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How We Hire

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36 pointsnemesisj43 comments

Under the important things they've learned, "A startup is a war. ... lots of life changes shouldn't be made together", and then a biblical quote saying that a newly married man should not be set to war.

Doesn't strike me as truly the bias-free process they were earlier promoting.

Yeah, was wondering in retrospect if that would be a bit bizarre without the context of the talk.

Essentially, we were saying that this idea of making sure we're not hiring people who are undergoing lots of change in other areas of life isn't a new idea, and has been recognised by ancient cultures long ago (hence the quote from the Old Testament). If you can find any similar quotes from a long way back, let me know and we'll add them!

Don't change the airframe and the engines at the same time ;)

The fact that it happened in ancient times and worked doesn't mean that it's fine to replicate. I know that people who work in start-ups tend to be of younger age because companies want them almost exclusively for themselves and not for their girlfriend/potential wife/family but acceptable forms of discrimination are still forms of discrimination.

This seems unwise to publicise. There are a few common life changes for which you cannot legally discriminate against a candidate in hiring (in the US.)

I'm not even sure why you would allow hiring manages to ask the questions necessary to discriminate against these candidates.

More fundamentally, there seems to be a conflict between candidates who assure that they are committed to the position and hiring managers who assume they cannot be.

"We were willing to hire you and put the success of our company in your hands, but we don't really trust you when you say you'll work hard, because you'll probably just go sneaking off to go spend time with your family."

I think candidates would prefer a company that trusts the judgement of its employees.

Hmm, we're not going to kill your application on this alone, but we are going to ask you about it, and talk in depth about how you're going to manage whatever it is. Many people underestimate how hard working in a startup is vs. a more established company. We're not talking in terms of hours either - we work a normal 40 hour week and never weekends. We're talking more about taking responsibility, etc.

If someone is moving to a new place, changing jobs, starting a family, or something else major, we just want to make sure they've really considered yet another factor. It can be no big deal, but we have had some candidates remove themselves from consideration after thinking about this, even if we were willing to move forward.

It's interesting seeing this through the USA lense - we're absolutely not talking about time commitment (which I guess is the default American perception of what we'd be referring to) but instead more talking about general quality of life and sanity for everyone.

And yes, I realise I misspoke a bit on the parent by using "making sure we're not" - more like "making sure we're intentionally addressing it and discussing it"!

As this is the UK this is very unwise stating that you discriminate against those with young kids or those planning to start a family is insane.

If that came to court you would lose automatically.

It strikes me they need to hire some one with a basic knowledge of employment law.

Yeah, we're definitely sending almost exactly the opposite message that we intended, on a slide that had a lot of verbal context put around it. I just updated it to make it more clear and remove the quote. No point to it that can't be conveyed in a clearer way. Thanks for the feedback!

> we're not hiring people who are undergoing lots of change in other areas of life

Having a child? Coming to terms with a mental illness? Coming to terms with some other disability? Coming to terms with newly discovered genetic information? Going bankrupt?

Yes, it comes of as a bit bizarre, and something of a red flag (due to the bias aspect).

But it was generally good advice, otherwise. It's amazing how many companies don't get the "Respond to every CV, always" and "Have the CEO personally involved in every hiring decision" parts, for example.

After seeing how this is being misinterpreted (there was quite a bit of verbal context around this) we've decided to just remove it. Definitely don't want to send the wrong message or perception!

Additional things that struck me (in addition to my other comment on censoring university name):

They give transparent pay ranges up-front. The salary game KILLS me (I can play it, but I don't like it). I had a HR person demand my current salary "so the company could protect itself", but didn't like when I asked their number "so I could protect myself". (I have a NDA that covers my current salary, but the HR person told me I should tell him anyway and "they won't know".)

They respond to every CV. THANK YOU. This should be automated for all companies.

"We don’t claim to be experts on HR.." then they list some prerequisites to hire and say "Don't have these prerequisites? Don't hire. Period."

...couldn't read past that. I really despise the "our way is the only right way" opinions.

You're misreading the slide. That's the criteria they use internally.

"Hey Bob, you need a new team member right? If you don't check these boxes then you don't really need one."

It's not directed towards outside people. It's just their internal process.

Not sure if you're reading the slides correctly.

Company Organization Chart, Company Handbook, Company Values.

This isn't something "Bob" comes up with.

You're not really getting it.

I really despise the "our way is the only right way" opinions.

I didn't read it that way -- it sounded like they were just trying to be very, very clear. So many people in the business world are, as we know, just so rush and slapdash in, well, pretty much everything they do. Especially recruiting and hiring.

So they've hired 150 people over the last 10 years, and currently have 13 people.. Turnover much?

Heh, sorry if that wasn't clear. Our team (through working at various other organisations) has hired more than 150 people over the last 10 years.

Haha that was my guess, but then I looked at your website and I didn't see anything about recruiting

    4. Verbal offer and acceptance.
    5. Email offer letter and acceptance.
    6. Official offer and acceptance.
    7. Send contract over in advance to review.

This seems like the wrong order, as I would call that the opposite of "in advance". Job seekers should see a contract before accepting any job.

This is common in the UK you have an offer letter outlining the basics and accept on that basis

You have to have a contract within a month or 6 weeks(I cant remember off the top of my head) of starting.

"Culture fit is really important."

We could discuss hours about culture fit but this might reveal an uncontroled bias on your (remarkable) bias free hiring process because it is highly subjective. How do you ensure a recruiter assesses culture fit correctly (i.e not by the way someone dresses for example or just by ensuring that the candidate looks sufficiently like him).

They specifically mention defining company values and having predefined interview questions to test for every value.

Looks like I skipped that part, thanks. I would love to have a snippnet of the questions though.

Better to admit that you're touchy about "culture fit" than to pretend that you're not.

I really suck at pretending I am not. Well I am more touchy about wrong culture and wrong fit than about culture fit.

This is pretty interesting, I haven't really seen a place that filters out the Degree Pedigree and name from the CV. I'm curious if they actually have any in depth data on this, because the hiring manager working the job sounds great in theory for them to know a lot about the job, but it can also really create an environment where everyone thinks the same way.

We don't have any data on the blinded vs. non-blinded looking at CVs, other than the anecdotal (and deeply embarrassing) realization that in the past there may have been instances where we were favoring "normal" names or becoming overly impressed with specific universities. These types of subtle biases exist, no matter how much we wish they didn't, so we thought we'd try to remove them as much as possible.

We like the hiring manager to know how to do the jobs they're managing/responsible for, but the expectation is that the person working the job should be and needs to be better. So for the first few weeks they work how the manager did things, then we specifically ask them to step out and start experimenting. It seems to work pretty well. Someone told me 37Signals has a similar policy in place, not sure what it is exactly.

I found this interesting as well. I'm sure it removes biases, but it removes a data point as well. A more prestigious university tends to be more selective and reflects a history accomplishments/drive. Of course, a "good name" doesn't mean the person is a "good hire", but when why not censor the name of previous companies ("Ooh, he worked at Facebook!") or other pertinent data?

"We strongly value reliability, so we're testing this with every email..."

What if the candidate is in an all-day meeting at the job he's currently working and doesn't have time to open his personal email?

This process seems to involve a lot less of the weird psychological-tests-designed-by-non-psychologists, but it's still there.

I think reliability is different than promptness. If someone says they'll get back to us on a certain day, we take note of that, and if it doesn't happen without a reason given, that's a concern. We wouldn't want to treat a customer that way, for example. We're totally fine with people letting us know (and this in fact just happened with a candidate recently) that their train is delayed due to mechanical failure, and they'll be late. That's a huge plus for us vs. just arriving late without forewarning.

Wait, that's basic social competence!

Sorry, but I don't think any interviewer in the history of job interviews would give a guy a job if he showed up late without warning - how is your "testing for reliability" any different?

What if the candidate actually does work in his current job and thus spend a lot of time focused on coding, writing etc (as opposed to dealing with personal mail constantly)?

Interesting to see they're using jobscore.com, but as far as I can tell doesn't have a presence on careers.stackoverflow.com. While I've yet to apply for a new job, I've so far found the good ads on so to be far superior (in terms of how informative they are, in letting me classify them as a probably good/bad fit right off) to pretty much any other job ads I've come across.

Ultimately I suppose the main thing is to get good talent to apply (and to a lesser extent, not waste everyone's time with those that clearly are a bad fit) -- so posting something like this on HN is probably a good strategy vs placing an ad pretty much anywhere else.

Thanks for posting this; I submitted an "Ask HN" entry a few days ago to ask other start-ups how they go about hiring technical people (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7978111) - it didn't get much traction but this might be a good opportunity to find out a bit more :)

>The CEO must be personally involved in the first 150 hires.

Is this a typo? Should it have read 'first 15 hires' because 'first 150' is absolute nonsense.

In fairness, it really depends on the CEO's level of involvement in those hires. If the CEO is taking time out of the day to interview each of the first 150, that might be inefficient (or it might not be, depending upon the length of time during which those 150 were hired). On the other hand, if the CEO merely has to give a thumbs up or final approval to anyone who's made it through the gauntlet, that seems like a more modest timesuck.

Modest yes but also completely unnecessary. If the CEO hasn't spent one-on-one time with the applicant then they shouldn't be the one holding the final decision.

This seems doable if the CEO is the final interview. I can't imagine the CEO overriding the team on more than 30% of interviews, so it's ~200 interviews on the high end.

I know the Palantir founders still interview every candidate and they seem to be doing fine.

> 3. Interview

> 1. Review blinded CVs (remove name and university whenever possible)

Interesting that they remove the name of the university, considering the seemingly widespread habit of name-dropping Ivy League universities when people want to show themselves in a good light/give indirect credentials, or is talking about someone who they want to show in a good light.

Though I've seen this behaviour on "The Internet", and The Internet is more American than Scottish.

Trust me, the British obsession with prestigious higher education establishments matches or perhaps even exceeds the American obsession.

Does it? on here I have seen a lot of comments that you have to go to the right University in the USA. And getting a good law job seems to require an extra degree from a small number of law schools

And I suspect that France is worse give the lock the tiny number of universities like ENA have on the Civilservice

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