Hiring
Building Better Products With People (Part II in a series)
I’d love to work with [insert name] again.
Wouldn’t we all. We’ve all got people in mind for a role when we’re handed an org chart with job titles and no names. But my advice is to stop and really think about why they’d be a great fit, today. They might have been the best 18 months ago in that other place where they’d been second hire and were able to flex a bit. What about now, when they’d maybe have to step into an existing process, and strong established relationships? Would they sink or swim in your new org?
A Building With People mindset is about getting that balance of character and skill right. You’re a People architect, and this particular kind of balancing act requires a level of equilibrium between people and teams — personalities, skills, approaches, communication styles, etc.
With imbalance you’ll end up McMansion-ing [1] your team. And once you’re on that journey, it’s really difficult (and costly) to unpick, especially if your early hires aren’t compatible with the future organisation. This is why trying to hire for a future state is so, so important; digging out foundations is a far more distressing task than say removing some roof tiles or replacing a bathroom window.
Those first hires are also going to be the ones that help set the tone for the future team. All of the soft and hard skills those individuals possess are going to be seen — by the organisation more broadly - as a template for other hires down the line. The business will also judge you on the basis of how those individuals perform their roles and how they interact with others.
My go-to checklist for hiring in a new business:
1. Hire for tomorrow
- What does the role look like in 12 months time? Hiring for today might fix an immediate problem but it will likely be costly in the long run. Does [insert name] fit into that role now or will they be able to skill up for what comes next? Will [insert name] mind doing a bit of everything now and again while the business matures, maybe a bit more IC than they’re used to? Working a departmental P&L and being wholly accountable for the money you spend and the value that it generates is often an entirely new, and sometimes exciting part of a leadership role. Take a beat before you spend that extra 10–15% on the hire you think you really need.
- You won’t always know what’s actually coming next, but your experience will give you a pretty decent idea of the way things will likely shape up. Use that nous and keep an eye on the market and your network; who’s hiring, who’s letting staff go, who’s getting promoted, who’s landing funding, who’s not and why?
- At the stage when you’re going to be required to make hiring and org decisions you’ll have already seen from previous roles how projects and teams grow (and contract). You’ll be proficient (or at least vaguely au fait) with working to different horizons and business requirements: what’s right in front of you, what’s further down the line, and what’s your potential North Star*. [2]
2. Find people who scare you. In a good way.
- If you’re a broken comb or starting to look like one then you really ought to be finding individuals who are superb at something(s). Maybe not all the things, but there should absolutely be a standout skill that’s going to elevate the team and the business. I’ve hired people in the past based on their ability to present work well. Not only are they invaluable day-to-day but they often have the motivation to bring others up to the same level. Sometimes that’s an overt effort on their part, and sometimes it’s almost by osmosis.
- Work hard to find individuals with complimentary skill sets. Where are the gaps in your knowledge? What’s the team lacking? For example; anyone who can write tight copy is an absolute bonus. You’d be surprised by the number of occasions when a solid command of whatever language you’re working in helps things over the line and turns okay work into fantastic work.
- If you’re hiring for a direct report, really go for it in the scary department. You shouldn’t wake up in a cold sweat worrying about the security of your position, but absolutely get people in who can light a fire under you, and most importantly, you can learn from. Leading can be lonely, and plenty of leaders can lose their motivation and drive for their own role when they stop learning. If you can surround yourself with people who — for want of a better term — are way smarter than you, then you’ll learn every day.
3. Look beyond the skillset
- I’ve hired many people who don’t fit the shape of the role quite as described. But they have experience. Life experience. I’ve been lucky enough to have met and worked with Product Designers who came from construction, Researchers who worked in the film industry, Product Managers whose previous role involved capturing and tagging baboons**. Each and every one of these individuals had time applying themselves to other careers, each of which gave them the fundamental, adjacent skills to apply to their roles in Design.
- At any scale it’s worth investing in brains. You should be building teams with mentoring baked in. Selfish people building things is not what you want. Selfish builders don’t share their homework, they tend to regard their approach as some kind of secret sauce, and their secret sauce is probably garbage (see [1]). Avoid.
- Smart people pick things up quickly. They want to learn. They want to evolve. Give them a platform and they’ll ask really good questions. You’ll see these are the people who can and will go from zero to knowledge much faster than you’d expect, and as a result will command the respect of their peers.
4. Do applicants really need a qualification to do the work?
- This is a real pet peeve of mine. There are of course reasons for wanting a degree or master’s for certain roles. I’ve seen far too many job descriptions pulled together where for some unfathomable reason the requirement for a degree is almost top of the list. It’s a massive hangover from a very long time ago, and it just sort of stuck when job descriptions were endlessly copied and pasted from dusty Word documents that had been lifted from other companies at the turn of the century. Further qualifications are fantastic, and worthy, but they shouldn’t be a blanket barrier to individuals with plenty of experience and some who are self taught and well read.
To do a chunky caveat on the above feels cheap, but there are always exceptions to the four rules***. It’s not always possible to hire for tomorrow; you might need someone to do X ‘right now’. That’s what you can afford and that’s what the business needs. You might not have time to grow an individual. You might not be able to find that very special person who’s head and shoulders above anyone else you’ve ever met. But do try and think beyond that initial engagement.
There’s almost always an urgent requirement, however there’s also a bottom line. Recruitment costs (not including recruiter costs) average 20% of an employee salary (in the UK). Rehiring then becomes a very expensive proposition. Think about the job description writing, sign-off, the job ads, the filtering of CVs, the screeners, the follow-ups, the team interviews…hours and hours of work and distraction. Even with recruitment tools that allow you to quickly sift through cover letters and CVs at the click of a button you’re still burning time and money and attention. Slow down and try to get it right first time.
If you’re hiring in another country this can be even more fundamental to the recruitment process. In the US, cutting a role is easy-peasy(ish), in the UK it’s a great deal more complicated, in Mexico it’s eye-wateringly costly, and in some European countries there are arcane ‘jobs for life’ approaches to employment. Imagine not being able to measure performance on an individual level…teams, yes, a single under-performer in a team, no way. Know the employment laws before you make international hires. What savings you think you might be making monthly could end up being decimated when it’s time for the team to change.
Building with people is difficult. It only works with a plan, decent leadership, mutual respect, and a desire to collaborate. I often liken building successful teams to inviting a bunch of strangers to a dinner that’s going to last around three years. [3]
i. You need to be able to rotate the seating plan without worrying whether [insert name] is going to start talking about that thing with [other insert name] — you don’t need fireworks unless you’re celebrating.
ii. Guests need to be able to disagree and resolve conflict without everyone else having to put down their cutlery.
iii. Everyone should be able to tell a good story, or be open to learning how. [4]
iv. If someone doesn’t like the food, they should be polite — although it’s important they try everything before turning up their noses.
v. Gossiping is frowned upon, it can easily turn part of a table into a toxic enclave — eventual fireworks.
vi. Make sure the people with the loudest voices are well distributed. No one wants to be stuck at the ‘noisy end’.
vii. Not everyone will love everything you serve (see iv), get used to it, another course will be along soon enough.
viii. When you’re done, make sure to tidy up — it’ll be someone else’s turn to host next.
ix. Not everyone at the table needs to know what’s going on in the kitchen. Be judicious with the amount of information you share. ****
Most importantly you need to relish the challenge of hosting. You’re never going to be running a seamless event, anyone who tells you that everything is smooth-sailing where they come from is lying. Whether you’re working at a MegaCorp or a small boutique studio, there’s likely mess everywhere, your job is to understand the mess, contain it as best you can, and know when to leave it well alone.
Part III: The Hiring Process & What To Do When It Goes Wrong
* Even if your business operates using Gantt charts, you can use a Now Next Later approach to creating a hiring plan. There’s almost never an exact date for when you’ll need a person who can do X or Y, but you can model these scenarios based on a number of outcomes. Creating quarterly plans is truly useful; they can guide you in the moment, support with budgeting and managing P&L (obviously), and they can also act as a great tool for a ‘hiring post-mortem’…should you have hired that person then, what level of surety do you need in future, what patterns are there that would indicate a need to speed up the hunt or slow it down, where’s it gone right, where’s it gone wrong, are there signals you should be aware of next quarter that will better inform your decision-making?
** IYKNY, and a huge thank you to those individuals
*** There are, of course, unspoken items on the checklist. These just seem like sensible and obvious ones to flag.
**** I’ll touch on this in following articles
[1] Kate Wagner’s blog, McMansion Hell, is a brilliant and awful time-suck. You’re very welcome.
[2] North Stars shift. I like to frame most of this stuff on what you know, or have been exposed to today.
[3] US study ~2019
[4] Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown: Canada:“Of course. Come prepared with stories” (video link)
