recruiting technical talent for early stage startups

Technical RecruitingPoornima VijayashankerEIR @ 500 StartupsApril 24, 2014

1

• Right time to recruit

• Sourcing candidates

• Interview process

• Crafting an offer

• Closing candidates

Agenda

2

Recruiting is a sales process.

3

What do the BEST sales people do?

4

Don’t sell!

5

They get you to buy!

6

7

Brand building.

8

Story of Starbucks.

9

Right time.

Supplemental Reading: How to Keep Your Startup Engineer Sane10

Pre-sourcing. Sourcing. Interviewing. Closing.

11

Pre-sourcing. Sourcing. Interviewing. Closing.

12

Communicate criteria.

Supplemental Reading: Recruiting for a Startup? First Figure Out Who & What You Want., How to Keep Your Startup Engineer Sane, Technical Recruiters Get a Bad Rap

13

Specify position

Culture, Skills, Experience Level

Identify ideal candidate

Who matches & does NOT match?

Communicate criteria

To everyone: employees & entire network.

14

Pre-sourcing. Sourcing. Interviewing. Closing.

15

Don’t hire a recruiter at this stage.

16

Get out more!

hackathons

17

Git online!

18

19

Validate candidate.

Assess their needs, skills, experience & interest.

Pitch the company.

Vision, why candidate is a fit & story that meets their needs.

Explain process.

Employees, recruiters & referrals.

20

Pre-sourcing. Sourcing. Interviewing. Closing.

21

Explain to candidate the interview process.

Steps of the process.

Who they will meet.

When to expect an answer.

Interview the candidate.

Divvy up areas & reviewquestions.

Every interview MUST tell vision.

What it’s like to work there.

Evaluate the candidate.

No communication during interview.

Have criteria set & measure every candidate the same.

Feedback system.

22

Make them solve REAL problems.

23

Phone screen first.

24

3 Keys to an Interview

• Make the candidate comfortable

• Background interests

• Have them teach you something

25

Early Stage Employee DNA

• Adaptability

• Productivity

• Quality

26

Evaluation Criteria

• Process

• Estimating complexity

• Testing

• Refactoring

• Acknowledging their limits!

27

Before you talk numbers...

28

Sell your vision.Sell freedom.Sell working for YOU!

29

Crafting an offer.

30

Offer

• Role

• Numbers

• Leave room for negotiation

31

How to definitely get rejected!

• Low ball offer.

• Aggressive offer deadlines.

• Not address needs.

32

REJECTED.

33

Why?

34

Q&A

35

Appendix

36

MotivationWhy do you want to work at a startup?Why do you want to work at this startup?What do you need from me to be productive?How do you keep up with tech trends?

Technology AcumenWhat technologies are you familiar with i.e. can you actually write code in?Can you handle full stack development (front to back end)?Do you do TDD/BDD?What are the gaps in your skill set or knowledge? Are you willing to help recruit people who can compliment you?How would you scale a system from 1-10, 10-10k, 10k-1M users, and do so with in a fixed budget?Are you familiar with: security, monitoring, backup stores, deployment, scaling, performance tuning?

ProcessHow do you interact with product managers and designers?How would you implement an agile development team?How do you evaluate a build vs. buy situation?How do you ensure code quality?What is your process for handling technical debt?

Mini ProjectCome up with a small project that you think will take them either a couple days to 1 week to implement. Can be as simple as integrate signups with email marketing provider. Grade on attention to detail (quality), how accurately they implemented what you wanted (capable of building & shipping), and turnaround time (speed).

Sample interview questions.

37

Resources

BooksBasic Black by Cathie BlackGood Boss, Bad Boss by Robert SuttonRework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier HanssonSecrets of Rockstart Programmers by Ed BurnsSmart & Gets Things Done by Joel SpolskyThe Leadership Pipeline by Charan, Drotter, NoelThe One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard

Blog Postshttp://femgineer.com/2011/12/blurred-vision-is-better-than-blindness/

http://femgineer.com/2010/05/startup-engineer-which-number-is-right-for-you/

http://femgineer.com/2012/10/optimizing-outsourcing/

http://femgineer.com/2012/10/where-to-find-femgineers/

PodcastsHire & Retain Talent - Barry Deutsch & Brad Remillard

38

InfrastructureApplication Hosting

Website HostingCode RepositoryBackups, Security

Product Features

DeploymentTesting

Continuous IntegrationRelease Cycles

App Store

Maintenance Technical Debt

Org EfficiencyEmail Server

Email Marketing Social Media

Data & Analytics

Engineering Department

39

Roles

Front End Interactions: JavaScript, HTML/CSS

Back End Algorithms, Features, Scaling

Architect Understands entire system.

DBA or DevOps Data Storage, security, scaling

Growth Hacker Get me more users!

Language Specific Rails Developer

Mobile Developer iOS or Android Developer

CTO/VP of Eng Manager

40