Savannah Keener
Our blog series, Featured Tectonauts, highlights the amazing characters we get to interact with daily here at Tecton. Want to join the team? Check out our open positions here.
What do you do at Tecton? What does your team do?
I am on the Recruiting team! My job is to bring people into our Tecton fam. When I started at Tecton I was focused on engineering recruiting which is historically the only type I have done. Recently, I switched over to recruiting for all of our roles outside of engineering. It has been fun to learn the importance and nuances of each different role we are hiring for and talk to people from all different walks of life.
What’s a fun fact about you?
When I was a baby I had a hilarious laugh. Maybe I still do? My parents saw this competition for kids with unique laughs and entered me. I’m pretty sure they found the ad for the competition on a cereal box. Such a classic advertisement back in the ’90s. They recorded my laugh and sent it in on a whim and to their surprise, got a callback!
I got to the finals where you met the judges in person and ended up placing 3rd. The winner of the competition went on to become the laugh of the Pillsbury Dough Boy that you see on commercials today. I still can’t decide if I am upset or happy that I lost but I do have a consolation prize of a pretty nifty t-shirt and a Pillsbury Doughboy doll.
What led you toward a startup?
My first job out of college was doing enterprise business sales for a large company and I absolutely hated it, so I quit 4 months in. I had a crisis quitting a job that I had moved all the way across the country for. Looking back later, I am proud of myself for stepping away from something that did not make me happy.
I found myself working at a recruiting agency staffing for companies ranging from retail to biotech, with some startup roles sprinkled in. I had much more fun recruiting for the startups and decided that’s where I needed to be! I joined Opendoor right after their Series D and was with them through IPO. After that, I knew I wanted to go much smaller and started interviewing solely at Series B companies. After meeting the Tecton team, it was an easy choice.
What’s your favorite software package or tool that you’ve ever used?
Gem is a newer sourcing tool that a ton of recruiters and sourcers are using now. I started using it at Tecton for the first time and it is the best tool I have used for metrics and data around sourcing. For example, if you include linked articles or any other content that you want potential candidates to see, you can measure which articles have the highest click and response rate.
It’s pretty neat to A/B test what different things are attracting individuals to your company. Since Tecton is heavily focused on data, we want to bring data to every decision we make. Gem has been instrumental in helping our team gather insights into our hiring efforts at a very early stage. I wish it was a tool I could have started using years ago!
What’s the longest train or plane ride you’ve been on?
It’s not the longest train ride I have been on, but I’ve taken over 15 round trips on the Surfliner train from Los Angeles to San Diego. I went to UCLA and grew up in San Diego so I would often take it to visit home. The ride was 1000x better than sitting on the 405 in traffic! For a good majority of the trip, you are on the coast and get a beautiful view of the beaches. You can even drink wine on the ride ;)! If you get the chance, I’d highly advocate the Surfliner for your mode of transportation from LA to SD or vice versa. Here’s the view you’ll get:
What’s the best swag you’ve ever received?
I was once given a basil growing kit! I have a ton of plants in my apartment so I was excited to get something that I could plant and grow. I followed the instructions to the letter and it never grew… I will never know if it was user error or if it was just not a good kit.
Although the basil never grew, I liked the idea of it and would definitely be happy to try again. Ironically, the best swag I ever got is the swag I never got.
What activity helps you relieve stress at work?
I live in SF in the Pac Heights neighborhood very close to Alta Plaza and slow streets that have been opened throughout covid. Slow streets are residential streets that are not open to cars so that people can get outside and stretch their legs.
One of my favorite things to do on my lunch breaks (or any time I need to clear my head) is to take a walk through the park to see and pet the dogs. I have it timed out pretty well to be out and about when all the WAG walkers are out with the pups and I can pet 10 at a time. Work smarter not harder 😉