Abhik Pramanik

Culture

Kyra ran our first holiday book exchange, and it's been a hit with the team (to the point people mentioned it in our 1:1s). I added some photos from our recent meetups.


Ben added some improvements to our Slack guidelines. Sylvie added a way for us to learn more about each other in our weekly standup. We've been using both for over a month, and the team has been enjoying the changes!


How we use efficient and deliberate communication at Ashby to keep Slack notifications and meetings to a minimum, focus 36h out of a 40h week, and have fun along the way 😀.


How Thoughtful Communication Makes Us Unreasonably Productive

aronow.io

Astronomer

Attentive

Aven

Benchling

Boulevard

Brightline brings virtual behavioral and mental health care to kids and teens, with a focus on also supporting families. They have no waitlists, provide customized plans, and work with families to track progress together.

Brightline

Brigit

Calm

Census

Clever

CloudTrucks

Coder is a remote infrastructure development platform that makes working with code easier than ever. Coder enables everyone from industry rookies to experts to develop code faster than ever before, using templatized starting points and ultra-secure workspaces.

Coder

Cohere

Cointracker

Color

Costanoa Ventures

Decimal

Deel is payroll for modern business. No matter where you're hiring, Deel helps customers run payroll, supporting 150+ countries with hundreds of worldwide experts. Deel helps their customers know that hiring, paying, and managing stayed compliant and easy in their all-in-one platform.

Deel

Deepnote

Deliveroo

Docker

Dune

Duolingo

EightSleep is more than a mattress company - it's a suite of products devoted to sleep fitness. Their goal is to make sure that your sleep is as high-performing as you are, helping you meet and exceed the bar for excellence in your waking life. Athletes and scientists alike love their range of highly customizable sleep tech because it helps them live healthier.

EightSleep

Format One

FullStory

Galileo

Ironclad

Juni

Linear

Marqeta is a modern card issuing platform dedicated to empowering innovators to launch their products to the world. They have over a decade of experience as a trusted, high-tech solution for builders who need simple, scalable payment solutions.

Marqeta

Mastodon

Modern Treasury

Monte Carlo is a Series D data observability company helping its customers accelerate the adoption of data to eliminate downtime. 

Monte Carlo

Multiverse

Notion is for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. The app blends everyday work apps into one. It serves as an all-in-one workspace for note-taking, task management, and project management. 

Notion

Compensation software that offers 5,000+ companies clarity for every pay decision.

OpenComp

Opendoor

Plato

PostHog

PostHog is an open source analytics platform. Their product is used by product, engineering, and marketing teams to understand user behavior, including product analytics, session recording, user paths, a/b testing, heatmaps, and more. The suite, founded through Y Combinator in 2020, has since been installed by over 10,000 companies.

Pragma Platform

Pulley

Quora

Ramp

Readme

Replit

Retool

Scratchpad

Sequoia

Sift

Snyk

Sourcegraph

Stytch

Talentful

Treasury Prime

VanMoof is a Dutch e-bike company creating stylish, feature-rich city bikes. They're the fastest growing bike company in the world, with an active community in over 50 cities worldwide.

VanMoof

Vantage

Veev

Verkada

WeTransfer

Zippin

Engineering

Recruiting

Product

Halden Pfearsen

If you want to know who is applying to work at your company, or if you’d like to cultivate a more diverse and inclusive workforce, you’ll want to track demographic data. In order to start tracking that data, you need to ask some questions first. That’s where a lot of people hesitate; how can you know that you’re asking the right things in the right ways to get the information you want while being as inclusive as possible?  
  
If that sounds familiar, this guide will help you figure out what to ask and why, to take the stress out of designing diversity surveys for your candidates.  
  
Note that, for this article, we’re focusing on candidate and hiring diversity surveys, rather than surveys for current employees, which is a topic for another day. We’ll be focusing on candidate diversity surveys. We’ll cover reasons to track candidate diversity, the best things to ask (and how to ask them), and briefly touch on how to track your results.  
  
If you want to be better about tracking diversity information, but don’t know what to ask, this article is for you.  

## Why to track candidate diversity

An inclusive, equitable, and diverse workplace starts well before an employee signs on. It starts as far back as how hiring is approached and thought of by those in leadership. It moves into how you write job descriptions and where you share them. By the time someone applies you already have a lot of moving pieces that impact how that person is likely to identify.  
  
Tracking diversity at the hiring stage can tell you who is applying to work at your company and where your organization is falling short of market representation, as well as revealing the stages of hiring that help or hurt your diversity goals.  
  
If you want to make your company into a richly diverse place to work, tracking DEI data is the most informative place to begin.  

![an example of an EEOC survey](/images/ashby-eeoc.png)
  
You may already be using [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission](https://eeocdata.org/) or EEOC data, either because you’re required to or because it’s a good base from which to start tracking candidate diversity data. And it _is_ a good base! But the EEOC survey set up can present as non-inclusive to applicants. Additionally, you may want more detail, or to track an element of identity that the EEOC questions don’t cover.  

## What not to ask

The knowledge that there are questions you simply cannot ask a candidate may hold you back from running a diversity survey. Asking questions that could lead to discrimination is illegal in an interview. However, surveying for inclusiveness is critical to building a diverse workplace, and even required in some cases. Following the [The Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures](https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/clearing-up-misconceptions-uniform-guidelines-employee-selection-procedures.aspx) is a good way to avoid any issues as you design your survey.  
  
**It’s important to make sure these questions are always voluntary for the candidates.** They should never be required in order to submit an application. They must also be uniformly asked and not related to a specific role in any way. Adding a note to the survey-taker that these questions are for furthering your DEI strategy, and will have no impact on their application, is a good idea.  
  
Additionally, ensure that this data is anonymized to those who are involved with hiring your candidates. This data is great to collect, but only if it’s being used _after_ all hiring decisions are made. It must never impact the choice itself, even accidentally.  
  
Check your hiring software to see what your options are for working with EEOC and diversity survey data. Ashby captures this data in such a way that it cannot be viewed on an individual basis, but can be analyzed in aggregate. You won’t be able to see the data per person, even accidentally, but generating reports and analyzing your DEI survey data overall is extremely easy.  
  
Once you’re confidant in your approach, the way you ask your questions is the next important consideration.  

## What data do you need?

To figure out what questions you’ll ask, pull back and look at your goals. Are you looking to improve where and how you source candidates? Are you hoping to uncover unconscious biases in your hiring process? Set your goal first, then consider which metrics that can help you make progress towards that goal.  
  
For instance, if you’re working to improve diversity via candidate sourcing, you may want to track which candidates come from which sources. So you may ask some questions about how they identify as well as how they heard about the job. Then you’d see if those things have a correlation. Frequently, inbound applications and referrals skew less diverse, but being able to identify that trend helps you show that you need to expand where you source new candidates.  
  

> Keep in mind that there are many types of diversity. Racial and ethnic identity, gender identity, LGBTQIA status, disability status, and veteran status are some elements you might want to consider, and you may have other elements of identity that you’d like to track instead or in addition.

  
It’s much more effective (and easier!) to tailor your questions to your goals than vise versa.  
  
While clear single-choice answer options will keep your data the cleanest, open-response boxes will give you the most inclusive answers. We suggest merging both. **In academic and scientific surveys, the best practice is to ask participants to click on the best multiple choice answer _and_ specify further in a write-in box.** This helps you get both clean data and a full spectrum of answers, including ones you may not have considered.  
  
![survey setup in ashby](/images/success-diversity-survey.png)  
  
In Ashby, diversity surveys are completely customizable. You can start with EEOC questions or skip right to devising your own. And you can customize the type of question to match the information you need, so don’t feel pressure to stick to multiple choice ranges.  
  

## Metrics and effective tracking

As you focus on improving your recruiting pipeline’s diversity, you may see other metrics go down a bit. This is a temporary issue, and the focus shift will be worth it in the long run, but you’ll want to make sure all your key stakeholders are aware of this up front and are ready to see those metrics shift.  
  
We talk more about that in the next article in this series, [How to Track and Improve Your DEI Hiring Metrics](/blog/recruiting/track-and-improve-dei-metrics), so read that next if you’d like to know how to watch the results and make them better over time.  
  
Think about how you want to send these surveys to your candidates. A big risk to optional surveys is survey fatigue, when a participant is tired from filling out multiple surveys or answering more questions than they have the energy to pay attention to. Survey fatigue can result in incomplete or skewed data.  
  
Ashby offers very powerful tools for survey delivery automation - you aren’t stuck giving them to candidates after they’ve filled out the rest of your application. Instead, you’re free to collect the data at a later stage in the interview process. Check to see if this is an option for you.  
  

## Designing for your hiring future

It's ok to feel nervous about pursuing DEI and wanting to get it right, but following these best practices will help to alleviate stress and uncertainty while seeking to build out a more diverse and inclusive team.  
  
Once you feel like you know what to ask, head over to [How to Track and Improve Your DEI Hiring Metrics](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/track-and-improve-dei-metrics) to learn more about tracking and analyzing what you’ve learned.  
  
Liked this article? [Subscribe to our blog](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/#newsletter-form) for more.

How can you know that you're asking the right questions to get the DEI survey data you need? Ashby has combined best practices from recruiting and scientific data collection to help you perfect your applicant diversity surveys.

How To Design a Better Diversity Survey

Benjamin Encz

[SourceWhale](https://sourcewhale.com/) and Ashby are teaming up! SourceWhale is an engagement platform that allows you to automate the tasks you do every day, freeing up your time and attention for the more human parts of recruiting.

![sourcewhale’s logo](/images/sourcewhalelogo.webp)

With Ashby and SourceWhale, you can source talent with multi-channel sequencing, diversity insights, and AI analytics.

If you’d like to learn more, visit [Ashby University](https://www.notion.so/SourceWhale-1c11df53e4aa4052bc22db3d0110f79b).


Read on to learn more about Ashby's partnership with SourceWhale!

Ashby Has Partnered with SourceWhale

There was a time when Ted Kleber was making upwards of 75 cold calls every single day just to make a hire.  

“It was a lot of trial and error!” he told Ashby when we sat down with him. “You were given a job description and a hiring partner. And then you had to learn your own way through it.” He had to rely on his candidates themselves to learn what his own interview questions meant. “A lot of it was on the phone with candidates. I would ask them to explain to me what they did and, thankfully, I met a lot of people who were kind enough to take the time to talk to this junior recruiter to explain, _this is what I do and this is what you mean when you're asking these questions_.”  

As introductions to the world of recruiting go, it was a rough one. But it did inform Ted’s hiring philosophy. “You just have to not take it personally if you have a rough call or somebody decides not to take the job you're offering. Because it isn't personal. But that said, it pays dividends to be collaborative and to have a kind and honest approach.”  

These days, Ted isn’t making nearly so many cold calls. He’s the senior manager of recruiting operations over at [Nylas](https://www.nylas.com/), boasting a well-earned decade in the technical recruiting field working for companies like Uber and Twilio.  

“About two and a half years ago, I made the transition into recruiting operations,” Ted said. “And I've been doing that since. At Nylas, the role is kind of unique and it's taking shape even as I'm developing it.”  

## **What recruiting operations** **_is_**

If most recruiters wear a lot of different hats, Ted has a particularly impressive collection. “Part of it is ensuring that our systems are configured correctly and that we have the right tools and software and systems. Another part of it is data analytics and understanding what activities are going on and, and how we’re setting goals. Another piece of it is enablement and training materials, so some of that is building training for the business. That’s so they can feel comfortable with our recruiting process and internal enablement materials, so that the recruiters know how to use our different tools, where to go for resources, and how to interact with the business expectations. There's also an element of employer brand; I'm also helping with our presence on social media like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, AngelList, and contributing a little bit to like our website and making sure that our job posts are all branded correctly.”  

Though Ted is building out a team to help shoulder the work, he mentions that these duties came up organically. “I went in expecting one thing and I just found all these opportunities to expand and help out. That's one of the nice things about being part of a startup, you can really set whatever scope you want to.”  

> "As a recruiter, your focus is really on your client. And there's all this other stuff that needs to be thought of, set up, and built to support that function."

That’s an unsurprising function of the recruiting operations role. In a space so new, definition is a constantly evolving work in progress.  

“Recruiting is such an interesting division to be in in HR, and the recruiting operations function as a subset of that is an emerging space,” said Ted. “If you think about the traditional roles in recruiting, you have recruiters who need to focus on their clients and focus on making good hires for the business. But then there's all this other activity that has to go into recruiting. Think about it as a business within a business. You need to be a bit of a marketer, a bit of a lawyer, a bit of a sales person. On top of that you need to understand how to build a good experience for your candidates and for your hiring managers. As a recruiter, your focus is really on your client. And there's all this other stuff that needs to be thought of, set up, and built to support that function. Recruiting operations can be a bit of a catchall, but it's also an opportunity to fill in those gaps.”  

## **Startup recruiting isn’t made for robots**

After years recruiting for startups, Ted had noticed that many of them repeatedly miss the same marks when it comes to their talent acquisition. “There are some startups that do an incredible job at hiring,” he clarified. But of those that don’t, the mistakes are often the same: “Recognizing the value add that recruiting is.”  

He went on thoughtfully. “I've talked to some chief people officers that have said, _well, I just sort of view recruiting as an overhead_. _It's a function that consumes money from the business and I don't see the value in it._ But then there's other startups where hiring is _so_ critical! People call it the war for talent, and I don't know if I love that term. But the competition in recruiting to get the right people into the role is so key at the startup baseline. If they don't have the right people that has that cascading effect of not being able to ship products or hit revenue goals and eventually that doesn't look great to investors or the public.”  

It’s two very different approaches to hiring that impact everything else a startup is.  

“What really good startups do,” he said, “is recognize the value that recruiting brings as a function to grow the business. They also see a recruiter as being a strategic partner to hiring managers and helping them do organization planning. Everything from thinking about their job profiles and how to build a healthy team, to what the right balance of senior to junior folks on the team is.”  

It isn’t enough to hire often, Ted pointed out. It requires dedicated, full-time thought. “These good startups don't just stop at a job profile, they need an individual that's gonna contribute in a certain way. Recruiters can add a lot of value by taking that consultative approach and influencing that manager to think about the best long-term growth strategy for their team. That goes into headcount, planning, and conversations that they have with HR and finance to stick to that strategy.”  

>"What really good startups do is recognize the value that recruiting brings as a function to grow the business. They also see a recruiter as being a strategic partner to hiring managers and helping them do organization planning."

“I think the best startups view recruiting as more than just _I turn the crank, I point my recruiter coin-operated robot, and they get me the people_,” he went on. “They add so much more value than that. That's the difference between recruiting at a successful startup and recruiting at just a regular one.”  

Of course, it’s easier to speak of the recruiter who can keep up with that than it is to find them.  

## **The right skills for a unique job**

It’s a complex time for recruiting. COVID-19 continues to impact the world, companies are deciding between remote or in-person work, and news outlets struggle to name the ongoing wave of quitting and hiring and recruitment confusion. But Ted points out that we’re still in a candidate’s market.  

“Everything that you do,” Ted told us, “Either front of mind or back of mind, should be providing a good candidate experience. Every call you make, every email you send, every follow up that you need to do, all of that has a direct impact on your ability to attract top talent. It’s in the communication cadence, and the importance of making sure that you’re giving somebody the right kind of attention. Even though there's tons of opportunities out there, the job search can be a very personal and vulnerable thing.”  

Falling short on experience too often is damning to a small startup. “It can start to build a reputation. There's a ripple effect that accumulates out there in the market. It makes it a lot harder to attract talent if people are not saying great things about your company.”  

The best way to combat this, advises Ted, is to understand, “It's a numbers game. You need to know your clients and your managers, and the profile that you're looking for. You have to provide a solid experience for each candidate, regardless of whether or not they're moving all the way through the process. You never know who you might need to call again, and you never know what people might leave you on a public review site.”  

The other key for anyone making the jump into recruiting operations is prioritization, the harsher, the better. “As a recruiter and now as an operations manager, there are so many things that need to be done. Being pulled in so many directions at once can be really daunting. Sometimes it can be to the point where you're a bit paralyzed and you get nothing done because you have 16 things to do and you feel like you have no time to do them, or you can't do all of them well.”  

Ted fixes this by making firm calls and committing to them. “I borrow one of the values that I learned at Twilio: ruthlessly prioritize. Taking a step back from the waterfall of the things that you have to do and saying, _what can I fill my bucket with?_ I'll stick my bucket out and I'll catch the things that I know are going to have the most impact.”  

Even the best don't always make the right calls. “Sometimes you let the wrong things slide. Sometimes you execute on something that doesn't necessarily really have as big of impact as you expected. But if you start to think about your role in that sense and focus on the wildly important things, it will help you manage the rest.”  

## **The structure makes the success**

An excellent manager helps with all these skills, of course, and can be the bridge between a recruiting team wanting to do their best and startup leadership seeking to hire top talent.  

“For career growth and for opportunity, never underestimate the value of a good leader and a good mentor,” Ted told us. “Being able to recognize that quality as you're interviewing, and finding someone that you want to work with and you feel has your best interests going to go a lot further than just the name of the company you might join.”  

As for his own managers, Ted hesitated to limit the praise to a specific person. “I wouldn't point to any one single person and say this is the person that changed my career forever. I learned all sorts of different things from different people along the way. I learned a lot of discipline from some mentors in the agency. I learned a lot of general process knowledge from people in operations. Even my peers have been mentors in some respects. I really believe anyone you can learn from is a mentor, and I think you can have multiple mentors that serve multiple mentoring purposes. It all comes down to communication and being genuine and kind to your colleagues and offering what you can. Because you may view them as a mentor, but they also might view you as a mentor too.”  

With all the progress he’s made in his career, the kind and honest approach Ted learned doing hiring agency work has not changed. “I've met a lot of recruiters and tried different tactics in my day and I've often found that what people best respond to, both colleagues and candidates, is honesty and being genuine. As long as you're being upfront and genuinely yourself when you're talking to people and when you're collaborating or recruiting, it builds that foundation of trust. That's gonna' be important later on in the process.”

You can find Ted on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-kleber-47124143/).

We spoke to Nylas's Ted Kleber on getting into recruiting, and why a thoughtful approach helped him succeed.

Nylas’s Ted Kleber on Bringing out the Best in Recruiting Operations

Ashby and [Rippling](https://www.rippling.com/) are now integrated! Rippling simplifies your employee operations by bringing together HR, payroll, benefits, IT, and more. It’s a one-stop shop for everything you need from onboard to offboard.

![Rippling’s logo](/images/rippling-logo.png)

Fully integrated, the hires you make in Ashby will transition seamlessly into Rippling, saving you tons of time with each new hire.

To learn more, check out [Rippling’s documentation](https://www.rippling.com/app-shop/app/ashby), and learn more at [Ashby University](https://www.notion.so/Rippling-ec235aafe50e45cc8aa8d5656a67daf7).


Ashby and Rippling now work together - read more about it here.

Ashby Has Partnered with Rippling

**By Kenza Moller with The Swarm**


Hiring? Finding it more difficult than ever? You’re not alone.  
  
Even as the United States has opened back up, job openings have remained at a record high, with open roles in February outnumbering unemployed Americans by [a record 5 million](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/29/there-are-now-a-record-5-million-more-job-openings-than-unemployed-people-in-the-us.html). In 2021, the number of open tech jobs [nearly doubled](https://datapeople.io/tech-hiring-report/state-of-the-tech-hiring-market/) and the average tech listing attracted under [100 applicants](https://datapeople.io/tech-hiring-report/applicant-source-analysis/) for the first time since 2019.  
  
The hiring squeeze has incentivized more startups to expand their reliance on recruiters. Unfortunately, the talent gap has also struck the sourcing field, with the number of open recruiting jobs [outpacing the overall job market](https://www.linkedin.com/business/talent/blog/talent-strategy/data-shows-soaring-demand-for-recruiters) and a quarter of recruiters reporting challenges in [filling sourcing roles](https://www.recruiter.com/recruiting/five-of-the-biggest-recruitment-challenges-concerning-hr-leaders/) on their own teams.  
  
For an early-stage business that isn’t yet dominating job boards, it might seem like hiring has never been more challenging. However, just because it’s becoming harder doesn’t mean recruiting has to be impossible. Here are five ways you can streamline recruiting, even as competition for recruiters grows fierce.  

## Lean into referrals

When it comes to recruiting more efficiently, it’s all about quality over quantity, which is exactly what an [employee referral program](https://community.theswarm.com/c/articles/how-to-build-an-employee-referral-program) (ERP) will do for you. Compared to applicants who apply on a company career site, referred applicants are [nine times more likely](https://datapeople.io/tech-hiring-report/source-of-hire-for-tech-jobs/) to be hired. They also save startups approximately $7,500 per hired referral.  
  
Referrals can be helpful, especially for early-stage startups, who have a harder time competing when it comes to employer brand recognition or salary. Connections can vouch for your company’s culture, opportunities, and mission, and they know ahead of time whether a referral would be a good fit.  
  
The key to running a successful referral program is to mine your contacts extensively, including employees, investors, advisors, and your personal network. Set up [a formalized employee referral program](https://community.theswarm.com/c/plan/creating-your-employee-referral-program) to reward employees for referrals and publicize that you’re looking.  
  
Don’t be afraid to ask your colleagues for introductions. A personal note to your advisors, investors, and personal connections can bring a ton of referrals your way, and job postings shared on one’s own LinkedIn or Twitter can garner interest from your networks.  

## Don’t overlook a career-changer

If you limit yourself to hiring a tech recruiter, you’re pretty much guaranteed competition. But if you’re willing to get creative, you may still have an excellent recruiter on your hands, even if they have a different background.  
  
Plenty of talented employees in other roles, from customer service to sales, may make great recruiters, especially if they’re already familiar with your industry. The overlap between tech recruiting and other fields has already been recognized by companies like [Recruit Rise](https://www.recruitrise.io/home), which help career switchers train for a role in tech recruiting in just nine weeks.  
  
Rather than compete for an experienced recruiter, consider someone with experience in your field and a desire to try out tech recruiting. If you hire for soft skills and cover their training for the hard skills, you might just end up with a talented recruiter who has deep experience in your field.  
  
Of course, this goes for other roles as well. If you can train and promote from within, you can save yourself the hassle of competing for external talent. [Promoted employees](https://www.umassglobal.edu/news-and-events/blog/promoting-from-within) not only save employers an average of 18% compared to external hires, but their performance reviews tend to be better for at least two years after promotion.  

## Outsource certain tasks — to technology

Whether you work with an in-house recruiter or you’re sourcing all applicants yourself, certain software tools can help you do more with less. Outsourcing certain tasks — from sourcing and screening to scheduling and follow-ups — can help you increase your bandwidth without having to hire on additional recruiters.  
  
Today, technology exists to streamline all stages of the recruiting and hiring process. A few areas you might consider include:  

-   Using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) (like [Ashby](https://app.ashbyhq.com/product?partner=underdog#sourcing)) to help you source candidates, automate communication and high-volume interviews, and track your pipeline.
-   Leveraging platforms like [Knockri](https://www.knockri.com/), which use AI to remove systemic bias from the interviewing and hiring process.
-   Outsourcing technical interviews to companies like [Karat](https://karat.com/), where trained engineers can screen candidates for the specific technical skills you need.

## Embrace transparency

Hopefully, honesty and transparency are already part of your company M.O. — but if you want to beat the competition in the war for talent, you may want to take it a step further.  
  
Job seekers today, including recruiters, are increasingly looking for jobs that match their goals in terms of values, work/life balance, and pay. And when competition is fierce, any company that can share data around those pillars will stand out. (According to Indeed Canada, job postings that share salary data receive up to [90% more applicants](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/pay-transparency-job-postings-youth-1.6435727).)  
  
Transparency isn’t only helpful because it increases the number of candidates attracted to your role, either. It also helps disqualify those who aren’t a good fit for your company early on; that helps you save time and ensure that those you _do_ interview are actually well-aligned with your company.  
  
How can you be more transparent when recruiting?  

-   Include salary ranges for each position
-   Don’t just share that you have a “generous” vacation or healthcare policy — share the policies themselves
-   Don’t preach “work-life balance” if your teams frequently work late; be honest about the challenges and opportunities that come with certain roles or your company’s growth stage
-   Be open about where you are in your diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, instead of simply saying that you’re committed to them

## Use storytelling to stand out from the crowd

As an early-stage business, it’s unlikely that prospective recruiters or employees will know your company name or your employer reputation before applying. Rather than considering this a challenge, use it as an opportunity: you get to share your story exactly as _you_ would like it shared.  
  
Leverage [the principles of storytelling](https://community.theswarm.com/c/closing-candidates/storytelling-in-recruiting) at all stages of outreach, interviewing, and hiring. Start by setting up a Careers page that clearly shares your mission, what it’s like to work for you, and the impact individual employees can have at work. Continue by sharing employee stories on LinkedIn and teaching employees (and leadership!) how to become thought leaders on Twitter and LinkedIn.  
  
Don’t forget to continue telling the story when you reach out to candidates and interview them. Focus on them as the main character: what mission are they helping to solve? How do they fit into the puzzle? Who are the other characters along for the ride with them? A compelling story can help you compete against those who may have an edge in available salary or brand awareness.  

## Work smarter, not harder

As an early-stage startup, the labor squeeze can seem overwhelming. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to streamline your recruiting efforts and stand out. And the best part is that all of these efforts pay dividends as you scale — so that even if hiring becomes effortless for your teams, these systems and practices continue to pay off.  
  
*This post was written by Kenza Moller in collaboration with [Ashby](https://app.ashbyhq.com/access) and [The Swarm](https://www.theswarm.com/). The Swarm makes it easy for companies to source referrals from their collective networks.*

Ashby has partnered with The Swarm to do a deep-dive on the current state of hiring recruiters, and how you can beat the competition and nab the recruiter you need.

The Last Recruiter: How Startups Can Handle the Fierce Competition for Recruiters Today

Ashby is now integrated with [HiBob](https://www.hibob.com/?utm_source=partner+page&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ashby)! HiBob’s intuitive and data-driven HR platform, Bob, was built for the way people work today: globally, remotely, and collaboratively. From out-of-the-box onboarding, workflows, performance management, and compensation management to engagement features and people analytics— Bob is core HR and more.

![Bob’s logo](/images/boblogo.png)

Together, the transition from Ashby’s data-driven hiring to Bob’s inclusive people management tools is faster and easier than ever before.

To learn more about this great integration, checkout [Bob’s documentation](https://www.hibob.com/?utm_source=partner+page&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=ashby) and [Ashby University](https://www.notion.so/ashbyhq/Ashby-University-efd04871f5554358ada837de165070ca).


Ashby and Hibob have a new integration - learn more here.

Ashby Has Partnered with HiBob

Jeremy Lyons


All RecOps roles call for, at a minimum, an advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel and/or Google Sheets. With 450+ functions, it can be hard to know where to start and which ones to learn.

To help, here is a list of formulas we recommend you know:

### VLOOKUP / XLOOKUP / HLOOKUP

 - The staple has always been VLOOKUP to find information across a
   vertical column and check it with search criteria. XLOOKUP eliminates
   some of the restrictions of VLOOKUP and offers greater flexibility.

- Used heavily in spreadsheets to find information.
    

### TRUE/FALSE
    
-  These often appear when checking lists or in other formulas to determine exact match or a relational match.
    
-   Used heavily to checklists
    

### IF especially IFERROR and IFNA
    

-   The IF family is especially effective if you checklists. Using IFERROR or IFNA are helpful when trying to have information stand out.
    
-   Used heavily in checking lists
    

### COUNT especially COUNTIF and COUNTA
    

-   Like the name suggests, it counts values. When building tables without using Pivot Tables, using these can be helpful.
    

### QUERY
    

-   Allows you to extract and manipulate data from a table or range of cells based on specific criteria.
    
-   Very useful when dealing with a massive table and multiple inputs.
    

### ARRAYFORMULA
    

-   Allows you to apply a formula to an entire range of cells at once, without having to manually copy and paste the formula into each cell.
    

### IMPORTRANGE
    

-   Allows you to important information from another workbook (Excel) or sheet (Google Sheets).
    
-   Extremely useful if you need to filter and manipulate data from a master spreadsheet that many people use at the same time.
    

### INDEX
    

-   Allows you to retrieve a value or a range of values from a specific location within a table or range of cells. Often used in combination with other functions like MATCH or IF, to search for specific data within a table or range and retrieve the corresponding values.
    
-   When trying to calculate team data, this function is fantastic.
    

### MATCH
    

-   Allows you to search for a specific value in a range of cells, and return the relative position of that value within the range.
    
-   Can be helpful in various tasks, such as looking up data in a table or validating user inputs.
    

-   Advanced-level formulas to be comfortable with are:
    

### QUERY(IMPORTRANGE())
    

-   Allows you to import data from another workbook or sheet spreadsheet and then filter and manipulate that data using SQL-like queries.
    
-   Fantastic if you want to pull in information from a master spreadsheet but only want a few columns.
    

### INDEX(MATCH())
    

-   Allows you to search for specific data within a table or range and retrieve the corresponding values.
    
-   Powerful alternative to V or XLOOKUP for searching for specific data within a table or range, and retrieving the corresponding values. It can be beneficial in large datasets where manual searching can be time-consuming and error-prone.

With 450+ functions between multiple spreadsheet tools, it can be hard for RecOps professionals know where to start and which ones to learn. To help, we've created a list of formulas we recommend you know.

The 11 Most Important Formulas to Know for RecOps and Data

We’ve compiled the following list of resources you'll be able to use to grow your data knowledge or find information for your stakeholders:

**Books:**

-   [How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information by Alberto Cairo](https://www.amazon.com/How-Charts-Lie-Getting-Information-ebook/dp/B07P88R6DW/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=Cj0KCQiAx6ugBhCcARIsAGNmMbhbiL1PZoFy44-pHr9emY_tYfDQVgL8t_8r63py_DsWCEYn0AhKPZ4aAglAEALw_wcB&hvadid=338881486269&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9030959&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=17589077887488862357&hvtargid=kwd-671762044713&hydadcr=3173_10390882&keywords=how+charts+lie&qid=1678495588&sr=8-1)
    
-   [Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic](https://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-with-Data-audiobook/dp/B079H3ZJJZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36DKWYQXZT18S&keywords=Storytelling+with+Data%3A+A+Data+Visualization+Guide+for+Business+Professionals+by+Cole+Nussbaumer+Knaflic&qid=1678495614&sprefix=storytelling+with+data+a+data+visualization+guide+for+business+professionals+by+cole+nussbaumer+knaflic%2Caps%2C144&sr=8-1)
    
-   [Effective Data Storytelling: How to Drive Change with Data, Narrative and Visuals by Brent Dykes](https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Data-Storytelling-Narrative-Visuals/dp/1119615712/ref=sr_1_1?crid=35ERU5XZ1OAU5&keywords=Effective+Data+Storytelling%3A+How+to+Drive+Change+with+Data%2C+Narrative+and+Visuals+by+Brent+Dykes&qid=1678495634&s=audible&sprefix=effective+data+storytelling+how+to+drive+change+with+data%2C+narrative+and+visuals+by+brent+dykes%2Caudible%2C137&sr=1-1)
    

**Websites:**

-   [Level.fyi](http://level.fyi/)
    
-   [Comprehensive.io](https://www.comprehensive.io/)
    
-   [Salary.com](https://www.salary.com/)
    
-   [30 Best Salary Sites to Know Your Worth in 2023](https://www.tealhq.com/post/best-salary-information-websites)
    

**Excel/Google Sheets Learning:**

-   Ben Collins -  [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@benlcollins)  /  [Website](https://www.benlcollins.com/)
    
-   Prolific Oaktree -  [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@ProlificOaktree)  /  [Website](https://www.prolificoaktree.com/home/)
    
-   [Sheets Help - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@SheetsHelp)
    

**Metrics to Track:**

-   [GitLab’s Talent Acquisition Performance Indicators](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/performance_indicators/)

**Reporting:**

-   [Ashby Offer Acceptance Rate Trend Report](https://www.ashbyhq.com/blog/recruiting/2023-trends-report-offer-acceptance-rates)

Looking to become a better data analyst? We’ve compiled some resources to grow your data knowledge and find information for your stakeholders.

Ashby's RecOps Data Resource Round-Up

Shannon Ogborn

A job description often calls for years of experience in a particular role. But, frequently, I’ve found that those role titles don’t have as much to do with the skills needed for the job as they sound. This often bars excellent candidates from the pipeline. Luckily, it’s a problem with a fix.

When you calibrate with hiring managers, focus on the true minimum requirements. What does a role actually entail? What “requirements” are really just nice to have? What are the competencies required to do the job well? Looking for the same minimum requirements across the board helps keep the whole process more equitable, and it gives sourcers more freedom. 

Of course, you won’t move a profile forward if they don't meet the minimum requirements. But when you’ve thought critically about the true minimum requirements, you can find someone who’s met those bars in non-traditional ways. 

If you want someone with a year of software engineering experience, maybe that could be updated to say “or technical experience or coding.” This will broaden the requirement to include folks from less traditional backgrounds. They could nail the interview, they could be the best performer on the team, but unless you think critically about what the requirements are, you are counting that person out before they can even be considered.

This type of calibration includes more people, invites more diversity of backgrounds, and helps you create a team capable of true innovation.


Are you relying on years of experience, or something deeper?

What Are Your True Minimum Requirements?

An excellent outreach strategy requires a screen-in mindset.

A screen-out mindset is where you look at a candidate profile with the framing: *“What about this person does not meet my criteria?”*

A screen-in mindset is where you look at a candidate profile with the framing: *“What about this person would match or add value to the gaps that we have right now?”*

Instead of trying to eliminate people who fall short of the ideal profile, I'm trying to find reasons people would qualify. Screening-in helps a lot with diversity and really increases that diversity pipeline. Part of why I do that is because I’m never looking for the “perfect” candidate.

> I once hired an engineer who had been an analyst for several years. He had no formal software engineering background. But I noticed that he’d done engineering coursework in college, along with a few other traits that really fit the role.
> 
> He performed the best on the interviews of any candidate I ever put through. Had I been looking for the perfect person, I would've missed out on the best fit.

Screening-in helps recruiters challenge our own biases without lowering the bar for excellence. It gets rid of arbitrary barriers, like specific role titles, or only hiring for specific companies, while focusing on the skills needed to actually do the job.

Starting from a place of screening-in can change your entire outreach mindset. If you want a better top-of-funnel, start there.


An excellent outreach strategy requires a screen-in mindset.

Screen-In vs Screen-Out Mindsets – There Is A Right Answer

Laura Li

Looking to break out of the LinkedIn bubble? Ashby’s consulting team has put together this list of sourcing locations you might not have thought of.

1.  Skill-relevant Slack communities

2.  MeetUp communities
    
3.  Github, Dribble, and other coding websites
> **Break-In Talent** If you’re open to hobbyists, you come across gems of talent that aren’t full-time engineers, but would like to be.

4.  School websites
 
5.  “First 50” groups
> **Kicking Off With a Team** If you’re hiring for an early-stage startup, there are many people who want to get in on the ground floor - first 50 groups will help you find them.
    

6.  Programs for under-represented populations
> **Great Groups** Identity-specific schools, clubs, bootcamps, and classes are a great way to source great talent from specific populations.

7.  Hackathons
    
8.  Quora
    
9.  Gyms and fitness studios
> **Go Where The Talent Is** If you have a role that requires heavy physical work an ad at a gym might do some “heavy lifting.”

10.  eSports tournaments
    
11.  Relevant subreddits
    
12.  “Jams”
> **Coding and More** While “code jams” were once the purview of just engineers, “jams” have expanded into all kinds of roles and areas of expertise.

13.  Message boards and interest groups for role-related certifications
    
14.  ResearchGate
> **True Experts** Need to hire for a scientific or research-focused role? ResearchGate is often called “Facebook for academics.”

15.  Skill, job, or interest-related Facebook groups
    
16.  College cafes for new grad roles
> **More Than Career Fairs** You’ll find students about to enter the job market in many campus-adjacent areas. An old fashioned posting on a coffee shop tackboard is a great start. So is checking to see if the campus has a career center that shares open job listings.

17.  Facebook career pages in the local market
    
18.  Specific interest meetups
> **Think Beyond Role-Focused Meetups** What does your ideal candidate do for fun? You might find excellent engineers at a robotics club or great content marketers at a writing workshop.

19.  Industry or skill-related panels and speaking events
    
20.  Running an ad in an interest-specific newsletter

We've put together this list of sourcing locations you might not have thought of - and we're updating it regularly!

Ashby’s “Less Obvious” Sourcing List

Ben Asher


At Ashby, we leverage GitHub Actions for lots of small automated tasks. We recently introduced a reminder to deploy changes to production when the number of commits in the deploy passes a specified threshold.

For some background, we deploy by merging `develop` into `master` (via a merge commit). `develop` consists of commits squashed from pull requests. We default to smaller pull requests, so commits may pile up on `develop` if nobody needs to deploy to production right away. Suppose a production issue happens after a deploy and the deploy has lots of commits. In that case, it's harder for our team to roll back (e.g., it has database migrations) and harder to identify the commit(s) that caused the issue. 

To avoid letting deploys accumulate lots of commits, we wanted to figure out a continuous deployment strategy that would keep deploys small. We considered several strategies and, for now, landed on this automated reminder. The reminder has several benefits:

- Deploys are always attended. We wanted to avoid issues where an automated solution might deploy right when everyone signs off for the day in North America or Europe.
- No changes to our deploy process were needed. We're hiring [roles to dedicate more time to improving our deployments](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/ashby/?departmentId=2c32d70f-d7cb-4a06-bd87-048084e3eb10), but we wanted to reduce deploy size while minimizing immediate effort.

Here's our GitHub Action in its entirety:

```yaml
name: Please Deploy
on:
  push:
    branches:    
      - 'develop'

jobs:
  please-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Check out repository code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Maybe Ask for Deploy
        run: |
          if [ "$(git rev-list --count origin/develop ^origin/master)" -gt "$MAX_COMMITS_BEFORE_NOTIFY" ]; then
            curl -X POST \
              --data '{ "channel": "C02D678LP29", "text": ":rotating_light: The deploy is getting too big! Can someone (on-call?:pray:) please deploy? https://github.com/ashbyhq/Ashby/compare/master...develop :rotating_light:" }'\
              -H 'Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8'\
              -H "Authorization: Bearer $PROD_NOTIFY_SLACK_TOKEN"\
              https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage 
          fi
        env:
          PROD_NOTIFY_SLACK_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.PROD_NOTIFY_SLACK_TOKEN }}
          MAX_COMMITS_BEFORE_NOTIFY: 4
```

The GitHub Action sends an automated message to our #ping-engineering channel when `develop` is behind `master` by five commits, ensuring that we keep the ship shipping throughout the day!

![Slack Message Screenshot](/images/gridhub-actions-deploy-reminder/slack.png "The automated message in Slack")


An automated reminder to deploy as an effective way to keep deploys small and safe.


Continous Deployment via a GitHub Actions Reminder


ES2022 introduces `Array.prototype.at` and we've come to love using it. `Array.prototype.at` can replace using the standard index operator `[]`:

```typescript
const arr: number[] = [];

arr[0].toString();

// Same as above!
arr.at(0).toString();
```

In the example above, even though index 0 may not have anything there, Typescript is happy to allow us to to call `toString()`. With `.at()`, we get a compiler error:

![Typescripts Compiler Error](/images/array-at/compiler_error.png "Typescript's compiler error.")

`Array.prototype.at` is not officially supported in all versions of Node. Check [node.green](https://node.green/) to see if you can use it!

Array.at provides better type safety than the standard index operator, and it works with Node 16!


Type Safety with ES2022's Array.prototype.at


[`jq`](https://github.com/stedolan/jq) is a tool I use at least two to three times a week (maybe daily when it's my week to investigate sentry issues in production), so I thought I'd write about it and its XML offshoot, `xq` (via [yq](https://github.com/kislyuk/yq)).

A lot of our day-to-day work involves reviewing API request and response data in structured text formats, whether it be debugging, reviewing input or output formats for vendor APIs, etc. Often, I find I have a question about a JSON blob, and that blob is too large to inspect by just giving it a "once over." Enter, `jq`. In it's most basic form, `jq` lets you query JSON documents, but it's also useful for linting and formatting minified JSON.

## Basic Usage

Let's say I have the following JSON blob:

```json
{"firstName":"Ben","lastName":"Asher","email":"ben@example.com"}
```

Copy this to your clipboard and run the following command (after you install `jq` with, for example, `brew install jq`<Footnote>Some other ways to install `jq` are [here](https://github.com/stedolan/jq)</Footnote>)

```bash
pbpaste | jq '.'
```

This prints the following:

```json
{
  "firstName": "Ben",
  "lastName": "Asher",
  "email": "ben@example.com"
}
```

What we did is pipe the output of our clipboard into `jq` and use the `jq` command `.` to print it with better formatting (and colors!). If the JSON were invalid, it would tell you where it's invalid. I've found this immensely useful for quickly fixing issues in our public API documentation since our API documentation vendor requires valid JSON in our sample responses that we present readers.

## Querying JSON

Things get even better when you need to query JSON. I often find myself investigating a Sentry error and debugging an issue that requires inspecting JSON involved in the error. Let's say I have a list of people in JSON format:

```json
[
  {
    "firstName": "Ben",
    "lastName": "Asher",
    "email": "ben@example.com"
  },
  {
    "firstName": "Ronald",
    "lastName": "Martin",
    "email": "ronald@example.com"
  }
]
```

If I want see just emails, I can do `jq '.[].email'`. That `jq` command string tells it to look at each array element (you can also do `.[0]` to select just the first one, for example), and from each one, select the `email` attribute. This prints:

```txt
"ben@example.com"
"ronald@example.com"
```

For a recent issue, I had data like the JSON above, and, if one of the object fields were missing, the backend code threw an error. The amount of data was too large to inspect manually. With `jq`, I could query each attribute, and, if `jq` couldn't find it, it printed `null`. So, to find which attribute was the culprit, I did `jq '.[].email' | grep 'null'` and replaced `email` with each sibling attribute until I got a `null`.

## Querying XML

`jq` is super powerful, but recently I wanted to do something like the example above, but with XML. Our customer job feeds for vendors are in XML and often contain thousands of jobs. I found out a new vendor would not ingest jobs that didn't have a valid two digit country code. Before we launched with the vendor, I needed to figure out how many jobs would be impacted. I figured there must be an equivalent for XML, right? There is, and it's a [tool called `yq`](https://github.com/kislyuk/yq) that wraps `jq` and supports multiple other formats. It ships with a tool called `xq` that you can use for XML.

Back to my task, I needed to figure out how many job postings in the feed would be dropped by the vendor. For simplicity, I'll use the snippet below as our "feed" and walk you through what I did. You can install `yq` with `brew install python-yq`.

Let's copy the feed to our clipboard:

```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<source>
  <publisher>Ashby</publisher>
  <job>
    <title><![CDATA[Product Engineer]]></title>
    <country><![CDATA[US]]></country>
  </job>
  <job>
    <title><![CDATA[Full-Stack Engineer]]></title>
    <city><![CDATA[Remote]]></city>
    <country><![CDATA[CA]]></country>
  </job>
  <job>
    <title><![CDATA[Pilot]]></title>
    <city><![CDATA[Remote]]></city>
    <country><![CDATA[PT]]></country>
  </job>
  <job>
    <title><![CDATA[Software Engineer]]></title>
    <city><![CDATA[Remote]]></city>
    <country><![CDATA[DE]]></country>
  </job>
  <job>
    <title><![CDATA[VP of Sales]]></title>
    <city><![CDATA[San Francisco]]></city>
    <country><![CDATA[United States or Canada]]></country>
  </job>
  <job>
    <title><![CDATA[Data Analyst]]></title>
  </job>
</source>
```

Then save the contents of our clipboard to a file:

```bash
pbpaste > feed.xml
```

From here, I want to query countries. Countries are at the path `.source.job[].country`. I can do the following to quickly check them out:

```bash
cat feed.xml | xq '.source.job[].country' | less
```

Looking at that output, I see some `null`s and some country codes, so I know I'm in right place.

Stepping back, our vendor only accepts two digit country codes. The way our feed code works is that we look up the user-inputted country's country code (for example, via [node-countries](https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-countries)). If we can find the country code, we use it, and, if we can't, we use the original value (people sometimes input invalid countries like "Remote" or "United States or Canada"). Also, some won't have countries, so we see some `null`s.

## Operators

To know what the vendor is going to drop, we can use the length of the country field (only ones of length two will work), which `xq` (and `jq`) can calculate! To get the length of all country codes, I can do this:

```bash
cat feed.xml | xq '.source.job[].country | length' | less
```

That's right! `xq` and `jq` have their own operators, which you can pipe output to within the command. The operator above will output the length of each country, and looking at the output, we can see that we're getting `0`s where we had `null`s before, and `2`s for most things (phew!). To get our final answer, we can run the following command:

```bash
cat feed.xml | xq '.source.job[].country | length' | grep -v '2' | wc -l
```

This takes that output that we were viewing in `less` and pipes it to `grep`. With `-v`, we tell `grep` to only give us output that doesn't match, so that gets us all of the "bad" countries. Piping that to `wc -l` will count the number of lines and give us our answer.

## Conclusion

`jq` and its offshoots are super powerful, and I use them all the time, even if it's just the basic path-based searching of JSON files (or formatting to make smaller ones nicer to read). For everything else, I can usually find a useful operator (via Stack Overflow or [`jq`'s docs](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/manual/)) that'll help me put together fancier queries.


How I use command line tools to inspect JSON and XML data that would be impossible to do by eye.


Querying JSON and XML with jq and xq

Graham Murdoch


In Typescript, when defining a type, it's nice to use a union of [literals](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/literal-types.html):

```typescript
type Sizes = "sm" | "md" | "lg"
```

This allows developers to quickly enter a valid value without having to import and expand an enum. In an editor like VSCode, you get a nice autocomplete prompt with the possible values.

However, sometimes you want a union of literals plus some flexibility for custom values. In this example, we want to allow CSS length units (e.g. `"100px"`). 

A simple solution is to combine the literals with a generic type that is a supertype of the literals:

```typescript
type Sizes = "sm" | "md" | "lg" | string
```

Adding the generic type weakens the type coverage since you can enter something potentially invalid that compiles (like `"lgg"`). You've also broken autocompletion for this type. VSCode, for example, won't show the literals as options in a useful way anymore.

One possible approach is to use a generic type that doesn't match the literal values (e.g. an object):

```typescript
type Sizes = "sm" | "md" | "lg" | { custom: string }
```

This restores autocompletion, some type coverage, and preserves a fallback option. However, it isn't quite what you want for CSS length units (and requires some superfluous decoration). 

## LiteralUnion

Prior to Typescript 4.1, a better solution was to use the `LiteralUnion` utility from the [`type-fest` package](https://github.com/sindresorhus/type-fest):

```typescript
import { LiteralUnion } from "type-fest"
type Sizes = LiteralUnion<"sm" | "md" | "lg", string>
```

While it still allows invalid values, autocompletion of the literal values works again!

## Template Literals

As of Typescript 4.1, we can do better. Using [template literal types](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/2/template-literal-types.html), we can more accurately model (and restrict) the range of values:

```typescript
type Sizes = "sm" | "md" | "lg" | `${number}fr` | `${number}px`;

const size: Sizes = "sm"     // ✓
const size: Sizes = "1fr"    // ✓
const size: Sizes = "100px"  // ✓
```

### Working with Enums

At Ashby, some of our older code uses enums and, for consistency, we continue to use them as the basis for possible values.

Historically, you couldn't really combine the approaches:

```typescript
enum DesignSystemSizes {
  sm = "sm",
  md = "md",
  lg = "lg"
}

type Sizes = DesignSystemSizes.sm | DesignSystemSizes.md | DesignSystemSizes.lg

const size: Sizes = "sm"     // 𝒙 - no literals in autocompletion
```

With template literal types we can!

```typescript
enum DesignSystemSizes {
  sm = "sm",
  md = "md",
  lg = "lg"
}

type Sizes = `${DesignSystemSizes}` | `${number}fr` | `${number}px`

const size: Sizes = "sm"     // ✓ - autocompletes literals and DesignSystemSizes!
const size: Sizes = "1fr"    // ✓
const size: Sizes = "100px"  // ✓
```

## Conclusion

With Typescript 4.1 and later, you can do some pretty interesting things to construct accurate types using literals and template literals. Exciting stuff!

Use template literals to create flexible types that accurately check possible values at compile time and support autocomplete in common editors (like VSCode).


Flexible Types that Support Autocomplete with Template Literals (Oh My!)

Arjun Nayini


When writing tests, especially longer integration tests, sometimes you want to run _nearly_ the same test, but with a few key variables changed. Instead of copying and pasting your integration test into another `it` block and changing the small details, you can use the `.each` table syntax [provided by Jest](https://jestjs.io/docs/en/api#describeeachtablename-fn-timeout):

```typescript
describe.each`
  variable1             | variable2
  ${"mystring"}         | ${true}
  ${"otherstring"}      | ${false}          
`(
  "Testing a variety of cases",
  ({
    variable1,
    variable2,
  }: {
    variable1: string;
    variable2: boolean;
  }) => {
    // Test content...
  }
)
```

The `.each` table syntax<Footnote>You can also define the table as an array of arrays or array of dictionaries.</Footnote> allows you to paste in a string that represents the different test cases you want to run.  The first row defines the names of variables that will be passed to each run of the test.  Each subsequent row represents a test run where the provided values will be bound to the variable names.

In example above, two tests will be run where:

1. `variable1 = "mystring", variable2 = true`
1. `variable1 = "otherstring", variable2 = false`

This technique can make tests a lot more readable. Note that in the above snippet, you'll have access to the variables in the body of the test content.

In using `.each`, I've noticed that it is often best when you don't want to change too much of the test logic based on the variables.  If your test ends up having a lot of `if/else` logic based on the variables, especially throughout the entire body of the test, I think it's better to just copy-paste as the additional complexity to read the test isn't worth it.


How to write similar Jest tests without copying and pasting code.  


How To Design a Better Diversity Survey

Ashby Has Partnered with SourceWhale

Nylas’s Ted Kleber on Bringing out the Best in Recruiting Operations

Ashby Has Partnered with Rippling

The Last Recruiter: How Startups Can Handle the Fierce Competition for Recruiters Today

Ashby Has Partnered with HiBob

Snippets

The 11 Most Important Formulas to Know for RecOps and Data

Ashby's RecOps Data Resource Round-Up

What Are Your True Minimum Requirements?

Screen-In vs Screen-Out Mindsets – There Is A Right Answer

Ashby’s “Less Obvious” Sourcing List

Continous Deployment via a GitHub Actions Reminder

Type Safety with ES2022's Array.prototype.at

Querying JSON and XML with jq and xq

Flexible Types that Support Autocomplete with Template Literals (Oh My!)

Testing Using Jest Table Syntax

Product

Resources

Company

Developers

How To Design a Better Diversity Survey

Ashby Has Partnered with SourceWhale

Nylas’s Ted Kleber on Bringing out the Best in Recruiting Operations

Ashby Has Partnered with Rippling

The Last Recruiter: How Startups Can Handle the Fierce Competition for Recruiters Today

Ashby Has Partnered with HiBob

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The 11 Most Important Formulas to Know for RecOps and Data

Ashby's RecOps Data Resource Round-Up

What Are Your True Minimum Requirements?

Screen-In vs Screen-Out Mindsets – There Is A Right Answer

Ashby’s “Less Obvious” Sourcing List

Continous Deployment via a GitHub Actions Reminder

Type Safety with ES2022's Array.prototype.at

Querying JSON and XML with jq and xq

Flexible Types that Support Autocomplete with Template Literals (Oh My!)

Testing Using Jest Table Syntax

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