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COLLECTION 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

How do you hire all-star talent?

Former CEO of Chrysler, Lee Iacocca famously said "In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. Unless you've got a good team, you can't do much with the other two”. We agree. You are only as good as your team.

In today’s collection, we're diving into the strategies and insights of founders and leaders who have done just that—hired an All-Star team. From their recruitment process, to how they attract talent.

Join us as we deep dive into their approaches to hiring and discover how they've built a cracking talent acquisition function inside of their companies.

Dan Westgarth - COO at Deel

The hiring process, especially when it comes to tech, is rarely done well. It’s honestly mind-boggling, given tech companies are the ones with unlimited access to software designed to make the process seamless.

It’s never been easier for applicants to find positions due to increased unfettered access to professional social platforms along with sophisticated job market ad-tech. As a result, increased candidate flow has shifted a company’s focus to data and operational efficiency. However, the candidate experience hasn’t kept up. Instead, it’s rapidly deteriorating.

Candidate experience matters. Potential hires are real people who will use their experiences to form views on the company, its products, and its people. Word of mouth conversations resulting from the hiring process is often more vital than the general user experience.

At Deel, we approach the candidate experience a bit differently. First, it starts with a meaningful job description that succinctly summarizes the company mission, explicitly states the expectations for the role, and lists qualification parameters. Candidates revisit and reference job descriptions several times, so we took the time iterating on a structure to make them digestible and ensure they accurately reflect the culture at Deel.

Internally, we have set service level agreements between our hiring stakeholders. What does this mean? Well, it means that we measure the time between each action in the hiring process and ensure promises get kept. Doing this helps manage and ensure candidates aren’t left hanging or have an unpleasant experience outside of our expectations set.

One of the critical results of the hiring function at Deel isn’t just bringing on great people. It’s turning all applicants into advocates through a well thought out process that manages prospective hire’s expectations and shows candidate appreciation.

Jennifer Phan, Co-Founder and CEO at Passionfroot

I think there are many factors that make for a good hiring process. We approach hiring with the same structured and strategic mindset as fundraising.

Focus is a key element; similarly to fundraising, we run a targeted and tight process, placing hiring as our top priority. Preparation plays a vital role also. Just like a well-prepared fundraising effort, we clearly define our criteria, the profiles we're looking for, and meticulously plan the different steps of the hiring process, including creating a targeted list.

Owning the process is next. Typically, my co-founder serves as the main point of contact from the initial call to the closing, ensuring a seamless experience. Our execution is marked by rigor. We aim for speed and efficiency, documenting feedback for each candidate at every stage, allowing for swift, asynchronous decision-making. We also leverage our network & communities for certain candidates, using warm introductions and tapping into communities and creators to extend beyond our immediate network, such as sponsoring newsletters targeting specific audiences.

Storytelling is a critical skill; as a startup founder, being an effective storyteller is paramount. We treat candidates with the same enthusiasm as investors, sharing our vision, pitch deck, and product demos, discussing competition, and outlining potential growth. Showing social proof is another tactic; we offer candidates the chance to speak with our investors to understand their confidence in Passionfroot.

Understanding their stage is just as important as understanding an investor's focus, as it helps in aligning their aspirations with our goals. Conviction is crucial, especially in the early stages. We seek individuals who share our belief and vision, preferring to hire those with a missionary zeal over mercenaries.

Finally, we adopt an always be hiring approach. We continuously build relationships with potential candidates who might join us later, keeping our eyes open for exceptional talent even when not actively hiring.

Ross Chaldecott - Co-Founder & CEO at Kinde

As with all things Kinde, we try to treat recruitment in the most human way possible. At every step we look at how we can optimize the process as far as possible. We aren’t doing a lot of hiring right now – our team right now is largely the size it needs to be – but when we do we’ve found that we don’t struggle a lot to attract talent. I think this probably comes down to the awesome employer brand that the team has built. People tend to self select in rather than us having to do a whole lot of sourcing.

When we have needed to source, we’ve tended to avoid external recruiters, and found that we get far better value and higher quality candidates by having our team refer people from their own networks. This has multiple benefits. We know the people are going to be good - because our team is vouching for them. We also know that they already know Kinde and have a good frame of reference for what we’re like. So it’s really a two sided benefit. Generally we’ve found this tends to result in mostly incredible people joining.

Once they’re in the pipeline we really focus on understanding the whole person. Values interviews and an interview with myself make it so that the focus isn’t purely on the work. Obviously we care very deeply about the work and go deep into that part with the person. But it’s the other parts that help us to build a richer and more detailed view of the person and whether we think they will love working here.

One of the things I find really helps us understand whether somebody has the appetite for startup life, is I spend a lot of time telling potential hires how crazy it is to join a startup and that they really shouldn’t do it. The ones who’s eyes light up and who get excited by the challenge - they’re the ones for us.

An algorithm to live by

In order to hire well, one needs apply an element of Aesop’s ‘Look Before You Leap Principle’. But how much looking is required before actually taking the leap. The right answer—in most cases—is not much. Recruitment is a game of speed and every moment you are sitting on your hands, waiting to make a decision, an active candidate is out being active elsewhere.

Even when the market is slow and hiring is luke warm, the general rule of thumb is; if you find the person who you believe can do the job—hire them.

Emmanuel Nataf - Co-Founder & CEO at Reedsy

First, I’d like to say that there isn’t an infinite pool of all-star talent, and I’d like to avoid creating the illusion that you can grow fast and only hire top talent. That’s why we grow our team slowly. We get 150 applications per week and don’t hire more than 15 people per year. And among those 15, we can be wrong 20% of the time.

All applicants have to complete a written assignment, which takes between 1 (for an internship) up until 5 hours (for a software engineer) to complete. We believe that people who truly want to join us should be willing to make a time investment. We’ve found that 90% of the time, we know whether we’d like to hire the person after reading their assignment.

Note: I asked for an example of one of these assignments from Emmanuel.

This example is an application from an illustrator, Dylan Thurgood, whose assignment was; “Could you design an exit modal image for people to sign up to our ‘How to self-publish a book’ Reedsy Learning course?”

While we didn’t hire that candidate—as we couldn’t agree terms—we liked that he explained the reasoning behind every decision. His work was on brand and professional. He was far more than just an Illustrator.

Niki Scevak - Co-Founder & Partner at Blackbird

Just as Blackbird wants to help Australia and New Zealand’s most ambitious founders succeed, we want to bring on ambitious people to help us achieve that vision. Our team come from diverse backgrounds—many have founded or worked in startups themselves—and have empathy for the rollercoaster of building technology companies.

Venture capital is notorious for its gender imbalance, and Blackbird hasn’t been immune from this—at the end of 2019, we had a team of 3 women and 10 men. We’ve still got work to do, but we’re making progress - for example, over the past few years we’ve been using a portfolio company, Applied, that de-biases the application process by removing any identifying information from candidates (eg; name, ethnicity, career experience) and this process has really helped us grow a diverse, high-performing team —with over 50% women across the business as of March 2023.

It’s amazing what happens when you simply focus on identifying the best person for the job and remove the noise that leads to biased and gut decisions—diversity comes as a natural outcome.

Alexa Grabell - Co-Founder & CEO at Pocus

Our process is simple. First, for every role we look at our networks first—VCs, friends of Pocus, employees (we offer a bonus to Pocus employees!). This is our best way to find great talent, fast.

While we are doing this marketing helps promote the role on our social channels. Our hiring posts are some of the best performing on LinkedIn. Something we are super proud of! Once we find the potential hires we move into out interview process which looks like the following.

First we use a Jobs-To-Be-Done framework to build a clear scorecard for each role. This removes ambiguity from the interview loop. We are also careful to make sure everyone’s voice is heard from the interview process—various of personas should be part of the interview loop. It’s helpful to get a gut check cross departments.

We also like to use take-home tests during the interview process. This is in order to test a few things. We’re big into documentation. If you can’t articulate your ideas clearly in written form—Pocus will be a hard place to work. We’re early-stage, so we need do-ers. If someone is unwilling to spend a couple of hours on a take-home chances are they’ll struggle to do in the weeds work.

We’re not just asking for answers also, but rather we want you to show us how you think. It can be hard to really understand how someone thinks in an interview. How each candidate might answer the same questions with the same context differently gives you a window into how they reason. Finally we make sure to never lower the bar—we much rather hire slowly rather than hire the wrong person.

Lexy Franklin - CEO at Sidebar

In a similar way to how we vet members for the Sidebar community, I look for growth-minded leaders who can adapt easily to change and the pace that comes with career progression.

Today, Sidebar employs about 20 people across product, engineering, facilitation, research, operations, and sales, and we are growing across the company. Fundamentally, Sidebar is a technology company, and we’re hiring engineers to help us build the next version of Sidebar, including even better algorithms to match people and new and innovative ways to collaborate through our virtual platform and other member tools.

Take facilitators for example. Facilitators must pass an two initial screening interviews and then a group interview with our facilitator team where they facilitate a Sidebar session with our current facilitators as members. Finally, they will meet with me. A big insight is that you may really like a candidate and we need to make sure they can facilitate.

Our program also features professional facilitators, so we’re looking for more people to help our members reach their career goals. And, of course, we’re adding to many of the other functions a growing company needs to operate.

I think the biggest lesson I have learned here is that “the first twenty people bring in the next two hundred.” It is really hard to keep the bar. I have personally seen people do it though, so just because it is hard does not mean it is not an excuse to go climb the mountain and stay patient to figure it out. We have talked to 70+ people for some roles (that may not be ideal) and our bar is really high.

Michael Batko - CEO at Startmate

We’re a very transparent organisation and that hopefully shows and attracts people who want to be themselves and work hard like us but in a fun environment. We are in a very lucky position in that we run Fellowship programs which are designed to help anyone transition into startup jobs. Throughout these, Fellows experience our culture and way of working, which often inspires. That means we post on mostly our community channels and social media, and only rely on inbound applications.

Referrals are always highly appreciated, but we do our first stage application reviews via Applied, which ensures anonymous screening to avoid any bias in our hiring decision making.

Karim Zuhri - Ex-GM & COO of Cascade

Recruitment is a touchy subject and the way we do it might ruffle a few feathers. For me, outbound trumps inbound every time. I harness the power of referrals, networking, and voices resonating on platforms like LinkedIn. It’s not about reference checks – it’s about knowing people who know people. It’s about the power of connections and engaging with voices that stand out in their fields. Reference checks? Important, but less so with referrals.

Another thing I swear by is potential over skills, every day. Especially when you’re carving out a new category or crafting novel concepts. Hiring from big brands doesn’t always translate to success. I've learned that successful companies don’t always mean successful individuals, and vice versa.

Also, values and character matter. We don’t hire jerks; we hire passionate humans who align with our culture and mission. Assessing cultural fit and addition is crucial during interviews. We aim for contributors who respect and enrich our culture.

And finally, speed is essential. Time is of the essence in any hiring process. When you reach out and spark an interest in potential candidates, you need to act fast. Our recruitment process respects candidates’ time – it’s concise, yet thorough, typically wrapping up within nine days.

It’s a balancing act, being thorough yet swift, valuing potential over skills, and seeking those who genuinely align with our values. It’s not about ticking boxes; it’s about finding those unique individuals who resonate with what we’re building.

Olympia Yarger - Founder & CEO at Goterra

Diversity of skills and backgrounds has always been a priority for us. We balance the tension of ideas & perspectives to drive exceptional innovation & commercialisation. Our team has a diverse range of skills, experiences, qualifications and backgrounds. And it's a focus of ours to integrate this diversity into every process and system in our technology, to deliver a new service, driving rapid growth.

Overall, we look for people who enjoy complex problem solving. These sound generic as a lot of people may classify themselves in this way. But, we’ve learned that often people don’t have these capabilities autonomously. Only in a group with many others surrounding them for support can we achieve this.

We’re looking for the tenacious, the contrarian the people who are looking for agency over their role. As a result Goterra’s workforce is 37% people working with a disability or who are neurodivergent. To make that true we started in the easy places - creating permission to apply. We added language to our job descriptions that explained we’re open to minorities & people with disabilities applying.

From here we looked at our hiring process, were there places where we were making it hard for people to be included because they were different?

We included options for written answers to interview questions instead of verbal. And, sending the questions in advance. That way people can prepare and be ready, which is important for non-neurotypical people & those with learning disabilities. As we learned more we added other vignettes to this process. For example; entry level females progressed through the entire hiring process, regardless of the final outcome. We know that women in STEM are less likely to make it to the final interview and so often are more nervous and anxious about their performance. We created opportunities for women to experience the interview process and be encouraged by the progress. And it works!

Women who get a second interview perform much better than their first interview. We’ve hired some terrific staff who may have not moved through to the second interview if we’d not created this pathway.

I want to be clear that it can feel like more work to have a diverse team. You have to pay more attention to communication and you have to work on creating the right engagement with tools and management. This is not easy to do when you’re also managing a startup. When you work with people who are like you, have the same cultural background and are neurotypical you can get away with lazy communication and instruction.

Generally, people will just ‘figure it out’. You can’t do that if your team is truly diverse. You’ve got to do better and make sure the team is evolving and improving. We’re still figuring this out and we still get things wrong. But over all, Goterra is a better and far less boring place to work because of this value.

Bill Kerr - Founder & CEO at Athyna

I think one of the most important skills you can have as a leader, founder, CEO etc. is to be an excellent storyteller. You need to inspire through words. And second is brand. In order to recruit the best talent you need to have an incredibly strong employer brand. We communicate things really well at Athyna. We create a buzzy online environment, we treat people well, and we work really hard to maintain our strong culture. This means we get a lot of referrals, a lot of inbound and when we do need to go headhunting we have the right doors open to us.

One really cool thing we do at Athyna is ask all of our team who their top three all time favourite colleagues are and we store them all in an internal database. This works incredibly well because when we are looking for a BDM for example we can often find someone in our internal database. Overall, get really good at employer branding and storytelling as a leader and you will do better than most.

In sum

Hiring is hard. But it’s incredibly important to the success of your startup. How you hire will dictate whether you an also ran or a shooting star. Hopefully you picked up a thing or two here that you can plug and play into your own process.

And that’s it! You can also find all of our original interviews with all the founders and leaders above here.

TWEET OF THE WEEK 🐣 

There was a lot of words in this one today. So here, to reward you for making it this far, is a classic case of bucket v sheep.

TOOLS WE USE 🛠️

Every week we highlight tools we use inside of our businesses. Today we are highlighting Deel — the only HR platform with everything you need, for everyone. EOR, contractor management, immigration and more.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

Here are the options I have for us to work together. If any of them are interesting to you - hit me up!

🌏 Hiring global talent: Check out my startup Athyna.
🧰 Want to outperform the competition: See our suite of tools & resources.
👀 Reach thousands of tech leaders: Advertise with us here.

And that’s it from me. See you next week. 🫡