Cursor’s head of talent says companies get one crucial thing wrong with work trials

Work trials can be a way for both candidate and company to see if a job is a good fit, but Cursor's head of talent says some employers get it wrong.

A big mistake is making the work trial too focused on getting something out of the candidate, Adam Ward, Cursor's head of talent, said on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" released Sunday.

"This is where most companies get it wrong on the on-site," Ward said. "They're almost always buying. This is like 'we are assessing. We're extracting information. We're not giving much back to the candidate.'"

Instead, Ward says that a good on-site, in which candidates work with employees on a project, should "feel more two-way."

That involves "handpicking" who the candidate interacts with, from the first greeting to who they sit next to at lunch.

He said this is to ensure the candidate has the information they need to make their decision and to gather feedback from staff on the candidate.

Ward said that Cursor, which SpaceX acquired for $60 billion earlier this year, is committed to on-sites despite them being "quite expensive" and a "big ask of candidates."

They provide a fuller picture of a potential hire than a conventional interview, Ward said, and send a strong hiring signal to both candidate and company.

"For a lot of companies, it's hard to think of a better way than doing side-by-side real work to get those signals," Ward said.

Cursor's hiring playbook

The AI coding company's work trials come as competition for top AI talent has raised the stakes in hiring.

Ward said Cursor sees recruiting as a companywide effort, built around identifying a small group of standout candidates and cultivating them over time, rather than filtering a large volume of applicants through a standard interview funnel.

Cursor's CEO, Michael Truell, has described a similarly intensive approach. He said the startup flew across the world to persuade some engineers who had initially turned it down and even invented dinners with researchers to revive conversations, Business Insider previously reported.

Cursor has also used a two-day on-site work trial for engineering and design candidates, during which applicants work from a frozen version of its codebase and spend time with the team.

Truell said the process helps the company assess both technical skill and whether the candidate and company want to work together.

Echoing Truell's point, Ward said the payoff extends beyond testing technical competence. "Imagine the amount of core values and collaboration and other things you could get over a stretch of time," he said, "that could be arguably more important than the specific technical skill."