How to Hire

Funny about that: I started exactly that with a friend at a Startup Weekend a while ago... we didn't go anywhere with it: http://www.findexpert.co/

We also found that these guys did the same thing: https://ooomf.com/

›››››› Spend more time

›››››› Have a mission

›››››› Always be recruiting

These three are of a kind for me.

I recommend that you think about hiring the way Patrick McKenzie things about conversion optimization: as a form of marketing that is amenable to engineering. In particular: start tracking it as soon as you possibly can, so you'll have data to pull trends out of. Every effective hiring organization I've talked to has a process for this.

"Have a mission" sounds fuzzy but I don't think that it is. What we've learned is to think a lot about what's good for the candidate about the roles we hire for. We've gotten good enough at this that people on our team can write snappy job descriptions for us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640441 --- Sean's a good writer, which helps, but there's also a notion across the team of what we think is great about the work. Having this "through line" for all your recruiting conversations makes it easier not just to sell the job to candidates but also, like any serious sales effort, to qualify prospects.

Being serious about qualifying also gives you another piece of data to track: how well your qualifiers predict how far people get into the funnel. That's been helpful for us too.

›››››› Don't hire

›››››› Get your hands dirty

This times 1000; I think this is the most important piece of advice he has. Jason Fried has been talking about this for years with "The Importance of Hiring Late"; the 37signals motto was "don't hire until you've done the job yourself".

›››››› Focus on the right way to source candidates

I agree in general with the idea here.

I think in particular that "blind" job ads of any sort do poorly. Every venue for ads that has significant visibility is both oversold and also low signal/noise ratio. We don't take job ads seriously anymore.

There's a lot to think about w/r/t poaching employees, particularly from peers. It's important to remember that the ethics of poaching from another company have to be weighed against the best interests of candidates; refusing to talk to someone because they work for a friend's company is probably a fraught decision. On the other hand, remember that you're likely to be at a different company in 2 years, and your long-term relationships with people are important; I wouldn't use inside information I have from peers to poach employees.

I wouldn't work with a recruiter. They also irritate candidates and set up weird incentives.

›››››› Don't compromise

›››››› Look for red flags

This is some of the oldest hiring advice in the industry, for a reason.

Be careful with the "default-to-no" posture if your hiring signals come from employee-driven interviews. Your whole team is rarely on the same exact page about what you're hiring for.

I take specific issue with the "red flag" of people being title-conscious, because there are good reasons some people think about titles: they are (sensibly) concerned about their own career trajectory. The absolute cheapest benefit you can offer an employee is their title, and if they have a rational reason for wanting a better title, why on earth would you refuse to give up some title to get a good candidate on board?

›››››› Have a set of cultural values you hire for

This scares me because I think people don't have a good idea of what a "cultural value" really is, or have aspirational cultural values, like "we'll work as hard as it takes to make our milestones!".

You discover real cultural values bottom-up, by observing what is good and effective about your team. You don't have the value until you've established it in your existing team.

It's obviously important that you build your team out of people who will work well with your team. But it's equally important not to cast too small a net. Among other reasons: it can make you especially susceptible to drama, in a monocultural kind of way.

›››››› Hire people you like

Don't try to do this.

You will be surprised by what you end up liking about people who didn't seem like an immediate "hang out on weekends" fit with your social culture.

When you hire, try to make sure you're hiring on objectively important criteria. Don't kid yourself about how much it matters that a candidate wants to go bar hopping with you after work.

›››››› Fire fast

This is so hard to do. If you haven't actually run a "fire-fast" culture at size yet, I recommend you not assume you'll have this capability. Hire as if it's the life-or-death decision it probably is.

›››››› Put a little bit of rigor around the hiring process.

Put a lot of rigor around the hiring process.

We've steadily standardized every part of our recruiting process and to date we've never looked back at something we standardized or measured and said "you know, this wasn't worth the effort or the cost in flexibility".

We have a funnel with specific objectives at each stage of the funnel. For instance, in 2013, I think it's impossible to interview with us without knowing what our whole hiring process is, and without having the phone number of a company principal to call with questions. It is remarkable how often we hear how much better our process is than the typical company's process, because the things that make us outwardly easier to talk to are so easy. And yet, until a couple years ago, we weren't doing them either.

›››››› Have people audition for roles instead of interviewing for them.

There's nothing I can say about this that hasn't already been said a million times, but I'll make the simplest point against it that I can: the best candidates generally aren't available to "audition" for you, because they're already working full time jobs.

The co-working trial is an attempt to make the scale more favorable for the company. I can understand the desire for this, but in the current environment, it's almost guaranteed to backfire, as the best developers simply won't put up with it. No amount of wishful thinking on the part of the company is going to change this.