A Guide to Hiring for your Startup

1. A guide to HIRING FOR YOUR STARTUP Yevgeniy Brikman

2. What is the most important part of a startup?

3. a) The idea b) The technology c) The sales and marketing

4. a) The idea b) The technology c) The sales and marketing

5. People are the most important part of a startup

6. Differences between people are massive

7. Therefore, hiring is the most important thing you do

8. Best piece of startup hiring advice:

9. Don’t do it

10. Don’t do it (yet)

11. Stay small as long as you can

12. Build a culture of leverage and efficiency

13. Eventually, you’ll need help

14. Founders spend >25% of their time on hiring

15. You must spend this time wisely

16. I’m Yevgeniy Brikman ybrikman.com

17. I wrote a book about startups hello-startup.net

18. based on my experiences at LinkedIn & TripAdvisor hello-startup.net

19. as well as interviews with developers from many startups: hello-startup.net

20. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Stripe, Pinterest, Quora, Coursera, GitHub, and many others. hello-startup.net

21. Here’s what I learned about hiring

22. 1. Who to hire 2. Where to look 3. How to interview

23. 1. Who to hire a. Co-founders b. Early hires c. Later hires d. What to look for 2. Where to look

25. You need a co-founder

26. to fill in your weaknesses

27. to talk you out of bad ideas

28. to share the work load

29. Two or three founders works best

30. Building a successful startup takes 10 years

31. So be careful when picking a co-founder

32. Look for someone you’ve worked with before

33. College classmates & former co-workers are ideal

34. Split the equity evenly

35. Make sure everyone is on a vesting schedule

36. Remember, a successful startup takes 10 years

37. You need everyone to be bought in for the long term

39. Early hires are like bringing new DNA into your company

40. Choose the first 10 employees very carefully...

41. ...as they determine the next 100

42. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky would ask early candidates:

43. “If you had a year left to live, would you take this job?”

44. Early on, prefer generalists

45. In the early days, everyone has to do everything

46. “You don't want someone saying that's not my job” - Julia Grace

48. Later stage startups can hire more specialists

49. Prefer “T-shaped People”

50. Experts at one discipline (vertical leg of T)

51. Broadly skilled at others (horizontal leg of T)

53. Smart and gets things done

54. Smart because you constantly have to learn

55. Gets things done because you must ship

56. Good communication skills

57. Can you converse with them?

58. Can you understand their writing?

59. Can they explain complicated concepts?

60. A good culture fit

61. Similar tastes & appearance is NOT culture fit

62. It’s discrimination

63. Real culture fit is about shared values

64. E.g. at Zappos, providing amazing customer service is a core value

65. Everyone who is hired answers customer calls

66. That’s culture fit.

67. 1. Who to hire 2. Where to look a. Use your network b. Employer branding c. Job boards d. Premature optimization

69. The majority of startup hiring is via referrals

70. Referrals fill jobs faster

71. Referrals have the highest retention rate

72. Referrals are the highest quality hires

74. Employer branding is attracting candidates to your company

75. You do this by sharing valuable content and teaching

76. Blogs, meetups, hackathons, conferences, open source, etc

78. No one likes job postings

79. “Results oriented”

80. “Has at least 12 years of iOS experience”

81. Only active job seekers look at job postings

82. If you just “post and pray”, you only reach 1 out of 5 candidates

83. If you’re going to post jobs, get creative

84. And post them in the right places

85. Better yet, reach out to candidates directly

87. Old joke: the boss takes half the resumes, throws them in the trash and says...

88. “I don’t hire unlucky people.”

89. You’re throwing away resumes if you:

90. reject someone for typos in their resume

91. reject someone for not having a particular degree or GPA

92. reject someone for not being a “bro” or a “ninja”

93. Instead of looking for reasons to reject a resume...

94. “Look for something that shines” - Gayle Laakmann McDowell

95. 1. Who to hire 2. Where to look 3. How to interview a. Interviewing is hard b. Basic interview process c. Interview questions d. Making an offer

97. You get an hour to make a decision that lasts for years

98. 1970’s orchestras: 5% of members are female

99. 1990’s orchestras: 35% of members are female

100. The difference? Blind auditions.

101. Interviewers will be wrong. Err on the side of no.

103. Step 1: connect

104. Email, phone, in-person. Get them interested.

105. Step 2: phone screen

106. On-site interviews are expensive

107. Use a phone screen as a filter

108. Step 3: on-site interview

109. Aim for 4-8 interviewers, each with a different focus:

110. communication, culture fit, job-specific skills, closer.

111. Don’t confuse interviews with interrogations

112. Your goal is learning, not a confession.

113. Make sure the interviewers are good representatives of your company

115. Puzzles and brain teasers are terrible interview questions

116. Whiteboard coding is a terrible interview practice

117. There are much better alternatives

118. Work on real- world problems (GitHub, Jawbone)

119. Give a talk (Peopleware)

120. Take home problems (Pinterest)

121. BYOL: Bring Your Own Laptop (Coursera)

122. Go through a real workday (Typesafe)

124. First, check references

125. What has this person accomplished?

126. What was it like working with this person?

127. If the reference checks are good, make the offer personally

128. Then follow up in writing

129. An offer has four parts

130. Part 1: the opportunity

131. There's work and there's your life's work. The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you'd never compromise on. That you'd sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don't come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end. They want their work to add up to something. Something big. Something that couldn't happen anywhere else. Welcome to Apple.

132. Part 2: the salary

133. Be fair and transparent

134. Use a formula hello-startup.net/resources/salary/ Salary = (job type x seniority x experience) + (location + salary choice)

135. Seniority Salary Executive $150,000 Senior $125,000 Junior $100,000 Use a table hello-startup.net/resources/salary/

136. Part 3: the equity

137. Be fair and transparent

138. Equity = (i - 1) / i Use a formula hello-startup.net/resources/equity/

139. Employee Equity Hire #1 2-3% Hire #2 - 5 1-2% Hire #6 - 15 0.5-1% Use a table hello-startup.net/resources/equity/

140. Part 4: the benefits

141. Listen to the candidate

142. $1 in benefits can be worth a lot more than $1 in salary

143. Time off, classes, outings, commute, hackathons, remote work, etc.

144. Recap

145. People are the most important part of a startup

146. Founders spend >25% of their time on hiring

147. Use your network

148. Build a strong brand

149. Be thoughtful about how you interview

150. Make an offer they can’t refuse

151. Check out Hello, Startup for more info hello-startup.net

152. Questions?

153. Slide 1, Road: Bec Brown Slide 2, Business plan: Heisenberg Media Slide 5, People: Heisenberg Media Slide 8, Four buildings: Davide Ragus Slide 11, Ant: US Dept of Argriculture Slide 13, Helping Hand: Tomas Sobek Slide 21, Handshake: Flazingo Photos Slide 22, Road: Joshua Tree National Park Slide 25, Jobs & Wozniak: Revol Web Slide 29, Schmidt, Brin, Page: Joi Ito Slide 32, Classmates, Travis Rigel Lukas Hornung Slide 34, Scale: Bob Miller Slide 39, DNA: EnzymLogic Slide 42, Brian Chesky: Official Le Web Photos Slide 44, Swiss Army Knife: Wikimedia Slide 48, Tools: Lachland Donald Slide 49, T-shaped person: Valve Slide 53, Brain: Allan Ajifo Slide 56, Tin Cans: Sebastien Wierz Slide 60, Scrabble value: Got Credit Slide 69, InMap: Ali Imam Slide 74, Honey: Thien Gretchen Slide 78, Flyers: Joel Kramer Slide 82, Passive candidates: LinkedIn Slide 83, Billboard: Google Blog Slide 87, Trash can: Sebastien Wiertz Slide 97, Office interview: Weltbild Verlag GmbH Slide 103, Keyboard typing: iloque Slide 105, Phone call: NEC Corporation of America Slide 108, Office: Robert Couse-Baker Slide 111, Chair: Paul Kehrer Slide 115, Puzzle question mark: Horia Varlan Slide 116, Whiteboard: Doc Searls Slide 117, Light bulb: R. Nial Bradshaw Slide 124, Reference call: Martin Cathrae Slide 129, Letter: Bearstache Slide 132, Money: Ervins Strauhmanis Slide 136, Stock certificate: Wystan Slide 140, Ear: Travis Isaacs Slide 152, Questions: Derek Bridges Photo credits