Startup Recruiting Principles / 4 Things
Building a great team requires the same vision and scrappiness that it took to build your product and secure investors. Not every recruiter has the vision to build a successful hiring culture for your startup. Through years of observation, working with top venture-backed teams, and a lot of experimentation, I’ve distilled my approach to talent / recruiting into four simple principles:
Culture of Transparency.
Operating with limited information often leads to misaligned decisions, unnecessary iterations, and slower growth.
Begin as you mean to go on. Treat recruiters as essential builders of your team and candidates as future team members. Keep in mind: Am I acting in line with our company culture in interviews?
Trust is given, not earned.
If the interview process doesn’t operate on a foundation of trust between the candidate and the hiring team, then it’s underperforming.
The onboarding process will also be slower. If you don’t trust a new hire to work on a meaningful project early on, it will take them longer to make an impact—and for you to feel confident that you made the right hiring decision.
Startups should interview for potential, not current experience.
Startups are dynamic and volatile. At their best, they are high-growth, too. It’s in the company’s interest to hire candidates who can grow alongside its evolving needs.
A candidate engaged in a job search is looking for opportunity. A strong candidate for a startup is looking for growth—because then their interests are aligned with the company’s.
Structure this assessment into your interview process:
The screening stage should ensure the candidate meets a minimum bar of experience to be successful in the role.
The onsite interview should evaluate their potential.
Speedy interview process.
In a high-growth environment, you need help now. Focus on candidates who can move quickly, make an impact on projects already in flight, drive product growth, and free up your time to hire the next headcount.
For some candidates, the timing won’t be right—but you can build a talent community, and revisit them for future positions.
