Founded in 2016 by high school wunderkind Joel Hellemark, Stockholm-based Sana Labs has quickly become one of Europe’s most talked-about AI companies.
Sana Labs builds software helping companies train their employees and build AI assistants using their own knowledge and tools. It’s raised $138m to date from investors such as EQT Ventures and Cherry Ventures partner Sophia Bendz, and has 270 employees across Stockholm, London and New York.
Last week the company announced it had been acquired by Californian human resources software company Workday in a deal which values the Stockholm-based company at $1.1bn.
Sana Labs told Sifted it could not comment on how the acquisition will change its workforce.
While the company doesn’t have an office mandate, Sana Labs makes clear in its hiring process that it’s an office-based company. It helps new hires living outside of its major hubs to relocate, making it all the more important to find the right people from word go.
“It’s a commitment that both parties value quite a lot,” says vice president of operations Olivia Elf. “We don’t hire easily or lightly either. So when we make a decision, it’s because we really believe in the person.”
Sifted quizzed Elf on what candidates can expect from Sana Labs’s recruitment process. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
How competitive is the hiring process at Sana and which roles are the most competitive?
Between 5-10% of the people we invite for an interview get a job at Sana. We hire the top 0.0001% of the market as we see it, so all roles are extremely competitive.
We’re currently hiring across all areas of the business and are focusing a lot of our firepower on New York and London, where we have our commercial teams, while Stockholm remains our product and engineering hub.
I would say the hardest thing we’ve done is hiring the first five people in a new market. It’s always difficult to start recruiting in an area where your brand isn’t well-known.
What do you look for in a candidate’s CV?
We deliberately avoid rigid constraints around schools or qualifications to ensure we find exceptional people, and instead search for very strong generalists and problem-solvers.
We have a set of questions we always ask ourselves in the interview process, independent of the role, to get a feel for who they are as people.
- Would I want to work for them?
- Do they have fire in their eyes?
- Will they run through walls to win?
- Are they missionaries or mercenaries?
- Do they have a ‘how difficult can it be’ attitude?
- Are they pragmatic dreamers?
- Are they more interested in learning than being right?
- Do they have the highest humility to skill ratio?
- Have they demonstrated being top 1% in a field?
- Will they be a magnet for talent?
- Did I leave the interview more energised than when I arrived?
- Would I want 10 of this person?
Does that mean you prioritise people with startup or scaleup experience, or do you also consider those who have come from large companies?
We do have a few people who don’t have previous startup experience. However, we’re very upfront with these people in the hiring process that they will have to unlearn everything they know. When you’ve worked for a bigger company, there might be processes, politics, ways of doing things, such as not challenging the status quo, that you will have to unlearn to work in a startup environment.
We look for people who want to do something that is very special and exceptional and crazy, and who seek to do difficult things in their lives. It doesn’t have to be working in a scaleup or startup, but it can be a nice proxy for it.
What are the various stages of your recruitment process?
Firstly, there’s an introduction phase where you meet with someone from Sana — it doesn’t have to be someone from the specific team the candidate is interviewing for; it’s usually someone random. During the intro, we check for three things: are they missionaries or mercenaries? Are they striving for excellence? Are they humble? We call it the MEH assessment.
Then we do a ‘role fit’, where we ask a few questions based on the aforementioned list. After that, the candidate does a take-home assignment which they typically present to members of the relevant team, or to adjacent teams who would work closely with that role.
Then the candidate meets with the senior leadership team — Joel Hellermark, our CEO, Jon Lexa, our president, and me. We speak with the candidate to assess whether their values align with Sana’s. If the candidate succeeds, we do a reference check and then make them an offer.
You mentioned the MEH assessment. How do you screen candidates for those things?
We have a few questions that we ask for each one. For ‘M’, we might ask:
- Why did you leave or join the companies you have so far?
- What principles or values drive your lives?
- Who do you look up to?
‘E’ assesses how a person overcomes challenges, and how they push for excellence in everything they do. We ask:
- What’s the most difficult thing you’ve ever done?
- Tell me about a time where you met a lot of resistance and didn’t give up?
- What’s the difference between someone great and someone exceptional in your field?
For ‘H’, we might ask questions like:
- Tell me about a time when you changed your opinion on something.
- What was the last piece of constructive feedback you received and how have you acted upon it since?
- Humility often shines through other questions: for example, we might consider how a candidate speaks about themselves versus others.
What is an example of a take-home assignment for a new team member?
For someone joining the commercial team, we usually give them a role play scenario which they have to act out in an interview. Examples include demoing the platform, pitching to the C-level of an imagined prospect or handling objections in a live scenario.
We also do a strategic assessment, asking questions like: What market or market segment would you attack at Sana and why?
We try to look less at the conclusion they come to and more at how they worked through the problem. Did they have a framework for it? Are they structured problem solvers or do they work sporadically and take detours?
You mentioned earlier that you are looking at the top 0.0001% of talent. How do you define that, and how do you identify if candidates are in the top percentile?
We tend to look at what people do in their private life: are they an athlete or a top musician? We have three people at Sana, for example, who have Olympic medals. Other things we look for include whether they’ve had really fast promotions at previous companies or if they’ve been to the best schools.
Saying we look for the top 0.0001% is often a proxy for two things. One is if you put your mind to something, you can do it — you don’t give up and you run through walls, even if people tell you it’s impossible.
The second is you get obsessed about something. If you’re likely to be obsessed about swimming or rowing or running, you’re likely to get really obsessed with Sana too.
What does the first week at Sana look like for a fresh hire?
In the first week we have something called Island Week. There’s an island outside Stockholm with just one house on it — you take a boat there with the other new hires and spend the whole week together. You cook, do activities, sauna and deal with whatever breaks in the house (and something always does). It’s chaotic, but it builds character and makes memories for life.
The idea isn’t to hand people a manual of “how things work” at Sana. You’ll never be served answers here — you have to learn how to find them. So instead of giving new hires an employee handbook, we give them a list of questions they should know how to answer. For example: who are our competitors? What’s our ICP (ideal customer profile)? Who owns what? Where do I go with legal questions? We direct people to where they can find the answers, whether it’s in Slack channels or company documents.
This way, people learn to be resourceful from day one. It also saves us from constantly updating onboarding material. Most importantly, it reflects the messy reality of startup life. Everything is chaos, so why would your onboarding week be perfect?
How can potential candidates prepare for an interview with Sana? Any books or podcasts you’d recommend?
There’s no prescribed reading for interviews, but self reflection is always good. My favourite book on this topic is ‘Scaling People’ by Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO and current advisor of Stripe. I would also recommend thinking about what your superpowers are and who you need around you to thrive.
Also think about questions you’d like to ask us. Remember you’re also assessing Sana Labs too when you come for an interview. That’s equally important.
