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How Tesla lost a brand advocate through poor recruiting practices
- Thread starter SteveTheTech
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- Tesla Inc.
bonnie
I play a nice person on twitter.
I didn't see it as whining. I saw it as a thoughtful post pointing out a problem. Obviously those at Tesla agreed, since they have reached out and talked to him directly. It appears that it was well-handled on both the OP and Tesla's side.
I've hired lots of people over the years and it is unacceptable for a job candidate to be treated as an irrelevant commodity. If they get the job and come on board, they never fully shake that feeling of being unimportant.
Flip side (and I'll name the company here because it's such an awesome/sad story) - I went to work for Intel & one of my first new hires was a regulatory engineer, responsible for emissions & immunity testing. Hard to find people really good in that area and I was excited that we did. She accepted the job offer and on her first day, driving to the office, she sadly was in a car accident that ended her life.
Even though she'd never set foot in the office as an employee, I called HR to see if we could at least send flowers or something. Much to my surprise, HR had not only already been in contact with the family, they were picking up all expenses for the memorial service.
Some large companies have figured out how to do HR. That story (plus others) cemented my loyalty the years that I worked there. Sure, there were missteps in recruiting and hiring. But those were one offs.
racerwes
New Member
Steve...consider yourself fortunate to learn these things before becoming an employee.
Side note: There is currently a hiring freeze through Q2.
Side note: There is currently a hiring freeze through Q2.
At tesla? That doesn't bode well for the new service center opening up a few miles away from me.
What's your source for this claim?
(I don't normally want to sound so skeptical, but this is an unusual first post.)
dirkhh
Middle-aged Member
At Tesla? I'd be very surprised to hear that. Given the growth path that they are projecting they cannot afford not to hire people for four months.
Do you have a source you can quote?
cpa
Active Member
From all the comments concerning this topic and like the one shared by Bonnie concerning the tragedy of a new hire, this just reinforces in my mind that we tend to appreciate and value the common courtesies in life. We do not necessarily have to agree or change our personal viewpoints, but we all like to be treated fairly and with a modicum of respect.
A company can make the best or the biggest or the fastest product, but in the end, they must treat their "off-balance sheet" assets like customers, employees and prospective employees with decency and respect. More goodwill is generated by word-of-mouth than any other way.
A company can make the best or the biggest or the fastest product, but in the end, they must treat their "off-balance sheet" assets like customers, employees and prospective employees with decency and respect. More goodwill is generated by word-of-mouth than any other way.
True, and let's also remember, that it is a personal responsibility to treat everyone with decency and respect. A company can foster good behavior and discipline bad... but even in the best company, there will be instances of bad behavior. If we had chronic complaints that indicated Tesla has a cultural issue here, then they need to pay attention and fix it. An isolated incident or two does not necessarily mean an endemic Tesla problem... Not that it should be disregarded in any way... but let's not judge the company until/unless there is a trend.
And let's also remember that we are only hearing one side of this story. There are two sides to every story like this.
dirkhh
Middle-aged Member
+1
And my interactions with Tesla so far have been amazing. I had Jerome respond to emails, I had excellent interactions with people in their server team when I mistakenly flooded their server with >50k requests per second... I was even able to argue with the trade in team and got them to see my argument and adjust the trade in offer for my car (after being told that they never negotiate and simply set the price). So many small moments where I was impressed with them, including of course every single interaction in the local service center.
Of course every bad interaction is one too many - but I don't think we have seen anything resembling a negative trend...
racerwes
New Member
Trusted employees/friends of a local service center.
Been a member here for a long time, contractually obligated to not participate until recently.
Been a member here for a long time, contractually obligated to not participate until recently.
I'd accept that local service centers can't expand headcount, but we know that Tesla is opening new service centers, such as Dedham MA, so I cannot accept that there is a firm wide hiring freeze. Take a look at the job postings on the website. Why advertise posts that you cannot hire people for?
racerwes
New Member
While anything is possible with regard to new service centers/galleries and the timing of their openings, the information I was given (which is solid) could shed a little light on the lack of communication the original poster is experiencing. Speculate at will based on job postings and pending retail development but the bottom line is that service centers that need talent and equipment are not to expect it through Q2. If you look at the recent financial performance of the company along with the announcement of massive CAPEX spending in the coming future this makes perfect sense. From a financial point of view it is actually somewhat responsible especially in the eyes of stockholders like me.
I sympathize with his post simply because as much as Tesla is my favorite company in the world simply because i concluded that electric vehicles were the trajectory for future transportation some 11 years ago (there's a funny story about that :smile
and i completely understand the pressure from upper level management with the rapid expansion, but I have heard countless Anecdotals of human resources or managers not actively communicating status updates as to whether or not potential applicants are moving forward with the next process. In their defense,Tesla works at a capacity and speed significantly more so than every other company in the world right now and it is difficult. Yet there isn't an excuse because a 65 character copy and paste email takes no more than 45 Seconds to communicate. My family jumped into managing restaurants in 2009 just after the financial collapse of 2008 which globally tracked more loss in gdp than the great recession.(Levering capital allocation with the downward pressure on prices considering the wealth implosion by much of america).
Buying 3 restaurants over 3 years and rehabilitate them over the past 5 years and as the principle manager while on scholarship and going to school full-time and eventually doubling the initial investment while my parents worked full time in their respective field bore tremendous responsibility (Im only 23 graduated dual major). Even at the height of the madness i was always sure to schedule myself reminders to simply inform prospective candidates of a yes or no within a reasonable time frame,no longer than if i was looking for a job. So yes at 2 am i would respond to inquires for the next day knowing the restaurants open at 6, 8 and 9 am respectively and at most i had 6 hours to sleep, it was for good reason. I never wanted to miss the opportunity to hire an excellent Sous Chef, Linemen/women, Manager or Register representative simply because of being lackadaisical. To be more direct "Top talent" doesn't wait or scrounge around for jobs. It is a necessity for not just Tesla but every Hr Department to follow up thoroughly with any potential candidates that they would like to have on the team. Inevitably it will cost more in acquisition and a loss in human capital that could be of tremendous asset in the early stages of corporate growth. 4 Months out from selling the the last investment i have garned some 6+ Interviews and 3 TOE's fresh out of college in which i have yet to hear a peep from Tesla in which i submitted my application first. Im not in despair i am confident that i will work with Tesla in the future long term around 5 years out due to my current job offers.
Just to speak to a teeny tiny bit on how much i love Tesla/Elon i gave a presentation 2 years prior to the model S debut in Business and leadership using the pre production silver/blue model s photos, to classmates on campus touting the benefits and rockstar technical merits of electric vehicles and now everyone on campus refers to me as the "tesla kid" which i wear proudly :love:, Eerily similar to hyper-loop i gave a presentation on the future of transportation in an environmental science seminar as a final project in 2011.
and i completely understand the pressure from upper level management with the rapid expansion, but I have heard countless Anecdotals of human resources or managers not actively communicating status updates as to whether or not potential applicants are moving forward with the next process. In their defense,Tesla works at a capacity and speed significantly more so than every other company in the world right now and it is difficult. Yet there isn't an excuse because a 65 character copy and paste email takes no more than 45 Seconds to communicate. My family jumped into managing restaurants in 2009 just after the financial collapse of 2008 which globally tracked more loss in gdp than the great recession.(Levering capital allocation with the downward pressure on prices considering the wealth implosion by much of america). Buying 3 restaurants over 3 years and rehabilitate them over the past 5 years and as the principle manager while on scholarship and going to school full-time and eventually doubling the initial investment while my parents worked full time in their respective field bore tremendous responsibility (Im only 23 graduated dual major). Even at the height of the madness i was always sure to schedule myself reminders to simply inform prospective candidates of a yes or no within a reasonable time frame,no longer than if i was looking for a job. So yes at 2 am i would respond to inquires for the next day knowing the restaurants open at 6, 8 and 9 am respectively and at most i had 6 hours to sleep, it was for good reason. I never wanted to miss the opportunity to hire an excellent Sous Chef, Linemen/women, Manager or Register representative simply because of being lackadaisical. To be more direct "Top talent" doesn't wait or scrounge around for jobs. It is a necessity for not just Tesla but every Hr Department to follow up thoroughly with any potential candidates that they would like to have on the team. Inevitably it will cost more in acquisition and a loss in human capital that could be of tremendous asset in the early stages of corporate growth. 4 Months out from selling the the last investment i have garned some 6+ Interviews and 3 TOE's fresh out of college in which i have yet to hear a peep from Tesla in which i submitted my application first. Im not in despair i am confident that i will work with Tesla in the future long term around 5 years out due to my current job offers.
Just to speak to a teeny tiny bit on how much i love Tesla/Elon i gave a presentation 2 years prior to the model S debut in Business and leadership using the pre production silver/blue model s photos, to classmates on campus touting the benefits and rockstar technical merits of electric vehicles and now everyone on campus refers to me as the "tesla kid" which i wear proudly :love:, Eerily similar to hyper-loop i gave a presentation on the future of transportation in an environmental science seminar as a final project in 2011.
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dirkhh
Middle-aged Member
Umm, and a quick search at their website https://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/careers/searchResults.jsp?org=TESLA&cws=1 just gave me 1015 open jobs listed...
So yeah, I agree. Unlikely to be correct.
Edited to add: while you get to this link above from Careers | Tesla Motors I just realized that this isn't on Tesla's site but on a third party site, just linked from Tesla...
Pretty standard where the applicant tracking system, Taleo in this case) (owned by Oracle), hosts the search and application process.
Zzzz...
Member
Setting # of opened positions apart aren't it is somewhat worrying that Tesla do not deploy Superchargers at the pace it used to? I personally do not worry about long term(EVs will win) but short term? May be TSLA is trying to get nice GAAP number this quarter? But this do not makes sense since Q1 is most slow Q for EVs and solar in general.
The SCs are all installed by contractors, not employees. Tesla has gone from 334 energized SC sites on Jan. 1 to over 400 today, so I think any concern about slowed SC installs to boost Q1 results are misplaced.
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