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How not to recruit for a startup

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Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#41

Post by SwellJoe »

cHalgan wrote: post #25

This is so funny. A while ago recruiter (expensive one) which was working for me to fill up a senior position in my team (I was a dev manager in a big company) sent me an email trying to recruit me... Regarding design candidates, there are some very very good designers working in big corporation and they don't have online portfolio or personal site (in many cases because HR does not allow it). For example, as far as…

How could a startup take that sort of chance on someone, though? Hiring and firing is the most important job you have as you scale beyond a small team. A big mistake at this early stage could sink a startup, while getting it right could be the key to explosive success. Without a portfolio, you're guessing.

Also, someone who excels in the corporate world, where there are a dozen people working on the website, a dozen people working on any given project, and a couple of managers to make sure it all blends seamlessly, may not do so well in an environment where they are expected to create and deploy without guidance or oversight.

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#42

Post by cHalgan »

SwellJoe wrote: post #41
cHalgan wrote: post #25

This is so funny. A while ago recruiter (expensive one) which was working for me to fill up a senior position in my team (I was a dev manager in a big company) sent me an email trying to recruit me... Regarding design candidates, there are some very very good designers working in big corporation and they don't have online portfolio or personal site (in many cases because HR does not allow it). For example, as far as…

How could a startup take that sort of chance on someone, though? Hiring and firing is the most important job you have as you scale beyond a small team. A big mistake at this early stage could sink a startup, while getting it right could be the key to explosive success. Without a portfolio, you're guessing. Also, someone who excels in the corporate world, where there are a dozen people working on the website, a dozen…

I completely agree that startup should minimize chance on hiring wrong people (that is reason I'm arguing that pay in startup must be market rate (no 20% less as many startup try) - otherwise your are gambling with the most important asset you have).

Yes, without a portfolio, you're guessing, but the problem with requiring candidate to have portfolio is that you will narrow the search to consulting/freelancer group which might not be the best pool of candidates.

Also many intelligent people which had startups or consulting end up working for corporations (Comcast, Apple, Oracle, etc.) because... because they are very very good and corporation pay with gold to get these kind of guys.

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#43

Post by ericd »

0x12 wrote: post #12
johnrob wrote: post #10

An open ended question I've wanted to ask for a while: when a startup (all of a sudden) needs to hire a bunch of engineers, what kind of things do those engineers work on? What requirements change so rapidly that doubling headcount becomes necessary?

Just my own experience here, not sure how much of that is shared with others. We launched with a duct-tape and baling wire version of an idea cobbled together from mostly stock components. It blew up overnight and kept on growing exponentially for months. All that time we managed to extend the life of the first version by throwing money at the problem, buying larger servers and tweaking the bits to remove the bottlen…

Is it still around? What site?

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#44

Post by ericd »

dmk23 wrote: post #32
huherto wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You almost need a recruiter to recruit recruiters...

At the end of the day the responsibility for recruitment is with the company management. Recruiters could have a role to play, but it is above their pay grade to decide what kind of candidates you want. They could surely help sourcing and pre-screening though. But if you are going to use recruiters you have to manage them carefully. Recruiter not given clear direction is poised to waste your time and money trying to…

The whole point of using a human is that they should be able to intelligently handle some level of screening that's hard to automate.

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#45

Post by 0x12 »

ericd wrote: post #43
0x12 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my own experience here, not sure how much of that is shared with others. We launched with a duct-tape and baling wire version of an idea cobbled together from mostly stock components. It blew up overnight and kept on growing exponentially for months. All that time we managed to extend the life of the first version by throwing money at the problem, buying larger servers and tweaking the bits to remove the bottlen…

Is it still around? What site?

Yes. No ;).

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#46

Post by adamseabrook »

If you really want to get some amazing results from the recruiter do this:

1. Go into their office and sit down and do some database searches with them. Sift through a mountain of resumes and then show them what to look for and what to ignore. Be sure to note down searches that bring back decent results.

2. If you have existing staff that you want more of give the recruiter their resumes and sit each of them down to do an interview with the recruiter so they can be profiled.

3. Once you have a stack of perfect candidates that they can use as a reference do some analysis and look for the previous employers that are statistically significant and add all of these to a list for headhunting. Also add any special skill sets that someone in the past may have which would predispose them to having skills you are after now.

4. Sit down and write the recruitment ad together with the recruiter so it "calls" to the candidates you want. Make sure they CC every resume that comes in so you can quickly flick through them and ask them to screen any that look interesting. Recruiters will often reject perfect candidates because they do not fit the profile exactly or they miss something interesting.

The recruiter should now have a pile of information and reference points that they can use to seed numerous searches that have a much higher likelihood of delivering candidates of interest. If a submitted candidate is not right make sure to give feedback that can be used to further refine the search.

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#47

Post by amirhhz »

aberman wrote: post #6
GavinB wrote: post #4

This recruiter's blunder gave you a great hook for this blog post, which is certain to bring in some well qualified applications. So, in some sense, this was a successful relationship.

I sent him a "thank you" email for that exact reason. Seriously.

What about the Atlassian approach [0]? They give the recruiters a chance to prove that they can deliver excellence and if not, both parties know it won't work out. I think it's a good model for the employer and the job-seeker.

p.s. I found out about this via this video: [1], scroll for transcript.

[0] http://www.atlassian.com/about/careers/recruiters.jsp

[1] http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2011/09/from-0-100million...

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#48

Post by tptacek »

amirhhz wrote: post #47
aberman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sent him a "thank you" email for that exact reason. Seriously.

What about the Atlassian approach [0]? They give the recruiters a chance to prove that they can deliver excellence and if not, both parties know it won't work out. I think it's a good model for the employer and the job-seeker. p.s. I found out about this via this video: [1], scroll for transcript. [0] http://www.atlassian.com/about/careers/recruiters.jsp [1] http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2011/09/from-0-100millio…

That probably works because Atlassian hires so many people that they too are in a position to play a numbers game with recruiters.

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#49

Post by tptacek »

I think the reality is that recruiting firms suffer from the same market dynamics as SEO consultancies and, I suppose, startups in general. The good ones are so valuable and so lucrative that they can be selective about their clients and have virtually no need to do outbound marketing.

Which means that any recruiter you can reasonably expect engage on a tactical basis is going to be drawn from the adverse selection pool.

Re: How not to recruit for a startup

#50

Post by joshu »

So after trying to use a variety of recruiters at tastylabs, we have discovered that the vast majority of recruiters do no recruiting, but instead just do sourcing and leave it up to us to actually filter and recruit.

So far as I can tell, they just get resumes off linkedin and make calls all day. Very low-value for us.

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