Hiring: How Consistent Lingo in a “Recruiting Summit” Can Help Build Your Dream Team

During my 8 years leading Universe, we hired 100s of people across various disciplines.

It’s been my experience that recruiting is one of the most crucial drivers of a startup’s success. Tech companies are largely a people business. Thus, being able to scale with quality talent can mean life or death.

One best practice we used in recruiting is to use consistent language amongst interviewers, paired with a simple but thoughtful “recruiting summit”. This power combo can help embrace diverse perspectives and create an environment with more engaged listening.

What’s the magic “consistent lingo”? 🗣

The following language helped our interviewers describe whether to move forward with a candidate. The ingredients of this nomenclature are ➝ {definitely, probably, maybe} × {hire, reject}.

This translates into the following six ratings:

• DH — “definitely hire”
• PH — “probably hire”
• MH — “maybe hire”
• MR — “maybe reject”
• PR — “probably reject”
• DR — “definitely reject”

Examples of what might generate a “DR” would include a red flag, or a candidate failing to complete a key aspect of the interview.

“DH” is a hard rating to get — this would be someone who is an enthusiastic yes to all of the following:

• 🥇 Would I leave this person alone with our most important customer?
• 🤝 Would I be excited to put this person in front of an investor?
• 🚀 Is this someone I would one day consider founding a company with?
• 💡 Was a new perspective brought when they aced the technical challenge (or other relevant challenge: mock sales call, design review, etc)?
• 🎓 Did I learn something new from the candidate?
• ♻️ Would I trust this person to interview other people for our company?
• 🏋️‍♀️ Does this person raise our already-high bar for culture and fit? If not, and even if they’re a rockstar performer, they’re still not a good fit.

Using an ATS

After interviews were complete, we would have each interviewer log their perspectives and rating in an ATS (Applicant Tracking System). We did this so that (a) it’s recorded and (b) there’s more accountability so people are less likely to be influenced during the recruiting summit.

We asked interviewers not to chat with or view the notes of other interviewers, so that they wouldn’t become biased.

What is a “recruiting summit”? 🏔

At the end of each interview phase, all interviewers would review candidates in a “recruiting summit,” and share their perspectives. This would be done live, either in person or on the phone, not via email or chat.

We found that it was best practice to debrief the same day as the interview round. This way, impressions were still fresh. Being timely also enabled us to get back to candidates faster in the process, which they greatly appreciated.

We encouraged the most senior interviewers to share their ratings last. We did this because for instance, a co-founder, director or manager sharing that they thought someone was a “DH” may bias the responses of other interviewers. Perspectives from more junior employees were not lesser in importance!

We even observed that interviewers would sometimes change their response based on what others of the same seniority (or any seniority) said. We’d often hear, “I had them as a PH but I think I’d change it to an MH now”. Re-shuffling or conforming was not the point:

• We found that it was more valuable to assess a diverse set of interviewer perspectives, than to consider a bunch of voices that have converged.
• No need to synthesize or calibrate while sharing, we waited to do that at the end to make sure each diverse perspective is still shared.

At the end of the recruiting summit, we’d take a step back and look at the distribution of ratings. What if there wasn’t at least one “DH” (Definitely Hire) voice championing the candidate? i.e. if it was all “PH” or lower, did we proceed given it’s lukewarm? For critical hires, not usually.

Secret ballots 🤫

We found it useful to have interviewers write down their rating on a piece of paper, then go around the table to reveal these secret ballots, and share the “why” behind their DH→DR rating. We found the secret ballot approach to be more challenging if interviewers joined the summit via phone or video remotely — this is why we’d try to conduct the summit in person. (Please let me know if you have a good technique for secret ballots in remote teams!)

We found a lot of value in having a “scribe”. Recording not just ratings but the nuances of the candidate’s interview journey would help us explain their strong fit with the company if an offer ended up being extended. We could then sell the candidate on joining the team by pointing to genuine and specific reasons as to why they were receiving an offer. We found this helped candidates feel the startup would be a good home for them.

Some benefits of the DH→DR nomenclature:

• ⚖️ Notice that there is no neutral rating on the scale — each interviewer must take a “Hire” or “Reject” stance, and state their opinion why.
• 🤓 It is weighted and calibrated — if an interviewer has a weaker opinion on the hire/reject decision, they can use the “Maybe” prefix.
• 👌 A candidate can (rightly so) move on to a subsequent interview round, even if they have an “MR”. Without this calibration, a loud voice in the summit room sharing an uncalibrated “Reject” could result in a fantastic candidate not moving on to the next stage.
• 🚩 A candidate can (rightly so) be blocked from advancing, if it’s a quieter voice in the summit room is the one expressing a “DR”. I can remember vivid examples of this. Without this calibration, a quiet voice’s “DR” could have been listened to by the room as a (quiet) “R”, resulting in a candidate moving forward despite red flags–yikes!
• 🤔 There is more listening involved: fellow interviewers are curious as to what the other interviews’ selected as their rating, and why!

In closing

A tech startup’s success hinges on the calibre its people. If an interview debrief doesn’t use consistent language, diverse opinions can get lost.

What techniques have you found useful in debriefing after interviews? I’d love to hear! Feel free to contact me directly or share in the comments below.

A shoutout to my old stomping ground of BCG, where I was involved in recruiting. At the time, BCG was using a DH→DR nomenclature.

Also a shoutout also to the Universe team and all the members who were involved in recruiting, in particular Mary, our Director of People & Culture. Overshadowing all our other many successes and many things to be proud of, I often share that what I’m most proud of at Universe was the team.

Craig was the founding CEO of universe.com — Universe was acquired by Live Nation Entertainment NYSE:LYV (Ticketmaster). The views expressed here are his own.

At Universe, Craig raised capital from angel and VC investors, led the company’s strategy, successfully executed a successful pivot (from sharing economy marketplace → event marketplace), oversaw the company’s acquisition of its universe.com domain name, led product development resulting in (among other innovations) the launch of its iOS & Android apps and the company’s embeddable widget, and defined and grew the marketplace’s LTV:CAC ratio and other metrics, bringing Universe from concept → launch → growth ➝ acquisition.

Craig is a classically trained software engineer and business analyst, with hands on experience at BCG, Credit Suisse and in software engineering roles. While at Credit Suisse’s technology investment banking division based out of San Francisco, Craig advised tech companies on their M&A and corporate finance needs. At BCG, Craig advised tech companies on strategy & operations, in Canada, US, Italy and Austria.

He studied software engineering at Western University, and business at Ivey where he earned his HBA. He is an avid rock climber.

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