This document summarizes Artsy's process for hiring engineers. It discusses the types of people they seek to hire, how they generate leads, how they conduct onsite interviews, how they provide feedback and decide whether to make an offer. Key aspects include looking for inspiring, high performing individuals with both right and left brain skills. Interviews involve 2-3 engineers and 1 non-engineer for 45 minutes with lunch. They provide written feedback on whether a candidate raises the bar or not. References are used to force objectivity and as pitch opportunities. The decision process aims for clear yes or no rather than maybe. Rejection emails thank candidates and offer to stay in touch, while acceptance involves a 3 month trial period.

1. Hiring Engineers
the Artsy way

2. People
#1

3. What kind of people?
Inspiring
High Performing + Team Player
Right Brain + Left Brain

4. Lead Generation
@... => blog, cold email to CEO
@... => Hirelite
@... => job post on Tumblr
@... => personal network
@... => personal network
@... => Hackruiter
@... => investor
@... => personal network
@... => personal network
@... => personal network, thanks to Hurricane Irene
@... => cold email to CEO
@... => cold email to jobs@
@... => personal netowrk
@... => tech talk
@... => tech conference

5. Materializing a Lead

6. Onsite Interview
Coordinated by Mads
2-3 Engineers
1 Non-Engineer
45 minutes 1:1
Lunch / Coffee
Standup

7. Written Feedback: Yep
Yep,
Seemed like a strong developer and a very humble individual. I talked to her about her
work on project Blue Beam for a while and it was clear that she made a substantial
contribution to it, specifically the software infrastructure for the launcher.
I described a simplified version of our current architecture and asked her to think up
some ways to get better performance from our back end and he came up with some
good ideas, including refactoring the API and rewriting the caching layer to use
Russian Doll caching.
She was very interested in how we measure the success of new features or changes on
the site and had some good ideas in that area as well.

8. Written Feedback: Nope
Nope,
While very energetic and clearly quite ambitious, the candidate's fundamental
understanding of computer science seemed weak for a college graduate in CS.
For example, when asked what's a b-tree answered that it's a kind of plant.
He deflected almost every technical question to a more general discussion, rather than
addressing the specific problem at hand.
When I asked him to describe a specific time when he identified and fixed an
application performance problem, he described something completely unrelated to
application performance - a bike race.

9. How to Decide?
Does the candidate raise the bar?
Will I be more excited to come to work if the candidate
sits next to me?
Clear Yes or No, not Maybe or Hesitations

10. Gushing References
from very successful individuals
Offense vs Defense
Force objectivity via ranking
Separate performance from culture
Pay attention to tone not content
References are also pitch opportunities

11. Decision-Making Process

12. Rejection
Thank you for taking the time to interview with Artsy. We have decided not to move
forward.
We think you're very energetic and ambitious. You take initiative and are generally
curious. Things like your involvement in your school’s programming club and your
personal project X speak for themselves. However, your fundamentals in CS and the
responses to technical questions were below the bar that we have set for a candidate in
this position.
However, we definitely want to stay in touch and would be grateful for the opportunity
to re-evaluate working together in the future. In the meantime, I'd love to see you
succeed at another NYC company. I am serious about this, so if you have some startups
in mind that you would like to be introduced to, or would like us to suggest some,
please let me know and I will connect you with the right people.
Thank you,

13. Acceptance
Offer extended
3 Month Trial Possible and Encouraged

14. What Can We Do Better?