Recruiting Rules Everything Around You
Recruiters suck! On this we can all agree. You don’t need to set up a honeypot to know the majority are just lurking LinkedIn and spamming software engineers for their next lottery ticket. Most people think recruiting is about “hiring talent”, but founders should be actually building acult.
Now that you’ve raised some money – Congrats! – the first thing your new bosses will ask is that you “grow the team”. We’ve got the future to build! And it’s gonna require a lot of bodies. And that’s why you’ll fail.
Recruiting isn’t about filing seats. By the time most founders think about recruiting – approximately 3-6 months after funding and not being able to hire anyone – it’s too late. You need to create a solid recruiting process that reflects your unique personality and company culture, and one that’s scalable and repeatable. Oh, you’ve already been using external recruiters? Or you’ve got someone doing recruiting but not delivering results. Now you have to call in a specialist to fix everything wrong with your recruiting process, do what I call ‘catch-up-recruiting’ and that’s a really rough road. I’ve done it. And it’ll cost you more (time and money) for me to clean up someone else’s mess.
So how should you think about recruiting? Well let’s go back in time…
Stages Of Growth
1) 0 to 2 – You’ve got an idea and you’ve got a partner (or two). Most startups end up in divorce. Marry well. The core/founding team is your foundation and every subsequent hire will reflect this. This is why VCs like to fund Founders from Stanford, Harvard or MIT.
2) 2 to 20 – Building the base, hire all your friends! Search your natural network until it’s tapped out. Then go outside your comfort zone.
3) 20 to 100+ – Create the recruiting machine, keep it running, feed the beast. Don’t let HR take over. No, it’s not the same thing as recruiting.
You Got Recruiting Problems
And I feel bad for you son. I got 99 engineers and you all want one. “Just get us one.” That’s what the emails all say. We just need one Google Engineer, one Facebook Hacker, one ex-YC Founder who almost made it and is now dead broke. If you think about recruiting one hire at a time, you’ll never build a proper team. There are some common pitfalls that Founders fall into, and they are:
1) Hiring too slow. Talent >Capital. VCs breathing down your neck. I’ve never met a startup that’s hiring “on plan”. Even the most popular startups with awesome teams and unlimited press mentions have trouble recruiting quickly while maintaining the highest quality that made them the hot startup in the first place.
2) Hiring too fast. Scaling before you’re ready. More engineers != more code shipped. Founders who brag about the size of their team are doing it wrong. More people means more burn, which requires more money, which usually means fundraising, which puts you on the hook for more hiring. Having 5 engineers in the earliest stage pre-funding doesn’t actually mean you’ll code 5x as fast, or ship product that’s 5x better. Don’t grow before you’re ready, but be ready to grow at all times.
3) Hiring poorly. This will be the death of your startup, guaranteed.
Save Us From Ourselves
So what do we do now? No one’s doing recruiting right. If you’re not a big company, why are you using big company recruiting? Pipeline, filters, resumes, reviews, phone screens, code challenges and interviews. Volume doesn’t naturally bring quality. Once HR is involved your startup is now a “company” for better or for worse. “But Google hires the best engineers!”, you’ll protest. Okay, but does your startup do *anything else* exactly like Google?
1) Always Be Recruiting. It’s Job #1 for Founders. People join your startup because of you, not because of salary, funding, equity or perks.
2) Recruiting is too important to be left to Recruiters. How many recruiters do you need? Well how many employees do you have? It’s everyone’s job to grow the company. Give them the tools and responsibility to do so.
3) Build strong teams. Strong teams get stronger over time, weak teams get weaker.
Retention is half the battle in this current “war for talent”. Even your friends and Co-Founders will leave you. Make sure you’re okay with that. Better yet, plan for it.
招聘主宰一切
我们都同意招聘人员会干一些很令人厌烦的事情。不用太多想象就可以知道，大部分的招聘人员会潜伏在LinkedIn上，不停的给工程师发骚扰信息，期待能撞大运找到合适的人选。绝大多数人认为招聘是在寻找天才，然而对于公司的创始人来讲，创建一家公司实际上是创建一个宗教。
现在你得到了一些资金，接下来第一件事就是招聘人马。因为你的投资者会告诉你一个渲染过的美好未来，只有招聘更多的人，才能获得成功。而事实是，你就是这么失败的。
招人可不是简单的填充空白职位–在经历过3-6个月都无法成功找到合适人选后，大部分的创始人终会理解到这一点，只是已经晚了。你需要在实施招聘前就指定严格的流程以反应创始人本人的性格特点和公司文化，这些公司的内在品质需要是可扩展和可重复的。哦，你已经雇佣了一个外部招聘团队？或者你让某人行使招聘职责，但是却没有任何效果？那么好吧，你现在必须请一个专家来修正你所有在招聘中犯下的错误，这是非常痛苦的。我以前做过这样的事情，修正他人的错误将耗费更多的金钱和时间。
那么你应该如何看待招聘呢？我们顺着时间一项一项看：
成长阶段：
1）0-2 这时你有一个主意，有了一个或两个合伙人。大部分的创业公司都以分手而告吹。俗话说的好，要嫁个好人家。创业公司的核心初创团队非常重要，而每一次找人又都会影响你的团队。这就是为什么VC们都喜欢Stanford Havard或者MIT的。
2）2-20 构建基础的时候，招聘所有你的朋友，找遍你生活中的关系网络，然后再向外扩展到你有把握的圈子。
3）20-100+ 简历招聘机制，保持它的正常运转以源源不断的输送人才。千万不要让HR部门接管招聘的事情，因为我们在做的事情和招聘没什么相似的地方。
你在招聘上陷入了困境
我为你感到难过。我招聘到了99个工程师，而你全部需要的也就只是一个。“就给我们一个吧”，一眼望去，email中满是类似字眼。我们需要一个来自google的，facebook的，或者是一个差点成功的YC前创始人。如果你认为招聘仅仅是一次一个的话，你永远无法搭建一个成功的团队。招聘中有一些常见的陷阱，创业者经常会陷入其中：
1）招聘的太慢。人才比资金跟重要。可是VC会控制的很严。我从未见过一个创业团队可以按照进度招聘的。即使是拥有最好的团队，被媒体热炒的最出名的创业公司，也无法在快速招聘和保持质量上获得一个令人满意的平衡。
2）招聘的太快。在你准备好之前就开始扩张。更多的工程师并不等于更快的开发速度。吹嘘自己团队规模的创始人绝对是大错特错。更多的人烧钱会更快，以为着你要寻找更多的钱，而这本身又会引诱你招聘更多的人。在开始阶段拥有5名工程师并不意味着开发速度可以快5倍。所以别在准备充分前扩张队伍，但是要做好随时扩张的准备工作。
3）招聘不合格的人。我保证这是你公司挂掉的原因。
只能靠自己拯救自己。
我们该怎么做？没有人有正确的方法。既然你不是大公司，那为何要使用大公司的招聘方式？渠道，筛选，简历，复审，电话面试，面试。如此兴师动众但是无法带来高质量的结果。一旦HR卷入近来，你的创业公司就将变得和一般的大公司别无二致。“但是google招走了所有好的人才”，你也许会抗议道。但是你要想一想你的创业公司在其他方面是否和google一样？
1）把招聘作为日常工作，永不停止。这是创始人的首要任务。人们加入公司不是因为钱，期权，工作环境，而是因为你。
2）招聘工作实在太重要了，以至于你不能将他交给专门的招聘人员来做。你需要多少招聘人员？你公司有多少员工，你就有多少招聘者。使公司成长是所有人的任务。给他们相应的工具和职责，让他们也成为你的招聘人员。
3）组建一个优秀的队伍。优秀的队伍会越来越优秀，而烂队伍只会烂下去。
把人才留住在现代“人才战争”占据了一半位置，即使是你的合伙人或者朋友也有可能离你而去。你要确定你可以接受，或者更好，做好一旦发生时的准备。
