Guerilla Recruiting: Combating the Counteroffer // Scott Weiss. One of the most frustrating things I’ve experienced as a leader is putting months into recruiting an amazing VP or engineer, only to have them change their mind at the 11th hour because of a ridiculous counteroffer. This is the big risk you face when aiming for the best people on the planet (see: “Hiring Rockstars”) as they are the “beating heart” of their existing employer, and the incumbent company will often go beyond great lengths to keep them.
They may be prized recruits for you, but they are absolutely the most critical people at their current employer. For instance, Google has been rumored to be especially aggressive at countering with restricted stock grants in the millions of dollars for their top people. But they aren’t alone. Any employer will do whatever he or she can to keep key talent. We found out the hard way at IronPort by being overconfident and sloppy at the offer stage. Have an outstanding recruiting process.
The hiring manager must control the offer process. Eric Stromberg — How to get a job at a startup if you aren’t a developer. Recently, I’ve received an increasing number of emails from “business people” looking for advice on how to get a job at a startup. Most have the same story, “I could go work at a big company, but want to join a startup. One problem: I don’t know where to start the process.” Everyone knows how to get their foot in the door at an investment bank - just apply online.
At least when I was at Duke, there were hundreds of people each year applying to big banks so everyone knew what to expect. Less clear is the path to joining a startup, especially for those lacking technical skills. What I usually tell people is that it’s not as scary as it sounds, and it is not as difficult provided you are passionate about your goal. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. I’d start by emailing a few entry-level employees at some of the companies you find most interesting.
The reason most startups will be respond to your inquiry is that although they aren’t always hiring, startups are always looking to meet exceptional people. Hacker News | Looking for a Technical CoFounder. I have a website that needs help getting to the next level. The site has been producing revenue since July 2010, although it is not yet profitable. I need a Technical Co-Founder to help with this push. We are an online marketplace for spas and salons to list their slower appointment times, typically at a discount.
We partner with spas, and when a client books through our site, we take a cut of the transaction. Currently, we work with spas in Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, and Seattle. The site is built in Django. One of the biggest challenges is just getting eyeballs to the site. Why I'm a good cofounder for you: I'm a business guy. I hustle. What I'm looking for: - Django and Python fluent - SEO background - Execute online marketing and email campaigns - Grow our consumer side - Location: Chicago preferred, but we can work it out with other locations I'm not looking for a code monkey. Why is this a great opportunity?
Interested in talking more?? - This is going to be BIG! - Startup Recruiting Hacks. Yesterday, First Round had its annual CEO Summit. One of the cool things about being a fund that works with so many early stage companies is that bringing the whole portfolio together in one place results in a lot of collaborative learning opportunities. One of the topics that was discussed in a breakout session was recruiting. From what I've seen, most companies simply don't get enough people in the top of the funnel. Finding the right person is hard, but it also starts with being a volume game. The more candidates you reach and evaluate, the better the idea you have of who you are looking for and the more you get the word on the street that you are hiring. That's something I learned at Path 101. I thought it was going to be easy to find two developers, given that I had a pretty large network. Actually, startups tend to drop the ball on recruiting the same way they mess up in PR.
Events Social Media Content from your Employees Want to find a whole bunch of Ruby devs in a hurry? Contests. Who Should you Hire at a Startup? Only Hire A+ People Who Punch Above Their Weight Class This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. There are people who tell startups that they should hire the most senior people that they can find. I’m not one of those. I believe that you should always hire people are are looking to “punch above their weight class,” which means to hire people who want to be one league above where they are today. Don’t confuse this with the quality of the individual. I’m a big believer in only hiring A+ team members. I’ll explain both below. I’m talking about what most of you are tempted to do. Your solution? Weight Class: Let’s take sales. Why? More likely this person who wants to work at your fledgling company is a decent performer but not a superstar. Ing and enforcing a sales policy) are not consistent with the skills you need in your company at this stage.
You’re far more likely to find success from an individual contributor. So what if you’re already a mid-stage startup. WTF!! Don’t Roll out the Red Carpet on the Way out the Door. This is part of my Startup Advice series. Before I started my first company in 1999 I worked for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). One of the things I noticed was that when really talented people – The “A players” – wanted to quit, the firm would quickly scramble to try and keep that person from resigning.
Suddenly it was star treatment and all sorts of promises about the future. In my observation this seldom worked. When you’ve reached a boiling point where you feel mistreated or under-appreciated you tend to leave regardless of the newly created incentives. I always wonder why Andersen didn’t try to do more to over compensate its best performers. So I’ve always had this in mind with me at startups. One example was Ryan Lissack.
We hit the first snag when the our then lead architect felt threatened by Ryan. Every year our company progressed we tried to give Ryan the upper tier of our annual pay increases. We decided to give Ryan more than he had even asked for as a show of goodwill. More on the Founder/CEO Question « VCMike's Blog. As I have written many times before, answering the vexing question of when founders should remain or be replaced as CEO is probably both the most important and most difficult part of the job for both founders and the VCs who back them. While the personalities and egos of both founders and VCs often complicate things, even without that, the reality is that determining the “right” answer is really damn hard. Sure, there are lots of instances where a founder is the perfect person to launch a startup but by his/her own admission clearly lacks some of the competencies necessary to grow it into a successful business.
Even still, the notion of bringing in a CEO can be troublesome. Will a new CEO be entrepreneurial enough to fit into what is still a very early stage company? This very question is playing itself out in no fewer than 3 of my portfolio companies right now, with 3 different answers emerging. Stay tuned, we’ll see how things work out.
Some thoughts on recruitment – instinct over CV | The Equity Kic. Having the right team is crucial for a startup and keeping the team right as a company develops is a critical discipline. I think this is one of the areas where a good investor director can add the most value: by leveraging experience across many startups to advise entrepreneurs on the likely impact on team requirements of growth and the other twists and turns of startup life by leveraging their network to find good candidates and recommend good headhunters (and leverage their reputation to make sure the headhunters deliver to the best of their ability) by leveraging their experience of working with many different types of manager and entrepreneur in many different situations to advise on the strength of individual candidates In other words helping our portfolio with recruitment is an important part of the VC job description.
I am a big believer in the power of instinct in recruitment, and I have made many more mistakes ignoring gut feel than I have going with it. How I Spot Valuable Engineers. Goofy stuff happens when your company announces a funding round. We've gotten walk-in solicitors who try to sell us networking equipment, pitches for I-can't-quite-see-the-scam-but-I'm-sure-it's-there-somewhere stock exchange programs, and phone calls from slick Oracle salesmen who have their get-past-the-secretary sneak perfected so well that they could probably make better livings as industrial spies. But most frequently, there are resumès that land in my inbox. Yes Milo is hiring, and a lot of people contact me directly instead of the "jobs" address, which I can sympathize with because I've always had this feeling that "jobs@" e-mail addresses are black holes where career dreams get sent to die.
Our general workflow for hiring engineers is to send the person our "engineering challenge" programming question and see how they do on it. If that looks good, they come in for interviews. What Makes A Kick-Ass Tech Team? Fat Hiring for Lean Startups. I have been following the lean startup movement for a while now. I’m sure a lot of it was in practice before becoming a full-fledged movement. But it has brought a common language and set of principles to how products are developed and brought to market that I think is just great. Like all movements, its scope has expanded over time. “Lean” is now an entire philosophy for building startups. To understand why hiring needs to be fat, not lean, lets first look at the core principles of lean startup. You can’t apply this to hiring. There is no such thing as a “Minimum Viable Hire”. Fat Hiring Fat hiring has no iterations and it has a slow feedback loop.
Principles: Hiring never stops. Good is the enemy of great. Focus on outcomes. Be process-driven. Try before you buy. There’s probably more to fat hiring. . - As you embrace lean principles in your startup, remember that they don’t apply to hiring. - Hiring is absolutely core and mission critical. So, take the time to hire fat and hire right! Jobs - Online backup, file sync and sharing made easy.