Ask HN: How did you find your first hire? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How did you find your first hire?

78 pointsnomadigital48 comments

My most interesting first hire: There was a user that absolutely loved our product, so much that he was a major promoter. Early on, he volunteered to help us with on boarding others and even support. Long story short, he was then hired with a significant signing bonus.

Did you use any resources to make your first hire? What do you wish you had known?

I don't understand your question in relation to my anecdote. Maybe you can re-phrase?

Thinking back over a few companies, the common categories are a) former colleagues, b) friends, and c) people I have met through meetups. Eventually I run out of people I trust and start hiring more traditionally, but the first hire's always somebody I have reason to believe is reliable.

How many hires is that before you run out of people you trust and have to hire at "arms length"? 5? 10?

May I ask as a non-native English speaker - does this mean "how did you find your first employee" (like, assuming that you are a founder) or "your first job"?

I intuitively interpreted is as the former but it seems that many commenters here interpret it as the latter.

Speaking as a native English speaker (US/California), I agree with you. "Your first hire" would be someone you hired, not (barring context) a job you were hired to do.

But... as I read the comments just 5 minutes after you posted yours, they also are overwhelmingly in favor of this interpretation. What are you seeing that has you confused?

I noticed that at least in Polish if you translated the question word by word it would look like the latter.

Google polish translation is even worse, it's about renting (like an apartment).

Just too much time had passed since I decided to post that comment until I finally posted it :) When I first opened the comment section, there were a couple of comments that confused me at the top.

The generally accepted interpretation is "first employee" but I can absolutely see how it could be taken the other way, especially by a non-native speaker.

Someone I knew from Uni. Later I hired friends of that person.

Not what I did, but what I wish I did: put ads on stackoverflow targeting the skills I was after.

After months of searching, finally we get a bunch of hits of people with the exact skillset we are after, all from newly placed ads on stackoverflow. Major facepalm moment.

What I actually did: ads on LinkedIn and local job portals. Mostly applications from India with none of the required skills listed in the job description. After a bunch of manual reading finally found a couple people with the background we need, but the time I spent looking was a major opportunity cost, not just from not having the people but as a time sink on my side as well.

interesting, so Stackoverflow > Linkedin. Were you targeting a certain # of years of experience or were you more concerned about tech stack?

Both. Experience in the stack is kind of required, since we were trying to get a few seniors to build a team around.

It's usually someone I have worked with in the past.

All joking aside, most of the hiring I've been part of has been as a third-party recruiter. I was that guy who trawled LinkedIn for keywords and only sent out InMail if I couldn't find your email and phone number elsewhere. I was the guy who went through piles of resumes on Indeed, again scanning for locations and keywords.

I've never been the one to 'pull the trigger' on a hire, though I did have no-go authority most of the time. I've been the guy who made sure you didn't get through if you didn't look right; I was the human alternative to an ATS.

"look right"? seems quite arbitrary.

We know that hiring process is totally broken, for exactly this reason. People use hunches and feelings and a whole range of subjective stuff instead of the only thing that actually works: a work sample.

In programming this is absolutely correct - but when it's for a management role, you can't just ask for some kind of work sample of a management decision. You have to go based on anecdotes and references. You do usually need to be able to define how this person specifically drove the company's profits when no one else did - because that's how you close to an in-house hiring manager or to upper management / ownership. But again, all you're likely to have is stories.

It does seem that way, especially when you're on the outside of the decision. When you're trying to find one hire out of thousands, something as minor as a slightly unusually formatted resume can be enough reason to make a no-go decision. I'm not going to waste anyone's time by listing all of the minor data I used to decide whether the candidate was a fit or not; but what seems arbitrary on the outside feels very systematized on the inside.

Just hired a boot camp/immersive graduate. Going well but it’s a bit early.

Boot camps have lists of students and you can post jobs on their sites.

Worked out well for me because I was looking for Somone junior.

How did you interview them since there are a lot of bootcamp grads with similar skill levels? (i am a bootcamp grad, just curious)

I did 2 skype interviews - a non technical and a technical. Skill levels varied quite a bit.

I met an old friend at a restaurant. I had just graduated. He asked for my CV and got me an interview. The same company had no available positions on their website.

Ideas are great but taking the first step to develop the product is very tiring. People just won’t have time to join your time. That’s common in India!

We were Always on the hunt for someone who could believe in launching the minimum sellable product. We met a lot of people and eventually we landed up with 2 Freshman developers from Waterloo. I had known one of them before he joined Waterloo and he brought in his friend.

I put an Ad in newspaper. I got a lot of calls. I picked one of them up and to my great surprise it was exactly what I was looking for?

Interns! We are a small company (6 people on the Payroll) and we always have 3 of 4 interns. With us, everybody can get an itern to teach and offload work to.

Most interns leave when they're done. But every now and then, one sticks and we get to keep'em! 3 of our regulars got in that way and 2 of our current batch are going to stick around.

How long do your internships last? Are you hiring students or recent graduates to be interns?

As much as recruiters get a bad rap in our industry, my first 2 came through a small 2-main recruitment agency that we happen to share an office building with. The team has expanded to 5 now and those first 2 employees have taken to more senior roles with no problem at all. They're the absolute backbone of our small operation.

Largely through word of mouth and referrals from friends. This has generally garnered the best signal for me personally.

My first hire is my brother.I hired him not because he is my brother, but he is really good at what I needed him for. Initially no one wanted to join me as a solo unknown founder of a bootstrapped company. So I poached him from his well paying corporate job. Great hire so far.

Reached out to someone after reading a blogpost about them. Was initially interested to learn more about their process. First call they let out they were currently looking for a job - several weeks & exchanges later i hired them.

Sent out a challenge on Hacker News. Met for coffee in London. Went from there!

Met through a mutual friend at a party at the bar where I used to work. We got along like a house on fire, so figured it was worth a shot.

We posted on Craigslist.

We tried Indeed, but were not happy with the caliber of applicant.

One of the VCs suggested a relative. Yes, I'm serious.

did you consider other people and the relative happened to win out fair and square? or did you just wing it

I was a solo founder with no real network of suitable people for this kind of job, the first employee was secretary/marketing assistance. I didn't have time or experience for serious recruiting and didn't particularly care about it at that point (was busy planning for scalability, writing forum software...). Thus I was grateful for the help and considered the VCs responsible for the result, the employee was paid with their money anyway. So everyone involved was OK with the outcome, I suppose.

Posted on FB, friend knew someone looking for a job.

Friend or a family is the first way to go.

Surprisingly, by going to directly tell a CEO that his website was deeply flawed and that I managed to access root credentials in a few minutes. Two weeks later, I had a job, the job I'm currently at, and I have this CEO in my list of good friends.

Great story!!! I also got a chance to meet my first hire in a fairly similar situation. Turned out that he was one of the first customers of my Indie Game. He pointed out a lot of good things, we got into discussion and next thing you know .. I offered him a partnership ...

Nice story but I think you got the question backwards.

(misread, off topic, ignore)

I think you read the question wrong.

Indeed, thanks :-)

Just do interviews a lot, then one day I finally can answer all of their questions.

May I ask if you are speaking as an employer or an employee?

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