Executive Spotlight: Renato Profico

Recruiter.com Magazine's Executive Spotlight features top executives, HR professionals, recruiters, and business leaders sharing their insights on hiring, management, and best recruiting practices.

This Issue's Spotlight: Renato Profico, CEO, Doodle

Renato Profico may have just assumed the CEO mantle at Doodle this past December, but his enthusiasm for the scheduling software company's mission proves he was the right choice take the helm.

"Working with young, talented, and diverse groups of people [at Doodle] ... is an honor for me," Profico tells Recruiter.com.

Recruiters and HR pros can likely understand Profico's passion — scheduling, after all, is an issue near and dear to our hearts. Who among us hasn't had to deal with the interminable email back-andforth when trying to set up a candidate interview? And we're not the only ones filled with dread at the mere prospect of a meeting: According to Doodle's "2020 Work-Life Balance Survey," 60 percent of employees have found themselves in meetings that accomplished nothing at all.

Below, Profico chats with us about how we can fix meetings — plus his secrets for building great teams:

What do you love most about your job?

I am very excited about the unique opportunity I have in my role at Doodle to work with the company's fantastic team to help shape the entire domain of the scheduling and meeting experience for professionals.

Working with young, talented, and diverse groups of people spread over our offices in Zurich, Berlin, Belgrade, New York, and Atlanta is an honor for me, and I am very much looking forward to bringing my long work experience to benefit Doodle and coaching the teams to succeed.

The ideal team, for me, consists of diverse people who are optimistic, eager to learn, and unafraid to fail.

What is your proudest professional moment?

There are many moments in my professional career I feel proud of, but above everything, I've felt the most proud when we, as a team, achieved a major milestone or goal.

For a leader, there is no better feeling than when the team you lead and aim to inspire works hard, creates something new, or overcomes challenging moments on the way to success — and you are able to look back on the final result with pride for what the team members have gone through to achieve that outcome.

Describe your ideal team. What kind of people are on it?

The ideal team for me consists of diverse people with complementary talents, as well as challenging and respectful mindsets always ready to go the extra mile. The people on it are optimistic, eager to learn, competitive, and persevering, but they also aren't afraid to fail.

My role in that team consists of guiding, coaching, challenging, listening, and taking over responsibilities, even in difficult times. As a well-known leader once said, "My main task is to get things out of the team's way that could restrain them from succeeding."

What is your must-follow hiring rule?

In my opinion, the cultural fit is as important as the match between the search profile and the candidate's hard and soft skills when it comes to hiring.

Once that fit is established, one of the most important things is to create transparency on both the candidate's and employer's side. That way, you can talk openly about present and future expectations during the recruitment process.

As your new survey shows, Americans are having a lot of meetings, and these meetings are growing less effective. How can we make meetings better in 2020?

I always challenge myself and others before organizing a meeting to ask ourselves: Do we really need one, and who actually needs to be invited?

Once the need for a meeting is clear, I want to use efficient tools to organize it in the most efficient and seamless way possible. We at Doodle are working hard to provide professionals with tools that ultimately offer a seamless scheduling experience today.

Once the scheduling is taken care of, the meeting participants, of course, should establish a few must-have rules — like the goal of the meeting, agenda/content, timing, notetaking, and next steps following the meeting — to make the best use of everyone's time.

If you could change one thing about how meetings are handled in the typical American office, what would it be? Why?

In addition to what I have listed above, I would suggest trying some "disrupting rules" for meetings. Instead of a typical conference room try outdoor walking meetings, or standing up during sessions, or enforcing extremely short meetings where participants are instructed to stick to the point. These rules will also help increase efficiency and make the best use of meeting time.

If you had to summarize your career in a quote, what would it be?

"Learn by doing and be persistent."

For me personally, this simple phrase has kept me motivated and allowed me to find success despite any hurdles I've had to face to get there.