Some Thoughts on Hiring at a New Startup
m.brianmcmanus.org
m.brianmcmanus.org
The theory is that if the recruiter has a high level of control over both candidate and client, the odds of a positive outcome for the recruiter (a fee) increase. The client and candidate are both essentially 'buyers' in the sense that they have to agree to accept the other, and the recruiter is 'selling' to both parties.
But nobody wants to buy from someone who sells too hard, and that's what most recruiters end up doing.
When I started in recruiting, I wanted to be involved in every stage of the process to be sure I had some level of control. More recently I've realized that if the candidate is mature (and not going to make rookie mistakes like asking 3x market rate for salary just to 'test the waters') and the client has a decent hiring process, I'll make the intro and then step away until (if) I'm needed.
A recruiter can be quite helpful as a sounding board for both sides during negotiations to help facilitate a deal or save a deal that is failing.
>I’ve had folks change their mind even after accepting an offer. Hell, to be honest I’ve done it myself (and felt terrible about it).
A recruiter should also be helpful in providing guidance on situations like these. For example, I usually offer my clients a handful of tips to try and guarantee that someone who accepts the job will actually show up on day one. Having lunch with the new team between acceptance and start date is probably the most common.
But today's recruiter is far too interested in control. Make the intro, step away, and step in when necessary - otherwise, let them talk.
Some things never change. When hiring for the Itanium BIOS years ago my brother hired 3 people serially and still didn't have anybody, because none of them ever showed up for work.
Agree. That's killing it for me.
The typical message from a new recruiter who dropped out of school or just pivoted to that less than 2 months ago, trying to sell positions (s)he no clue about at companies (s)he doesn't want to tell.
> A recruiter should also be helpful in providing guidance on situations like these.
Agree. I think recruiters should be
1) good middle men negotiations. To advise and prevent the rookie mistakes. Most candidates have very little experience with that (Think, like guys who'll message their dates 12 times in the day because she didn't answer yet.)
2) good contract and professional advisors. It can get really tricky to arrange job offers and contracts, like arranging the start/leave date and notice periods with whatever special stuff apply to your circumstances, at 3 simultaneous competing companies that you know you'll only stay at a single one in the end.
- Tell them, unprompted, key difficulties that may lie ahead (in an upbeat manner)
- Sell them on the goal, but don't sell them that they are the right person - that's their choice
- Do not make promises you can't keep. Let me repeat this. Do not make promises you can't keep
The reason for doing the above is a) You will have tough times together - this is your team - you must start well b) If they can't handle these conversations you probably don't want them c) You're human, behave well if you can
Context disclaimer - this is from a London, UK perspective while hiring senior people. YMMV.
The people we all want have no trouble finding work to pay their bills somewhere. If they are working for larger companies, they likely receive the key company info in HR-mandated newspeak. Hearing a direct, honest view from the top can be instantly attractive.
* AngelList - seem to mainly attract recent bootcamp grads
* Meetups and Networking Events - seems very inefficient and so far I've come across very few technical folks at these events, at least in digital health
* A lot of personal outreach using LinkedIn/email - probably the most successful so far..
* HN Who's Hiring - surprisingly few leads, but very high quality ones so far.
* Personal network - although similar to the author's I'm relatively new to the Bay Area
On the hiring side, we seem to get inundated by recent grads regardless of where we post. LinkedIn and Indeed seemed like the worst offenders for us in previous gigs.
also, Ads on stackoverflow tend to get us high q leads as well
I haven't tested this idea, but... consider starting a meetup that would draw more technical folks. I would personally like to see deeper technical meetups near where I am, but I haven't pulled the trigger to try and organise anything yet.
The two go hand in hand for your first few hires.
Here's what we do, which is a little different:
1/ We'll spend in the order of 5-6 hours with a mid-to-senior hire before we recruit them. We pick one topic from their CV (the project they're proudest of or happiest with), and dive into it in huge detail: everything from the people involved to the outcomes and recognition of success. It helps to illustrate what the person is truly like.
2/ Where it's possible, we'll pay the person a pro rata salary equivalent to spend a day with us actually working in the role. I know a couple of other companies doing this and it's really great.
3/ If we like the person we immediately throw out whatever references they provide and spend a few hours dredging up people they worked with from our networks. We also look at the people they named in the project example. Once we've got a list of 6-10 people, we ask the candidate if we can reference using those people.
4/ Typically at this point we've decided that on paper we want to make an offer. Referencing is the last opportunity we have to really assess the person's ability to cope under pressure, how quickly they drop their "new job" act and get into being themselves, and crucially what "themselves" is like. I nearly always only ask questions which could be perceived as negative at this point -- what makes them throw their laptop across the room? What stresses them out? How do they communicate when under pressure? What are the things you told them they need to work on in their last review?
Referencing probably only accounts for 10-20% of the time I spend on a candidate, but the weighting I give it is huge when it comes to working with and managing that candidate when they're on the team.
A million different ways of doing things -- but referencing is so often overlooked and I've never understood why.
This does not mean I disagree with you. We had someone working for us, we're connected on LinkedIn. That person since then switched multiple jobs and I know for a hard fact that he'd never get a job if the company just called people working with him. No way.
I totally used to think that too, but whenever I've asked people about our process they say - "sure when you're making an offer, make it contingent on references and do a bunch of them."
I never revoke an offer unless we find out something truly bad at reference stage. Everyone has their foibles, and it's just useful to have more information about how to work with them.
I thought someone (a reference) who would badmouth a colleague to a prospective employer would not be a reliable source of the information. This is an honest question -- I do wonder when you find disqualifying things what do they look like?
I listened to a podcast a while back about bankers that were given horrible references by vindictive bosses because they didn't cooperate with some loan policy or something like that.
Firstly by taking a bigger sample of references it's more likely we will find commonalities in the negative points.
Secondly we get different perspectives on negative traits. The man you fired who hates you because you were a micromanager is balanced by the woman who was your boss and wanted you to keep close to the person underneath.
Disqualifying things are generally not specific. It's a multiplicity of people saying "do not hire this person."
Some real problems relying on references that aren't really fixable too:
#1 good luck getting references from anyone they weren't friends with. If you "find your own" you're a special kind of evil if they're still employed. You could make someone lose their job without even making an offer. It's lose-lose
#2 It's so easy to fake references that the people you don't want will have you talking to "the king of timbuktu". The best references will come from the biggest liars
This is insane. By this logic one would never take any advice about how to work productively with someone, what someone's strengths and weaknesses are… centuries of management theory have been reduced to "opinions and gossip".
I don't think I said anywhere (correct me if I'm wrong) that we're asking anything to do with their ability in the new job. We're asking about how they performed in their previous job.
> the people providing the references are at the mercy of your interpretations and how their statements are later represented.
I think this is a major reason why people don't reference. I'm always honest with my references. A competitor hired away a disastrous hire I made a few years ago. I met the CEO a few months later, after the guy had been let go from there, and said "Why didn't you just call!" -- he'd have saved a bunch of time and money.
> Even if you don't hire the person for entirely different reasons they could end of being held liable for loss of earnings if it's decided that some of the information was untruthful, unsubstantiated or illegal.
If you're an adult about it then there's not a lot which can put you off a hire at the referencing stage. You just have to recognise that not everyone gets along, and everyone has different sensibilities and cultural pros and cons. The point of our referencing is that we want to work with this person, so we want to be prepared to help them excel and hit the ground running.
The laws that these people are benefiting from are meant to protect people like whistleblowers, those who fought back against discrimination, or just personality conflicts from following people the rest of their careers, but there can be a risk even when this extra background information is above board.
There characters are far more common than cases of thefts. Don't want them to have lasting implications on your career.
My point was that there is enough caution around these sorts of conversations with references, that companies already avoid them, even though it might expose them to other dangers.
I think it was a potentially harmful suggestion, because if it were a more widespread practice, people's career prospects would increasingly change for non-meritocratic reasons, and therefore the productivity within the industry as a whole would suffer. However, it's simply easier to talk about the potential legal jeopardy it puts people in in the near term.
What if there aren't any?
Because it's worthless.
There is a 1% chance that you'll find out that "that guy" was a drug dealed and he was let go.
The other 99%. It's impossible to know if you're calling a friend of him, if you're talking with an ex-grumpy manager who's backstabby (that may be why the guy left in the first place), if you're reaching someone at all (do you seriously expect employees to have valid phone numbers from people they've worked with 5 years ago and the numbers are still valid??? wtf), and of course you can't get nor trust references for the current company (you're not only rattling him out but the reference may have a serious incentive to lie to you in ways you can't possible understand).
And last but not least, all consulting and sweat shops will ask and insist for name and references of everything, not to hire you BUT to go harass your companies as potential customers for their services.
IMO: references are optimizing against everything they're supposed to help with. Never do referencing. Stop interviews when people insist on references.
[P.S. Answering reference requests is a liability that's putting you at risk (and it's forbidden in a lot of places). Don't do it. The only acceptable answer is "That guy has worked with us around <that period of time>. That's all I can tell you."]
That's great if they're unemployed, but not so good if they have a job. Most employers won't do after hours interviews either. Is a currently employed person meant to call in sick?
It's absolutely terrible if you are one of a million generic companies that candidates aren't excited to work for.
I had a great initial process with a promising startup who wanted to graduate to a "we'll pay you contract rates to work with us a couple of days" sort of evaluation.
Since I was a FTE elsewhere and would have had to take PTO, I asked for a comp talk first. While I had no expectation to make the same salary I already was, I discovered their high end was way under what I'd calculated as a max pay cut I could take and still pay bills. It probably would've gone above water a round or two of funding later, but I would potentially have drained my savings waiting around. Unless I were founding, that would've been unacceptable.
I'm glad I forced the talk first or else that would've been a frustrating end to the process. My basic take is the more you ask as part of your evaluation process, the more you need to make sure it's even a possibility for both sides.
1) A recruiter will do everything to place you at one of his [very few] positions. No matter how bad it is for you.
2) Recruiters inside a firms are competing internally against each other and they each have different portfolios.
Better have the right recruiter who's got the right companies in the right industries for you.
(I am writing in a snarky way to convey a message)
1. If you're using recruiters, you're already losing. Especially if those are recruiting agencies that "hide" the name of the companies.
The cold emails are just ridiculously hideous.
2. Use as little hyped up words as you possibly can. You might change the world, but everyone else is saying the same thing and people are getting sensitive about it.
3. Impact - Emphasize what is the impact of the role. Why do you need my skills, Not just an engineer skills, why do you need me. If you don't need me I don't care what you need, post on LinkedIn for all I care.
4. The mail needs to come from the CTO with as many details as possible about the company. Not how much money you raised and from which VCs, everybody raised money and everybody as VCs behind them. I could care less. What are the technical challenges, what's the roadmap, what challenges are you facing that you need me to solve and help with.
5. Compensation - "Competitive salary" means nothing. I don't think it's relevant to me at all. You need to be specific about the compensation levels. If you wanna give a range, that's also fine. If your range stops at X and I am making X+50%, I know we are too far apart, we could save each other the trouble.
6. Interview - If the interview requires more than a single day, I don't care. If it requires whiteboard, I don't care, If it requires multiple processes and screens, I don't care.
It's all about managing friction. Just like acquiring a customer on Google or Facebook. If the process has too much friction, I don't want to go through it. I just don't. I'm happy where I am and it's not worth my trouble.
All of these may sound elitist, I get that. I really do. But if you want really senior engineers the targeting is different than people that just finished bootcamp or have 2-3 years of experience.
They simply can't understand that I would give up when I realised there were three interviews, or that I needed to spend a day doing a test.
Sure if I did well in one interview the other two would likely be fine too, but equally... I could just go to another company that says "OK" after a conversation in a bar and save myself a lot of friction.
Every founder thinks their company is great. People who want jobs will happily reinforce that delusion to get the job. Some companies are better than others, but most of it is really boring stuff. I guarantee that everyone working at your company is there because they need a job.
It's not even about being attractive to juniors, seniors or mid level. It's just looking for desperate, even if you have a brand name.
Screw the rest, seriously, it's just not worth the trouble.
A couple of weeks back I saw a repo on Github. Preparing for an interview @ Google. It was a mile long. Never doing that.
There are more people than you'd expect who can talk the talk but can't code at the same level. In the majority of companies, I'd bet there aren't too many openings for engineers in such a narrow role. If you don't want to work with an 'idea person', would you want to work with an 'idea engineer'?
Multi-day interviews are likely overkill, but a full day interview is completely fair. There's no need to do 4 back-to-back algorithm whiteboarding sessions, but testing other aspects such as data modelling, general architecture, and coding style/ability are all high-signal.
Multiple days? Not a chance.
If you were paying 2x rates or real equity, ya I'd slog through a day long interview, but I bet you aren't.
What does your company have to offer that would compel me to spend 8 hours interviewing that another company doesn't?
Maybe they'll be only one company willing to pay then, maybe that will be the one with the one day interview :D
Something that's worked well for me in the past is to secure at least 1 good offer - compensation you feel comfortable with, recognizable brand, but still an offer you're willing to walk away from - and then give notice.
Then, after leaving, spend additional time (up to 4 weeks) interviewing with all the other companies you want to. Keep in mind that many companies offer a sign-on bonus, and using it to cover this in-between time is high-return, likely more so than buying a new car/vacation/entertainment system.
You can be upfront about this break in your interview loops - "I'm no longer working at company X, but I have a very competitive offer from company Y and considering several other ones." There's no guarantee you'll be able to keep all the offers you receive (many of them will explode), but you should have a steady pipeline.
Whenever you feel comfortable, you can exit the pipeline, and begin negotiation with the outstanding offers you have. Last I did this, I went onsite ~15 times among even more interview loops.
There aren't that many good companies to work for in any area (even in SV), to have 10 on sites simultaneously, and you might burn bridges for later [e.g. don't reapply before 1-2 years policy].
IMO: If there is that much interest for you, you need to charge more.
I have a hard time taking seriously a company that doesn't give me 25 days in EU. (better be with 25 sick days :D).
For me it isn't the PTO. Say I want to interview at 10 companies to see which is the best fit. That's 10 days of interviewing. If they are all 3 day interviews, that's an entire month.
I get tired of talking to people about nothing after an hour. If someone wants to bring 5 people for me to talk to about smalltalk and nothing really of substance, I won't do very well.
20 years ago, a friend who worked for a guy who would hire 10 people then after a few weeks, fire most of the ones leaving just the best. I live in an "at will" state. I guess most people just don't have the stomach for that sort of thing, so they try to make up for it with 3 days of doing nothing really relevant to the job.
Make a 1h test, NO fancy problems, just the basics. Think: summing some numbers, displaying some stuff on the console.
That doesn't substitute to the on site but it goes before to ensure a minimum level and some screening.
It's win-win for everyone. It's efficient and straightforward. On the top side, it's easier for the candidate to take 1h whenever he wants than to schedule a full phone call that will ruin half a day for both of you.
So HR gets in touch and says "We would like to bring you in for the first set of interviews next week some time, when would work?" I said, "Uhh, there must be a mistake, I already talked with the hiring manager, I thought you were calling to discuss salary, benefits, start date, etc." HR: "Hmm, no, that's not right. Did you even fill out our application online yet?" Conversation was pretty much over from my standpoint at that point. What a crappy experience and a waste of time!
And it was a very productive discussion. We talked about a lot of some pretty high-level stuff, both technology-wise and business-wise -- possible failure modes in their fraud detection process; customer acquisition strategies moving forward, etc.. Not in a fuzzy, "whatever" way -- but in a serious, analytical way. You know, high-level, adult stuff.
The weird part? When I got the schedule for the interview (btw several more hours in length than the "couple of hours" we had initially talked about -- but we'll let that slide for now), the first thing they wanted be to do was come in at 9 AM for a session on "logic problems" -- you know: pirates, gold coins, poisoned wine bottles -- for a whole hour.
To which I wanted to say, "Wait -- didn't we just have a conversation in that cafe demonstrating exactly the level of critical thinking skills you're looking for (arguably at a much more nuanced level, in fact), and applied actual, real problems -- not silly, made-up puzzle problems?"
But of course I felt too shy to just come out and say that. So made up some excuse about "accepting another offer", instead.
1) Look legit, as much as possible without spending mass $. Marketing is key for startups, again try look like you know what the hell you're doing.
Most people will walk away if you don't have a solid website. Have a company Linkedin, Facebook, and GMaps listing as well.
The more results in google search the better, try to fill the front page for your name with random things like an actual company would. As long as your name isn't stupid this is much easier than it sounds, you can make a lot of noise on the interest for free.
Have a working phone number with a phone tree, best if it's an 800 # but local area code is better than nothing.
A few company shirts helps even if you only wear them while interviewing. If you have an office on top of it you're set.
Whatever you do try to avoid meeting at public places like coffee shops, a lot of scams are doing this nowadays and candidates will be weary. If you don't have an office your home is probably best.
Another thing, use something like Workable to manage candidates and have a real financing and benefits system setup like zenefits + freshbooks. These things will be visible to prospects and new employees quickly and again shows that you know how to run a real company.
2) Cut all the buzz and BS in job listings. Don't try to make it sound like a difficult job to land. Make interviews easy and fast to get, LOWER the bar. Emphasize lax rules and freedom. These are your only advantages.
Remember who you're competing against. Good candidates will have many choices of where to work and you don't have anything against their brand appeal, pay, benefits, and overall attractiveness. Don't pretend that you do, your selling points are as follows: Be your own boss, loose rules and freedom to build something as they see fit will be the main drivers for most of your early hires. You may get wannabe CEO types, and don't be afraid, these are the people you want. Be afraid of the ones in it solely for money. There's much better ways of making money than joining a startup...these people are probably stupid or naive.
Most good candidates will end up with more than one offer. You need to make the process faster than any other company so that you can short circuit some of these people before other companies have a chance. You're small enough to be quicker to the draw than larger companies, use that to your advantage. To make the process faster, you need to do more thorough initial screenings so that you hire more people that come in the doors. Bigger companies don't want to waste the time but you can afford to. Most companies have an "offer lag" of about 1.5-3 weeks from initial contact, so you should be hiring people by Friday if you meet them Monday.
The "culture fit" is really important in super small companies. Try to make friends with the person you're interviewing. Is it someone you would chill with? Look at your current employees. Do they like to go out an party on the weekends? Play sports? Video game nerds? Try to hire the same at first. People not getting along at huge companies doesn't matter much, but when you're forced to work together all day it's important
Our approach is to meticulously research anyone we're serious about and bring these things up during their interview. In my own interview experience it's extremely rare for someone to take any interest in your personal projects and achievements, or even in your "story". We lived in the same state? You came from a place I'de like to visit? We both know some obscure language? Worked at the same company? Interesting/crazy projects on github? I'll star you. The end goal is to make it hard to say no, and making as much of a personal connection as possible has worked wonders for us. Make sure not to go too far and lie... if you can't find anything that interests you about a candidate why consider them in the first place?
Whenever I've been looking for a job a quick turnaround is a sign of competence. These guys are on top of their game type thing, as in they know I'm good and want to hire me right away. I just don't see waiting being a positive especially in a startup when you're supposed to be doing everything fast and efficently.
It's me btw, can't remember my throwaway pw :).
This is how I prefer it:
1. Recommendation from a friend. 2. Sit down over lunch or something and chat with the boss. 3. Decision to offer is made, start date and compensation is set. 4. Done.
Any lingering, any delay only increase the chances of it not working out.
I see this to an extent, but it's not stupid to refuse to work for a low salary. There seems to be an idea floating around that magic startup pixie dust somehow makes it possible to hire good people for little money. I'm not so sure.