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Startup advice: cold recruiting

stripe.com

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Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#91

Post by gedrap »

thinkerer wrote: post #89

I dont know. I personally felt it was better to at least give the person an idea of my background and what I am up to. It solves the issue of finding someone whos vision is aligned to yours. A random note for coffee doesnt work that well for me tbh.

It doesn't say that it's over of conversation, we either meet right now or forget. Feel free to continue conversation online, it's just call to action, showing initiative. It's easier to respond to initiative, rather than initiate. And it's easier to convince someone to accept an offer face-to-face rather by messaging. We are social creatures after all.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#92

Post by gedrap »

EvanMiller wrote: post #40

I occasionally receive emails like these, and I agree with most of this advice. I will add a couple of personal turn-offs: * Overtesting. I have received multiple emails from different people at the same company with the exact same subject line ("Hey Evan, let's chat"). I am sure this subject works better than the other ones that they tried, but a little variation would make me feel like I am more than a conversion g…

>>> Don't be bashful, just say your company is hiring.

While I haven't received this (yet), I strongly agree. Everyone knows a guy who messages you after years of not being in touch, asking how are you doing and all that crap while we both know he doesn't care and it's just a foreplay before asking for some favour. I won't say yes just because of that, so let's stop wasting time and looking silly.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#93

Post by bobbles »

I wonder if anyone has gone as far as to simply offer the person a consulting fee for coming and talking to them for an hour.

eg. I know you're busy, but we'd be willing to pay you a consulting rate of x/hr to discuss how your experience may help us achieve what we are aiming for.

Still going to be orders of magnitude cheaper than going through a recruiter, and potential recruits have something invested in making sure the meeting is worthwhile.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#94

Post by aaronbrethorst »

The last two recruiting-related occurrences that have gotten past the Spam+Delete stage for me:

* A Facebook recruiter does a copy-paste on an email to an unknown number of iOS developers (including me). This is rapidly determined on Twitter, and the poor person is summarily mocked. A fairly senior FB person reaches out to me personally, apologizes, and asks if I'd be interested in chatting with them. I say "sure," of course. Personal engagement is worth a lot. A recruiter who copy-pastes an email to me and hundreds or thousands of others is worth less than nothing to me.

* An Apple recruiter reached out to me a couple months ago and asked if I'd be interested in an engineering position on their camera/photo team. I declined since I have absolutely no interest in relocating from Seattle to the South Bay, but he obviously had done some research on me to know that—were I to join any team at Apple—this would be my first choice. I was impressed, and replied to give my regrets that I have no interest in living down there.

I get calls and Linkedin invites from recruiters several times per week. At this point, I just reject any phone call I get from unrecognized numbers, and delete any email I get from Linkedin. These people are obviously trying to play a numbers game, which will simply never work with me.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#95

Post by wildpeaks »

mootothemax wrote: post #15
itafroma wrote: post #7

As someone on the receiving end of these emails, the point about demonstrating some knowledge of who I am or what I've done in the opening of the email is essential. It's almost guaranteed a reply, even if the opportunity doesn't seem immediately interesting. It's amazing how virtually none of the recruiting emails I've received do that.

Seconded. The number of emails i receive that make the least effort possible for something alleged to be so important is truly staggering. It can feel rather insulting. Is it really too much to ask for 15 minutes of your time if you genuinely find me so important?

I suspect it's intentional: if they find someone that bites despite they put no effort into it, that means he will be easier to control and will work for cheaper without needing to spend as much on salary or good working environment; the same way spam doesn't work on most people, but when it finds a sucker, they bleed it dry.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#96

Post by gdb »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #85

I feel like this post is generally on track, but it still falls into the same problem that come with all questions about recruiting: People trying to hire quality people quickly/easily. Arguably, hiring is the most important thing that you can do, with firing being a close runner up. This should be the thing that the CEO is most engaged with, especially if the CEO is doing his job as "culture minister." Now this does…

You're right: there are no shortcuts in hiring. No matter what blog posts on the internet you read, hiring is hard work, and requires a great deal of attention and thought. The bullets I describe are mostly principles to focus your thinking if you're choosing to do cold outreach — it's generally better if you can just hire from within your network though.

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#97

Post by gdb »

incision wrote: post #82

I'm inclined to be extremely mistrustful of messages like this. As best I can tell, the majority of contacts I've had along this pattern came from someone's clever 'growth hacker'. It makes sense, a more typical message is going straight to the trash while a feigned recruitment has a decent chance of getting me to visit your website. Though, I think my typical work makes me a big target for this - social proof is par…

Wow. Really unfortunate that people end up doing that. I think the most important part about cold outreach of any sort is to be sincere (cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917277).

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#98

Post by gdb »

silverbax88 wrote: post #60

I love Stripe. Huge fan. But if I get an email from someone, anyone, at a company who wants to 'grab lunch' and talk about me working for company XYZ, I'll pass. I mean, he says this is what has been the most effective for them, so I can't argue that point. But the reality is I personally wouldn't ever take anyone up on this. Actually, now that I think about it, I would probably only respond if it was an email actual…

Thanks for the kind words!

I'm not sure I fully follow your comment — what's the distinction you're drawing between managers/execs wanting to talk about their team, and someone wanting to talk about working at the company? Is it the specificity of them wanting you for their particular team?

Re: Startup advice: cold recruiting

#99

Post by gdb »

nbarry wrote: post #87

> Don't explain what your company does. ... Google would never send someone an email saying "I work at Google, a search company in Mountain View which is organizing the world's information". The Google comparison is a poor one, since Google is extraordinarily well known, and most start-ups aren't. And even they do describe the team each position is on, at least on its job postings. If I were getting enough cold email…

There's definitely a tradeoff there — the flip side is that after reading a bunch of company descriptions, they all start to blend together. So counterintuitively, a full description can cause your email to be ignored. In my mind, it's all about creating a (genuine!) connection with the person, and being cautious about consuming their time.
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