About once a week an email shows up in my inbox with question: “Know any engineers?” followed by the requisite qualifier: “I’m looking for rockstars/hotshots/insert-ego-boosting-title-here for my startup.” I don’t mind people who are eager to hire developers or engineers for their startup. Of course, I know people. Even people I’d consider rockstars or hotshots. But I don’t know what you’re looking for and I don’t know if they’d be interested. While I could connect people, I don’t think that it necessarily translates to a successful hire or startup experience. An introduction is just the beginning.
Let me tell you a simple little secret… a candidate is just like a customer. You have to do a good job figuring out if your startup is the right fit for you and them. Then you have to sell them on the vision, so they’ll join. Once they join you need to invest in onboarding them. Finally, you’ll have to keep them engaged to avoid turnover.
For now I’m gonna focus this post on a conversation I had with a recent founder about figuring out fit:
1. Get rid of the words “hotshot, rockstar, etc” from your job description.
I know it’s been said a number of times already, but I’ll say it again until people stop using them to hire developers.
There are a couple issues I have with putting this in a job description. For starters, you’re a startup you haven’t even proven yourself, what makes you think that even if someone was amazing they’d want to work for you and your startup?
Sure you’ve got funding and you’re making headway but still all you can give them is a worthwhile experience.
The second issue I have is it makes people out to be better than they are. Yes they maybe fabulous. They may have a series of successes under their belt or gone to some awesome university. But they haven’t performed for you yet.
Past performance isn’t always the best indicator of future success. So save the praise until they’ve checked in their first line of code. Or better yet until they’ve fought their first fire or shown some initiative at your startup.
2. Don’t look to hire developers who are hotshots look for those who are hungry.
I cannot emphasize this point enough. Too many recruiters and founders look for technical talent and recruit someone because they went to some awesome university or can crank out code.
That’s great if what you want is a workhorse…
Remember a startup requires long hours, careful thought, collaboration, and stamina above all else. I’ve witnessed too many people that come in the first year do their time get promoted and then the second year they coast.
Contrast hotshots to those who are hungry, they’re going to want to keep building, innovating, and have a vested interest in helping you succeed.
To that end my criteria is as follows: first is the person articulate? They’re gonna need to be able to speak clearly and translate problems to other engineers and to other teams.
Second, are they rigorous when they solve problems, not everyone is going to answer every question correctly. What matters is were they methodical and covered a lot of ground. Can they make it through a long interview process.
Finally, emotional stability over accuracy. This is the last on my list because someone can be really accurate but still mess up on the job. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes. Being an engineer doesn’t mean you’re perfect. It just means you can solve problems from multiple angles.
What you want is to figure out how resilient they are and do they keep their cool under fire. The last thing you need is a loose canon controlling your code base.
3. Figure out your culture as a team before you hire developers.
Its not enough for you as a founder to think you know what the culture is, you need to ask your employees. They’re the ones who are going to be working with this candidate day in and day out.
One bad hire can really impact the team and throw things off course. Not to mention wear people down.
If you’re a sole founder you should still think about the personality traits you’re looking for in that first hire.
When it comes to culture think about the best personality traits that each person exemplifies including the founder. How do people interact with each other? What is the general development process? And most importantly how are conflicts resolved? Answers to these questions serve as selling points.
It’s not enough to say “we have a great culture… we play ping-pong together”.
Sure you might have a great culture but if you all work 100 hours a week, and the founders and constantly bickering with each other, that might not be what a candidate is looking for.
Having this conversation with your team may actually expose some bad things about your culture that you want to fix and that’s a good thing. J
Just make sure the other person actually fits in with the culture before you hire them. And if you’re on the fence its perfectly ok to have them come work for a few weeks to see if there’s harmony.
You’ll know if they’re a good fit if they buy into the vision, seem interested in the projects people are working on, add immediate value in the form of improvements (suggesting tools, process changes) or want to learn more about the user base.
Some liken hiring to a marriage, it’s not if you consider marriage as a long-term partnership.
When you hire developers you are doing it to build a relationship with them. And it can progress and get better or end whenever one or more people feel there are irreconcilable differences, hence divorce. But it’s not an equitable partnership. If you’re the founder, you have a greater vested interest in your company by the sheer amount of equity you.
So for each candidate you hire, you’re job as the founder is to make sure that they’re able to learn and grow, that they’re adding value not just to advance the company but to advance the team as well, and that they’re willing to resolve conflicts.
If you want it to be like marriage, then you’ll need to reconsider if they should be your technical co-founder.
Happy hiring!
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Great post Poormina. Very true that one word adjectives don’t convey much about a company’s hiring needs, nor a candidate’s skills. I’ve always favored longer thoughtful position descriptions versus short quippy job specs that sound sexy but don’t tell you much about the role, requirements and needs.
This is an amazing post. #1 has always bothered me, too. I feel #2 acutely whenever I can’t get into a startup because I lack experience in a very specific framework that they’re looking for. And I haven’t spent much time thinking about #3, but it makes sense.
Thanks Ed! What have you found works best for you when hiring? Any suggestions for how you can get a candidate to convey information beyond their skills?
Glad you enjoyed it Will. You should go through the exercise of doing #3 with your current team. It can be as simple as talking about it over lunch or during a break, just take a poll. I’d be curious to hear what your results are.
I’ve read that when you were at your start-up you had senior guidance and you thought it could be risky to hire a junior, like yourself way back when, but it worked out because you were passionate. But how does one hire for those who were your seniors?