2. Page 2
Why?
ā¢ To Be Great at Recruiting
ā¢ Great Recruiting is:
ā¢ Telling Stories ā Company & Positions
ā¢ Understanding the Candidate
ā¢ Crafting an Experience
ā¢ Work to make it a strength of your org
3. Page 3
Role of Talent
ā¢ Create the Experience
ā¢ Keep the Trains Moving
ā¢ Troubleshoot
ā¢ Learn to use data
5. Page 5
The Experience
ā¢ The goal of recruiting is more than just a repeatable process, it is
about crafting an overall experience
ā¢ You should be deliberate about every step a candidate goes
through. Be aware of:
ā¢ Itās purpose
ā¢ What it feels like to go through
ā¢ Map steps and measure how long it takes
7. Page 7
Setup
ā¢ Goal:
ā¢ Sync with manager on the ideal candidate and prepare the interview team.
ā¢ The Position:
ā¢ Why does this role exist and what is the potential impact to the company?
ā¢ What will the person work on the first 3, 6, 12 months? Why is it interesting?
ā¢ What hard skills do they need? Required vs. nice to have ā prioritize
ā¢ Perquisite experience? How senior?
ā¢ What are you willing to trade off: domain experience vs. coding chops
ā¢ Ideal candidates? Where do they work? Look through LinkedIn together
ā¢ Process:
ā¢ Select interview team and give them responsibilities ā more to follow
8. Page 8
Introduction
ā¢ Goal: Generate Interest & Understand What They Value (LISTEN TO THEM)
ā¢ Generate Interest (storytelling):
ā¢ Why does the company exist and why does that matter?
ā¢ Why are you going to succeed where other have failed?
ā¢ Why does the company matter to you? Mission? Culture?
ā¢ Upcoming projects
ā¢ Set Expectations and Prepare for what lies next
9. Page 9
Introduction
ā¢ Discovery:
ā¢ Why are they looking and how serious are they?
ā¢ What are they not getting from their current company?
ā¢ When are they looking to make a decision? Timing?
ā¢ Who is the competition? Other startups, founding something, large companies
ā¢ What do they want out of their next position?
ā¢ Whatās their current comp and what are they looking for? Stock vs. cash?
ā¢ Who are the decision makers? Parents, wife, kids, etcā¦
*WRITE IT DOWN & SYNC WITH THE HIRING MANAGER
10. Page 10
Evaluation
ā¢ Goal:
ā¢ Evaluate Fit , Communicate the Responsibilities of the Position &
Answer Outstanding Questions
ā¢ Main Areas:
ā¢ Work Experience, Relevant Skills, Culture Fit.
11. Page 11
Evaluation
ā¢ Work Experience
ā¢ Systematically breakdown what theyāve done for the past 5 years.
ā¢ What projects where they working on? What were their specific
responsibilities? ā Really dig into the details.
ā¢ What did they deliver? How did they influence the direction of the product?
ā¢ How much autonomy did they have to make decisions? Enough, too much?
ā¢ Did they work on core parts of the project?
ā¢ How did they deal with roadblocks? What happens when they get frustrated?
ā¢ Look for people that had key roles and that have had increased responsibility
over time. Each role should be a step forward.
*Takeaway: What have they done, how well did they do it, was it hard
12. Page 12
Evaluation
ā¢ Relevant Skills: Break it down to the fewest people possible
ā¢ Technical Skills
ā¢ Programming languages, writing abilities, sourcing
ā¢ Problem Solving
ā¢ CS Fundamentals, deductive reasoning, situational questions
ā¢ They should be relevant to the position
ā¢ Practicals
ā¢ Tests, presentations, role playing
ā¢ Can be used as a filter if you have a lot of applicants or towards the
end of the process if you need to do a lot of selling.
ā¢ Examples of Previous of Work
ā¢ Code Samples, writing samples, portfolio
13. Page 13
Evaluation
*Takeaways:
ā¢ Strength of knowledge on each required skill
ā¢ Horsepower
ā¢ Problem solving abilities
ā¢ Quality of work
*2 - 3 interviews:
ā¢ Always leave time for questions and for interviewers to talk about their
experience
14. Page 14
Evaluation
ā¢ Culture Fit:
ā¢ Understand and quantify your culture first
ā¢ How do decisions get made?
ā¢ Conviction of ideas?
ā¢ How collaborative?
ā¢ Pedigree?
ā¢ Passions/Interests?
ā¢ Positive vs. questioning?
ā¢ How independent are people expected to be?
15. Page 15
Evaluation
ā¢ The questions asked should be relevant to your current culture or the one
youāre trying to build
ā¢ How much control do you want over decisions?
ā¢ How do you handle disagreements with coworkers? What do you do if you
disagree with a decision thatās been made?
ā¢ What risks have you taken? What was the outcome, what did you learn?
ā¢ When have you gone out of your way to do something or learn a skill that
wasnāt required?
ā¢ When was the last time someone was critical of your work, how did you handle
it?
*Takeaways: How well do they fit into the organization you have and do you think
they can adapt?
16. Page 16
Connection
ā¢ Find ways of endearing the candidate to you
ā¢ Social interaction:
ā¢ Team lunch, dinner, golf, ping pong
ā¢ Potentially engaging other interests: family-life, outdoor activities, etc
ā¢ Check-in:
ā¢ Engage the candidate after their onsite
ā¢ How excited are they?
ā¢ What questions do they need answered?
ā¢ Offer to spend more time outside of the interview process
ā¢ Discuss career growth and future aspirations
ā¢ Love Bomb:
ā¢ Have the interviewers reach back out
ā¢ Send a gift basket that relates to their interest
17. Page 17
Debrief
ā¢ Goal: Moderate a discussion with Hiring Manager and Interviewer(s) to determine
hiring decision
ā¢ Facilitating the conversation:
ā¢ Require concrete data
ā¢ Avoid statements like āI feelā
ā¢ Be thoughtful about the order in which people give feedback
ā¢ Donāt have the most influential people speak up first
ā¢ Look for a champion
ā¢ A weak YES is really a NO
ā¢ Donāt hire someone to be the weakest person on the team
ā¢ Get value out of ānoāsā
ā¢ Know why they are a pass
ā¢ Learn what would have made them a YES
18. Page 18
Close: pre-offer
ā¢ Goal: Have the candidate ready to accept before the offer is delivered
ā¢ Begins at the Introduction: Reinforced through each stage of the process (slide 8)
ā¢ Take each thing they value and cross it off the list as you interact with the
candidate
ā¢ Have hiring manager and other leaders communicate the vision for the
company and how the candidate fits in. Why it is a career and not a job.
ā¢ Constantly check-in:
ā¢ How excited are they about the position?
ā¢ What concerns to the they have about the company, job, etc?
ā¢ What questions do they need answered?
ā¢ How does it compare to other positions?
ā¢ If terms could be agreed upon, would you accept?
ā¢ When can you start?
ā¢ Learn to position against: smaller companies, other startups larger companies
19. Page 19
Close: talking numbers
ā¢ Making Comp Recommendations
1. Employeeās comp history ā discuss early
2. Expectations/Motivations (equity vs. cash)
3. Industry benchmarks
4. Competing offers
5. Internal comparisons
20. Page 20
Close: delivery
ā¢ Figure out the best person to deliver the offer
ā¢ Hiring manager, CEO, Recruiter
ā¢ Have a āconfidantā
ā¢ Typically the recruiter, someone that can discuss the details of the
offer while still being removed from the negotiation
ā¢ Negotiation
ā¢ Avoid unless theyāre ready to accept
ā¢ Sign-on Bonus
21. Page 21
Close: the counter
ā¢ Mentally prepare the candidate for a counter offer
ā¢ Strengthen their resolve
ā¢ Stay connected, itās not done until they show up
22. Page 22
Experience Killers
ā¢ Time in process
ā¢ Clock is ticking from initial intro or connection
ā¢ Treat employee referrals like gold
ā¢ Lumpy communication
ā¢ Follow-up immediately
ā¢ Missing interviews or being left waiting
ā¢ Not paying complete attention ā checking phone/email
ā¢ Inconsistent expectations between interviewers, candidates
ā¢ Asking the same questions
ā¢ People that donāt know what the hell theyāre talking about
ā¢ Weak Process
ā¢ Not challenging enough
23. Page 23
Useful Metrics
ā¢ Goal: Understand conversion and time in process
ā¢ Overall Conversion Funnel
ā¢ Total Outreach ļ response rate ļ interview process ļ offer
ā¢ Instrument interview process
ā¢ Track each stage in ATS
ā¢ Understand the funnel conversion from phone screen to offer
ā¢ Track days spent in each step
ā¢ Offer Conversion
ā¢ Run a post-mortem on each rejected offer, avoid making the same mistake
twice
ā¢ Sources
ā¢ Track where offers and hires come from, will help you better allocate time
24. Page 24
Comp
ā¢ Define your philosophy:
ā¢ Create salary bands
ā¢ Donāt be a slave to data but be aware when youāre breaking band
ā¢ Update bands each year
ā¢ Start to level employees but donāt worry about it until 50 or so
ā¢ Stock Refresh
ā¢ @ 3 years in
25. Page 25
Comp: trends
ā¢ Modest increase in salary and equity (<5%) from 2012
ā¢ Average Salary for New Grad Engineers at top companies: $100K
ā¢ Companies are essentially paying 2 years ahead of current experience
ā¢ Will likely push other salaries up
ā¢ Little to no discount on salary for early stage companies
ā¢ Perks are getting more creative
ā¢ Laundry service, task rabbit, uber