Why I still spend 20% of my week focused on hiring great people
As a startup facing rapid growth, there’s mounting pressure to step back and get less involved in hiring. Here’s why I’ve challenged this assumption and what I’ve learned by staying involved.
By: Cliff Peskin and Sean Mackay
BuzzBuzzHome’s humble beginning is the quintessential startup story. Two guys. Two laptops. One big vision. Although a lot has changed over the last few years (we now have 35 full-time employees in three offices across North America, as well as a flourishing digital creative agency, 88 Creative, with 11 hires), I still find myself spending a significant portion of my day crafting job ads, attending meetups, vetting resumes and interviewing candidates.
Let’s go through three major points I believe are critical to hiring success that are maybe a bit different from the norm and why I think they’re so important.
As a leader, hiring is one thing you shouldn’t entirely delegate.
My co-founder Matthew Slutsky and I are still very involved in the hiring process. We believe hiring to be one of the most critical factors to success. I personally spend an average of about 20 percent a week focused on hiring. And, depending on the urgency and number of hires, I will sometimes spend as much as 80 percent of my time on it. As we’ve grown, I’ve delegated hiring responsibilities to our five team leads, but ultimately, Matthew and I make most of the hiring decisions.
We’ve discussed working with recruiters as we’ve grown and had to deal with hiring spurts (this month we hired five people and are about to hire a sixth). But we haven’t gone there yet. Partly because of cost and our desire to stay lean, but also because I believe you lose something in delegating this super important task to a third-party.
When I started BuzzBuzzHome six years ago, I questioned whether the individual with an MBA or PhD from the best school and 10 years of management experience was the holy grail of employees. Could you apply a rubric and have the candidate that scores best pop out the other end? Over the years I learned that success is far more personal. The ingredients that make a team successful aren’t always intelligence, academic achievement and/or experience.
It goes deeper than that. Do you even like the person?
I often use the “airport test” to determine whether or not I should hire someone. Would I want to spend three hours stuck in an airport with them? If the answer to the question is no, I won’t hire them, regardless of their experience and education.
Once the candidates pass the airport test, I try to figure out how ambitious they are and gauge their desire to learn and grow. There are things I’ve internalized about what makes a great BuzzBuzzHome employee that can’t be easily passed onto a recruiter.
By putting myself out there, I also learn a ton about what our value proposition is to potential hires. As part of the interview process I go through our vision, the impact we hope to have and how that person will contribute to that vision. That comes best from me or Matt. I think this is a big differentiator that makes us successful. It partly comes from necessity, but that’s something I believe more leaders should resist giving into — allowing others to take over too much of the process of finding and hiring great people. It’s just so core to success and it’s not something you can replace with process.
Take risks to attract and keep the best talent
We love hiring talented individuals who have recently finished school and are looking for dynamic, meaningful experiences to begin their careers. I hold a bit of a controversial belief that smart people who work hard are the biggest percentage of the success equation in effective hiring. An MBA with 10 years experience is not two times as productive as a recent grad with the right attitude and ability to learn — but can be two times as expensive. So we’re focused on finding great people and then helping them grow with the company. We do this by taking calculated risks on people. In the same way we take a risk on a recent grad to give them experience towards their career, we take risks when promoting within. It means that sometimes we’ll put people that don’t quite have all the right experience in new roles as long as they have demonstrated an ability to learn and a desire to grow.
We all know that millennials value opportunity, so it can’t be a stated value with no real action. For example, we hired our now Executive Vice President, Kiyoko Fujimura, straight out of school six years ago. As a recent grad, she didn’t have a ton of working experience, but she was super ambitious, intelligent, had a great personality, and believed in our vision. She’s proven herself to be a very valuable member of our team, and with her leadership, we were able to expand our company. If we were solely looking at candidates with experience, we wouldn’t have considered her for the position and would have lost a big part of our family.
Hunt for candidates with the same zeal that you hunt for sales:
- Have urgency
When a new role opens up at BuzzBuzzHome, I use a blitz recruitment strategy where I post the opening on every single job site and forum, social media channel, and wherever else I can post and share it. As soon as the resumes start coming in, I start vetting and interviewing. I make a hire on that first wave of applicants. I’ve found that moving fast gets good results quickly and that has a material impact on results. A longer process doesn’t yield better results. The next wave of applicants are fewer, not necessarily better quality. I make finding the best hire a key priority. It eats up a lot of my time, but it’s a worthwhile investment.
2. Market your company at events
I’ve also spent a ton of time looking on Meetup and Eventbrite for events geared toward roles that I’m searching for. It’s really important to get outside your comfort zone and meet people who you wouldn’t ordinarily cross paths with at your typical industry networking events.
3. Hone your value proposition
Remember, hiring requires two-way communication. You need to sell these candidates on your company and its vision just as much as they’re trying to sell you on their value. Meetups are a great opportunity to perfect your pitch for a new audience. Maybe you’ve mastered explaining why your company is doing interesting work to your industry peers, but have you tried pitching it to a group of 20-something UX designers that might want to come work for you?
This is especially important if you’ve been using recruiters for years as many larger companies do, especially for more technical roles, this is your opportunity to sharpen your own recruitment skills outside the confines of your office. This is an immensely valuable ability to possess within an organization of any size in any industry.
4. Do PR for potential hires and showcase your culture
In addition meeting potential candidates at third party events, it’s equally as important to organize something yourself. In my experience, hosting events that bring in young professionals to your space are a fantastic chance for exposure within communities you’re hiring from. You get to show people your great work and what the day-to-day is like in your office.
In summer 2015, we hosted a Hackernest event which drew hundreds of people involved in Toronto’s tech community to our office. You should assume that those attending the event are going to these types of networking nights frequently. This means you need to make yours stand out with a creative flourish or two. For the Hackernest event, we had ice cream sandwiches assembled in-house and served by the BuzzBuzzHome team.
Hosting events like these are especially beneficial for larger companies as they will often have the space to comfortably fit a few hundred keen software engineers. Large companies also tend to (rightfully or wrongfully) have a reputation for being difficult or even intimidating to approach, especially for those coming straight out of school or from a smaller company. This is a chance to prove you don’t fall into that stereotype.
In conclusion: Attitude is everything
This one is as straightforward as they come, but it’s surprising how many companies aren’t taking this advice to heart.
If you have a challenging hire to make, you need to approach it confidently and methodically. Most importantly, you need to stay motivated and oriented toward the goal of finding the person who is best suited for this position.
You have an incredible employment opportunity for someone out there — but remember, you need to be just as motivated as that applicant out there who’s toiling away on their third draft of a cover letter. Use that drive to make a great hire.
For larger companies it can be a challenge not to get bogged down by procedure. That’s all in place for a reason, but if you’re genuinely excited about hiring a candidate, make sure everyone knows so you can use that momentum to get it done faster.
Cliff Peskin
Co-founder & Co-president, BuzzBuzzHome & 88 Creative
Cliff Peskin is co-founder and co-president of BuzzBuzzHome.com, North America’s leading search portal for new construction homes, and creative communications agency, 88 Creative. Prior to BuzzBuzzHome, Cliff founded his first company Nutrition in Motion Ltd. (nimdiet.com), which he later sold to Florida’s the Fresh Diet. He has also served as a medic in the Israel Defense Forces. An experienced entrepreneur, Cliff is most passionate about product development and design. He currently lives in Toronto.
