The Importance of Hiring at Speed

Problem

Hiring good people is always a challenge - doubly so in Silicon Valley where the competition is fierce. If you're not a Facebook or Google, it's hard to get good talent. How can you hire at scale? I faced this situation at a startup that wasn't well known back then - I found myself needing to hire 20+ engineers in short order.

Actions taken

I worked on a recruiting tech startup before where we worked closely with many tech companies and startups and thousands of high potential job seekers, and in that process made a few key observations: these top companies that people want to work for often don't know what they want, pattern match a lot, apply all sorts of biases, and move very very slowly - they are flooded with resumes and optimize for weeding out false negatives at the cost of false positives. So I designed a recruiting process that squarely optimized for significantly superior candidate experience - go after folks with the key traits we want, get them into and through the funnel fast, and make quick decisions. We've had cases where we did a phone screen on Thursday, onsite on Friday, and offer letter out on Saturday. Candidates were blown away by the warm and thoughtful interview experience and speed with which we made decisions. In fact, many accepted our offer just because we were the first to make an offer - and ditched other interviews.

Lessons learned

Competing against well-known and well-funded companies is easier than you think. As the saying goes, culture is your product to attract talent - and it starts with interview experience for candidates. Turn that into your unfair advantage - focus hard on it and make it fast, engaging, respectful, and warm. Even if you end up rejecting someone, they may refer friends.