Kayak co-founder Paul English on "hiring religion" (2002) | Hacker News Reader

Kayak co-founder Paul English on "hiring religion" (2002)

paulenglish.com

55 pointsadammichaelc9 comments

If you like this, hear him more recently on the same subject (an interview I did with him earlier this year): http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/03/paul-english-on-...

Jinx.

That was a great interview, I learned a lot about hiring from that.

This is excellent. Best article of this genre that I've read in quite awhile. The best part? It isn't developer/programmer/coder specific.

Gabriel Weinberg does an interesting interview with English on his views on hiring. http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/03/paul-english-on-...

There's a problem for a newbie or budding entrepreneur, though.

How do you know you're any good at hiring if you've never done it before? By English's admission (and many other wizened ones), that first hire is very, very crucial to your startup's success.

If you've never done it before, you'll probably be terrible. I was the first time I interviewed someone (and the second, and ...) despite all the preparation I did. If you're in a position to do hiring interviews for your employer, definitely do it - not only will you get better at it with practice, but you'll probably better on the other side of the table, too.

Entirely right, experience is huge. That said, I cut my teeth growing an engineering organization from 2 to 50+ when I left. For our first hires we interviewed a LOT. We we're incredibly inefficient, but it paid off. Those first hires are still with the company 6 years later. We didn't get fancy, we simply tried to hire the smartest people we could find.

Today I'm much more efficient and a bit more nuanced in how I conduct interviews. I'm intentionally casting a wider net these days. In those first interviews we did a lot of basically language trivia. It excluded some smart folks, but seemed to select those who really knew what they we're doing.

Also, you might find that there are startups willing to let you sit-in on their interviews. You get to see how they do it, they get an outside voice. I've done this a few times and it's really helpful.

I'd love to work for this guy.

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