Notes on how to hire
In a growing business, you will need to hire more people as well as develop those you have. There is no way to guarantee this works out well every time. Here are some things that have helped me.
“The only job of a partner is to make more partners.”
Yann Bonduelle
My former colleague was dead right. He explained that this meant two things: going out and generating new work so the firm had the capacity for more partners; and developing and growing our people so they could be great partners.
This is still as good a definition of the role of founder, leader, or CEO as you will find anywhere.
“Spend more time recruiting. Take risks on high-potential people with a fast rate of improvement. Look for evidence of getting stuff done in addition to intelligence.”
In a growing business, you will need to hire more people as well as develop those you have. The hiring process involves human beings making judgements about other human beings based on limited information. There is no way to guarantee this works out well every time. Here are some things that have helped me.
Notes:
Your job is building and growing a high performing team. Hiring is at most 10% of that job.
Hire for potential, not for experience. Your business is going to grow, so your people need to develop with it.
“Best” means best fit for your business. Fit matters as much as talent and much more than experience.
When someone leaves, always look for the new hire to be an upgrade - even if the leaver is the best person you had.
Always prefer to develop and promote your own to leadership positions rather than hire in.
Interviews are the worst possible way to assess a person, apart from all the others.
In an interview, maybe means no. If you conduct five interviews, then one person saying maybe still means the overall outcome is no.
Psychometrics and other similar tests are essentially useless.
CVs are the worst possible way to evaluate which candidates to interview, apart from all the others.
Clever application forms with insightful, balanced, fair questions lead to bad outcomes. You are essentially testing the ability of candidates to write well and hit a handful of keywords by chance. This downside outweighs all the benefits of those carefully crafted questions. Its a huge bias in favour of a narrow, specific skill.
Once you sit down for the first interview, the scores from CVs/ application forms should count for zero. Make your decision based on interview feedback alone.
The most important question for every interviewer in every interview is “Would you have this person as a member of your team?”
You will make mistakes. Talk about them, learn from them, and put them right fast. Don’t be invested in “fixing” people who turn out to be the wrong hire.
The quickest route to performance improvement is better people. Single best (and lowest cost) way to get there is to get more/ better out of your existing people. Next best is to hire more great people. Fire under performers and hire better people is the third option.
Reading:
Angels, pitch decks are overrated. Go with your gut by Yves Schleich. Totally agree with this. Pitch decks and pitches are a terrible way to make investment decisions. Trust your instincts and invest in people.
A list of factors that act(ed) as drag on the European Tech/Startup scene by Thomas Dullien/Halvar Flake. I am fascinated by the myth of “free” money that surrounds all government sponsored activity. Friction and drag are the hidden costs we ignore.
Why fast? By Matt Rickard. You can read lots of analysis on why projects are slow and cumbersome. Interesting to see this take on why some legendary achievements happened quickly.
The Anatomy of an Amazon Six-Pager by Jesse Freeman. Jeff Bezos famously banned PowerPoint from meetings. This is his alternative method. How valuable is the discipline and depth inherent in these documents?
The Indian Challenge to Blockchains: Digital Public Goods by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution. There are countries that are building trusted digital infrastructure. Estonia is one. India has another different approach. This is a fascinating introduction to that idea.