What College Basketball Taught me about Hiring
I’ve been a college basketball fan for as long as I can remember. There’s an aspect of a college sports that’s rather fascinating to me. The athletes are young adults between the ages of 18–22, most of whom have yet to live up to their true potential. Throughout the time in college, most student athletes improve drastically over the four years they spend in school. The success of college teams is shaped by the support on and off the playing field from coaches, staff, and fellow teammates.
Being a college coach is a tough job and there is no off season. Alongside coaching these young athletes about the game and ensuring they do well in the classroom, coaches are often on the road recruiting players from high school for future rosters. These coaches aren’t looking for players who can start on the team right away and be a leader, instead they are looking for recruits who are eager to learn, develop, and improve throughout the course of the four years and make an impact on the playing field when they mature. Recruiting is more about finding the potential in athletes to thrive with your coaching style and culture than it is about assembling a team of talent. The best teams are usually the ones with a strong senior class who have gelled, grown, and improved together through shared experiences. Each new recruit on that team buys into the culture that the coach has set and the most successful coaches are the ones who focus on creating a strong pipeline of player development.
As a Michigan Wolverines fan, I’m continually inspired by the methods of the basketball coach, John Beilein. He is known for looking for players who fit his system. His typical recruits are usually not highly sought after from other schools. The core of his philosophy prioritizes culture-fit over pure talent.
The success he has had in building teams is an inspiration to me. I believe there are many parallels between the way college coaches build their teams and the methods we’re trying at Buffer. At the core of our hiring philosophy, we prioritize culture fit well over technical talent and expertise. We look for those who we feel will grow along with us.
Why hiring should be about growth potential and not about expertise
When I started hiring and building the engineering team at Buffer, I thought I needed to hire the “best,” most experienced engineers I could find. I only looked for people who went to the best schools, with computer science degrees, or who had tons of experience working at top companies. I struggled to find those who had fit this mainstream criteria while also fitting our cultural values. In interviews, I would ask the standard technical questions. Often times those that would thrive, I didn’t feel would fit well with the team, and those that I thought would fit well sometimes struggled with these questions—though I knew they were capable of understanding them given the right opportunities.
Through reflecting on my own journey, I started to believe that the best candidates would do what it takes to learn and develop the expertise needed to move at our speed, perhaps they would even ramp up way faster than those with traditional backgrounds. I remember my first startup experience, which was at Kno in 2010. I had very low confidence in my development ability and felt out of place among my incredibly smart coworkers with years (and decades) of past experience — I remember that imposter syndrome well. I bombed my interviews, yet I was lucky enough to have an awesome and experienced manager who took the risk to hire me for whatever potential he saw in me. I was so eager to do whatever I could to fit in and ramp up. With some great team support I hit my stride and hit a point where I felt on par with my co-workers. The personal and professional development I went through during that time was invaluable for me and for Kno — it was mutually beneficial. I’ve had that imposter syndrome feeling for as long as I can remember—but I’m grateful for it because I feel it’s motivated me. This realization led me to believe that there’s potentially great talent everywhere. With the right environment, opportunity, and mentorship, good team members can develop the expertise needed to thrive on a team.
My ‘aha’ moment was when I stopped asking technical questions and instead focused on gauging a candidate’s potential to learn and develop within our team. With the internet and the right motivation, we believe anyone can become an expert in anything. Tough technical interview questions, school degrees, or specific past work environments, haven’t been an accurate indicator of the potential to succeed on our team.
When I tried out this new approach, I overlooked the technical backgrounds of Dan and Niel, both of whom haven’t taken a formal computer science course or worked at popular tech companies. Dan worked as a civil engineer in construction before learning how to code on his own, and Niel studied linguistics and was teaching English to students in Taipei. Niel was coding for fun on the side when he joined our team. Both were incredibly passionate about the product and culture and it was clear early on that they would do what it takes to be a great engineer at Buffer. After working closely with both Dan and Niel for over a year, I can’t imagine where we’d be without them.
The offer is just the beginning
After watching coaching inspirations, like John Beilein, be successful over the years, I’ve come to realize that building a good team or organization is all about continual learning, development, and growth as a group and much less about individual contribution and expertise. Coaches like John Beilein are completely invested in his players, and the team is more like a family. It’s a culture built around continuous improvement and this type of support gives players confidence and creates success. In the past 2 years, 5 of Beilein players went on to be top NBA draft picks even though they weren’t expected to even make the NBA when they first joined Beilein’s team. With a chip on their collective shoulders, and Beilein’s supportive culture they found success.
We try to have a truly supportive culture for new team members. At Buffer, I’ve felt more like a coach (or a senior year teammate) than a ‘manager.’ When someone is hired at Buffer, there’s a contract period called ‘the Bootcamp’—I see this approach as being very similar to a football or basketball training camp. Continuous two-way feedback is critical during this early time to achieve mutual success. If there’s something a team member feels would really help the new hire succeed during the Bootcamp, they’d give advice immediately. Positive mentorship from the rest of the team absolutely critical. For us, one of the awesome effects of focusing on culture and the Buffer values has been to establish this type of supportive team environment.
I’m grateful for the strong and connected team we have at Buffer (even though we’re spread out across 11 timezones). After watching great sports teams develop and seeing our culture-first team building approach at Buffer, I truly believe the best teams are the ones that focus on continual improvement rather than recruiting/hiring the most experienced people from the start. Build a team by focusing on the potential to develop together and less on expertise and talent.
