At Dex, we believe every career is a journey of a thousand decisions. Navigating through these choices, finding purpose, growth, and meaningful alignment, can feel overwhelming. However, stories like Jamie Edwards’, currently the VP of Talent and Organizational Development at Deliveroo, illuminate pathways that others can follow. In this exclusive conversation, we explore Jamie’s extraordinary journey from startup founder to shaping talent at one of the fastest-growing tech giants.
A Founder’s Journey: From Kayako to Deliveroo
Jamie’s journey began as a self-taught web developer and UX designer, long before ‘UX’ was a mainstream term. While studying computer science at university, a chance meeting led him to co-found Kayako, a pioneering customer service software startup. Over nearly a decade, Jamie wore countless hats, from coding and debugging to writing blog posts and building a global team of nearly 250 people.
Yet after Kayako’s successful exit to private equity in 2018, Jamie found himself at a career crossroads. How do you articulate years of varied experience without a straightforward “job description”? Enter Deliveroo. Jamie joined as a product manager, tasked simply: “Find the most broken thing and fix it.”
Pivoting into Talent: Bridging Technology and People
Initially engaged in product operations, Jamie soon found himself immersed in critical talent challenges. As Deliveroo rapidly scaled, Jamie tackled questions like how to onboard new hires effectively and what career progression looked like within a hyper-growth context.
His background as a founder uniquely positioned him to approach hiring systematically, treating talent acquisition with the rigor usually reserved for product or customer acquisition. This was a pivotal insight: talent acquisition deserved meticulous attention and strategic design.
Rethinking Talent Acquisition: Systematic, Not Sporadic
At Kayako, Jamie learned the hard way that hiring mistakes often result from failing to apply systematic rigor. When he transitioned to Deliveroo, he brought this critical insight. It wasn’t long before his part-time exploration into talent became a full-time calling.
As Jamie reflects, he realized the importance of changing perceptions around talent acquisition, both internally and externally. Deliveroo’s approach evolved from viewing hiring as a sporadic activity to treating it as a core strategic process, integral to the company’s long-term success.
Good for Deliveroo: Why Culture Beats Skill
Jamie highlights one crucial insight gained at Deliveroo: hiring individuals who align with the company’s core values consistently outperforms hiring based solely on skills and experience. Success at Deliveroo is fundamentally linked to three core values:
• Curiosity: A deep passion for understanding beyond surface-level questions, crucial for leadership and innovation.
• Intellectual Honesty: The courage to challenge ideas, speak uncomfortable truths, and prioritize collective success over personal gain.
• Thriving in Ambiguity: Embracing uncertainty and proactively solving complex, unclear problems, a hallmark of Deliveroo’s innovative culture.
These values have become central to Deliveroo’s recruitment strategy, distinguishing successful hires from unsuccessful ones.
Stakeholder Empathy: Aligning Talent and Business
A significant talent challenge Jamie tackled was improving relationships between the Talent Acquisition (TA) team and business stakeholders. He recognized that misalignment often arose from a lack of empathy on both sides. To bridge this, Jamie championed initiatives that increased transparency and mutual understanding, embedding TA professionals within business units to foster genuine collaboration and empathy.
This approach paid dividends, reinforcing a culture where hiring is viewed as a shared responsibility, not solely the TA team’s burden.
Raising the Bar: Maintaining Quality Amidst Growth
Scaling rapidly presents a common dilemma, how to maintain hiring standards. Jamie’s answer lies in creating systematic frameworks like Deliveroo’s “Team Teal,” a group of highly calibrated interviewers dedicated to upholding quality across all hires. This initiative ensures hiring decisions are decentralized yet rigorously aligned with Deliveroo’s core values.
Navigating Future Challenges: AI and the Talent Landscape
Jamie sees AI dramatically reshaping talent acquisition, particularly in candidate outreach and engagement. With automation making hyper-personalized outreach increasingly common, Jamie anticipates a potential decline in traditional outbound recruitment effectiveness. Deliveroo is proactively exploring alternative recruitment channels, leveraging vast candidate databases, investing in brand awareness, and exploring specialized talent marketplaces.
This foresight underlines Jamie’s belief that adaptability will be crucial in navigating the rapidly evolving recruitment landscape.
AI Opportunities: Enhancing Candidate Experience and Empowering Teams
Jamie is optimistic about AI’s potential to enhance candidate experiences significantly. By automating and personalizing data collection, candidates could enjoy streamlined recruitment processes. He also sees AI democratizing technology, allowing smaller teams to create custom recruitment solutions tailored specifically to their needs, ultimately elevating talent acquisition’s strategic role.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Talent Acquisition
Jamie underscores the shift toward customizable recruitment experiences, placing candidate needs and expectations at the forefront. He envisions a future where talent acquisition is driven by personalized candidate journeys rather than rigid, vendor-imposed processes.
At Deliveroo, and beyond, Jamie’s journey exemplifies the evolving role of talent leadership, a blend of systematic rigor, strategic insight, empathy-driven collaboration, and a relentless pursuit of innovation.
Final Thoughts: A Lifelong Learning Curve
Reflecting on his career, Jamie emphasizes continuous learning as a primary motivator. Talent acquisition, inherently complex and ever-changing, offers endless opportunities for growth, innovation, and meaningful impact.
Dex celebrates stories like Jamie’s, which inspire individuals to shape careers driven by purpose, growth, and fulfillment. In Jamie’s words, talent leadership is about understanding that people are messy, processes must scale, and innovation never ceases, an endless adventure filled with potential.
As we look forward, Jamie’s insights illuminate the path ahead for talent professionals and aspiring leaders alike, emphasizing adaptability, innovation, and human-centric leadership in building careers that people genuinely love.
