Hiring Principles

Good operating principles can help you prioritize your time, be more efficient, and consistently make good decisions.

Below are some battle tested hiring principles that have worked at early-stage and high-growth startups as well as large public companies.

Don't hire

Exhaust all other options before you hire. Be sure you really need it.

Small teams are capable of doing some pretty amazing things. They can move faster, are more resilient to change, and are of course cheaper

When low-leverage work needs to be done, hire contractors.

If you are running a startup, try to find product market fit before hiring. You want the leanest team possible until you are certain that you are building the right thing. Inertia grows exponentially with team size.

If a game changing hire falls in your lap, be opportunistic. Hires like that can alter the course of your business.

See them do the job

In a perfect world, you would have every candidate do the exact job you are hiring for. The process would be in a controlled and fair environment, and you’d assess them based on their performance the same way you’d assess an employee.

That is usually not realistic, but your goal should be to get as close as possible. Use work samples, projects, and other types of simulations to see candidates do the job.

Use other structured interview techniques when it’s impractical or expensive to simulate the job. And to assess softer skills and team fit.

Always be selling

The interview process is a two-way evaluation. If you are interviewing a great candidate, they likely have lots of options. You will need to convince them why they should join your team.

Talk about the company vision, impact, culture, and any other selling points throughout the entire process. Don’t wait until the end, once you know you want to make it hire, to turn on the charm. At that point it might be too late.

Be careful who you let interview. If someone isn’t able to be engaging and speak passionately about the company, keep them away from candidates.

Include an anti-pitch as part of the process. Talk about the reasons why they might not be happy at your company. This will help build trust with candidates and weed out people who won’t work out anyway.

Be deliberate

Every moment you spend with a candidate should have a clear purpose.

You should be able to describe what you are measuring and how for every ~15 minute block. If you can’t do that, then your interview process isn’t well designed.

It’s surprising how many people decide to wing it. Spend at least an hour coming up with a structured plan. Iterate on it after every interview until you can get the important signals in a repeatable way.

Default to no

Making a bad hiring decision is an expensive mistake. Not only will it cost you financially but it will distract and frustrate your existing team.

Have a clear idea of what you want from a candidate before you start interviewing. If someone meets the bar and your team is excited, make the hire. If there is any doubt, the answer is no.

Prioritize candidate experience

Your hiring experience should make every candidate an advocate for your company, even if you don’t hire them. The pool of talent is smaller than it may seem, people talk and can either create detractors or refer you to other candidates or even customers.

Move fast - anything over 2 weeks is too long. Every touchpoint of the process should be purposeful and efficient.

Be responsive. Set expectations properly. Tell people what’s coming next. Send rejection emails and never ghost a candidate.

Make candidates feel comfortable during the process. If a candidate is nervous or frustrated you are collecting bad data.

Don’t oversell. Be honest about the pros and cons of your company.

Leadership needs to be involved

In a startup, founders should lead the recruiting process.

In larger companies, a senior leader should participate in every hiring decision to act as a bar raiser.

If leadership completely delegates the process to their team, or even worse - outsources it, they will lose control of the quality bar and team culture over time.

Invest early and often

Start investing in recruiting before you actually need to hire.

If you are a founder, you should block off at least an hour a week, every week, to do something for recruiting. Build your network, market your company, or send some cold emails/DMs.

Have early recruiting and growth efforts overlap as much as possible.