growth.

Remote is a very intense environment. When it comes to hiring, we set expectations early. We talk a lot about high performance — and we truly live it. It takes discipline and autonomy. There is no work buddy next to you. We don’t care about work hours — we care about output and results.

For me, it’s no different from what you expect from other fast-paced companies — remote or hybrid. But the misconception is still there — people imagine you on a beach occasionally replying to emails.

[00:33:46] Adriaan: Yeah — I can echo that. Absolute pleasure. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Always a pleasure talking to you. So many great lessons on scaling a fully remote company.

What’s the best way for people to connect with you — LinkedIn?

[00:34:11] Anastasia: LinkedIn. I must admit my inbox is very busy, but I’m trying to keep up. So yes, LinkedIn would be best.

[00:34:20] Adriaan: Anything exciting happening within Remote that we should be looking out for?

[00:34:29] Anastasia: We have a bunch of exciting updates lined up — keep an eye on Remote and everything we’ll be sharing publicly.

[00:34:36] Adriaan: Amazing. Anastasia, thank you so much.

Anastasia: Thank you.