Recruitment is about selling the story: Expedia chief architect Rajesh Naidu

Big Tech dismissals have opened opportunities for smaller players – if you can convince staff to come onboard

You’d think being a household name would make attracting new talent easy; but even recognised brands sometimes need to rethink recruitment.

Technical success starts and ends with talent - but finding that talent can be difficult.

Expedia is a globally recognised travel company, aggregating search results and helping people find holiday deals. But...perhaps it's too well known as a travel firm?

Increasingly, Expedia is billing itself as "not just a travel company, but a tech company that covers travel." That's according to chief architect Rajesh Naidu, who joined in 2022.

"That's what drew me to the company: the opportunity - and some of the problems we have. They are what I would call real computer science problems, because of the scale and the complexity of the business and everything else."

Big tech firms like Microsoft and Amazon have cut thousands of jobs this year after over-recruiting in 2020. While that was bad news for tech professionals at the time, Expedia has now found that "supply [of workers] is outstripping demand."

But that didn't immediately translate into an untapped pool of new talent, ready and willing to join Expedia. Potential recruits took some convincing that there was genuine technical change going on.

"Getting the word out there has definitely helped, in terms of attracting talent... People were not sure [about joining] and it was word of mouth [driving recruitment].

"I feel like we are at a great point in our journey. Because of the nature of the work that we have, as we talk to candidates about it, they get excited; they're excited to be involved in the scale and problems. That's what a lot of engineers want."

It doesn't end at attraction

Attracting new talent is only half the game; once they're in, you have to keep them. That's an increasingly difficult task in the modern labour market.

Expedia does "a bunch of different things" on that front. As a travel firm (or even a tech firm that does travel), perks that help people move and work around the world are readily available. On top of that, it's about keeping staff involved.

"We have simplified our ecosystem in terms of the complexity and making sure we are moving to the cloud and cloud-native, giving opportunities for the developers.

"The core versus context conversation, identifying what is core and we need to build, has provided clarity to the engineering teams.... I think having that relentless focus on execution and quality is helping us retain individuals within the organisation."

Competition for talent - especially in Expedia's home city of Seattle - remains fierce, but Rajesh is not concerned. In his opinion, the company's values set it apart from the competition.

"As people learn about the brand, as people learn about travel and learn about what we do, we have some differentiations from the other tech companies. I think the mission and values of the company are different. We've been using those levels to really retain our talent.

"Personally, for me, that's what we do at Expedia. I left a good company [in 2022], but I also joined a good company."