How Dosu hired their founding engineer within weeks on Wellfound's wellfound:ai Autopilot

Introducing wellfound:ai Autopilot x Dosu.

We recently got to sit down with Devin Stein, founder of Dosu - the AI teammate that empowers teams to triage bugs without looping in the engineering team. Devin sat down with us and shared how he's using wellfound:ai Autopilot to ramp up Dosu's growth and hiring.

Watch the full interview here.

Get to know Dosu

Dosu is an AI engineer that helps teams develop, maintain, and support products. Like an engineer, Dosu uses an understanding of code and code changes to answer undocumented questions, triage customer-facing bugs, tackle feature requests, and more.

“Engineering centric” Hiring

When he started Dosu, Devin knew he wanted the company to have a strong engineering culture. As someone who has been a founding engineer at two different startups Devin explained, “I was acutely aware of the type of person I needed to hire and how hard they are to find.”

A founding engineer has to not only have the technical skills to work across the software stack, but also be able to empathize with customers and drive product development.

It’s possible, but incredibly time consuming to identify these traits from resumes and LinkedIn profiles alone proved.

Initially Devin relied on referral-based recruiting from his network, but “at a certain point that network was exhausted,” Devin explained. Many of the people he met through referrals were either starting their own company or comfortable in their stable big-tech roles.

Next, Devin took to manually searching for and messaging candidates on LinkedIn. He quickly discovered this process was extremely time-consuming and not always fruitful.

“As a solo-founder, the biggest burden is when I'm not coding, nothing is pushing the product forward.”

Devin tried third-party contingency recruiters, but quickly found that he wanted more control and visibility over the process. He knew what he was looking for in a candidate, but didn’t have the time or tools to find them.

Discovering wellfound:ai Autopilot

As the founder of an AI company, Devin wanted a recruitment solution aligned with Dosu's ethos of leveraging AI for operational efficiency and seamless communication.

That’s when Devin discovered wellfound:ai Autopilot in a newsletter. Devin was drawn to RecruiterCloud’s seamless integration with Slack, allowing candidates to appear directly within the platform. He found the ability to specify search criteria, such as identifying candidates with founding engineering experience or previous startup ventures, extremely valuable.

Achieving a New Peace of Mind

wellfound:ai Autopilot allowed Devin to efficiently evaluate potential candidates within weeks, adjusting the search parameters as needed. Devin found that he had more control and a better UX over the search than via LinkedIn queries.
Devin also appreciated that he could see how the search criteria would impact the candidate pool. These features helped him decide on non-negotiable skills vs. nice-to-haves.

“It gave me peace of mind to know exactly how many thousands of candidates are left in the search.”

Devin found the streamlined workflow of wellfound:ai Autopilot, with its straightforward approve or reject options, reminiscent of Dosu's mission to assist engineers in managing tasks efficiently. “Not having to go into my email to send those rejection emails has kept my workflow streamlined.”

Devin also loved the efficiency of wellfound:ai Autopilot compared to traditional LinkedIn queries. With wellfound:ai Autopilot, he could swiftly assess whether potential candidates met the required qualifications within a matter of weeks, enabling adjustments if necessary. For Devin, who was heavily involved in the recruitment process, wellfound:ai Autopilot offered a significant time-saving advantage compared to his previous methods.

Moreover, as an engineer, Devin appreciated seeing how the criteria is set and understanding how it would impact the candidate pool. These features helped him decide which skills are non-negotiable and which ones would be nice-to-haves. He said, “I thought that this was really cool in terms of just setting expectations and giving you peace of mind for knowing, ‘Okay, I have X many thousands of candidates that before I need to reevaluate options.’”

Devin found the streamlined workflow of wellfound:ai Autopilot, with its straightforward approve or reject options, reminiscent of Dosu's mission to assist engineers in managing tasks efficiently. He shared, “Not having to go into my email to send those rejection emails or scheduling emails has been really nice in keeping my workflow streamlined.”

Stay on Track with Hiring

In this case study, Devin is wearing multiple hats as he manages the company while also spearheading the hiring process. Like many startup founders, he's juggling numerous responsibilities simultaneously.

Thanks to wellfound:ai Autopilot's Slack integration and quantifiable candidate expectations, Devin was able to stay on track with hiring – and growing Dosu.

Learn more about wellfound:ai Autopilot here and watch the full interview.