Hiring Lessons
What we learned from hiring three positions at once
A year ago Gimkit had zero employees. It was just Josh working over the summer without knowing what would happen when school picked back up.
By the end of January 2019, I had joined full time. I joined because Josh was drowning between Gimkit, School, and his internship. We both thought we’d probably be able to go a full year or 18 months before having to hire, based on growth at that time.
In May of this year it became clear we’d need help sooner, and summer seemed like a great time to hire. Two and a half weeks ago we brought on our first hires, but not before a two and a half month hiring process.
Although I’d been involved in hiring decisions before, neither of us had ever hired to this scale before. This process was fun, scary, exhausting, enlightening, awesome, terrible, and everything in between.
We learned a ton along the way, and I wanted to share as much as I can before the ups and downs fade away with time.
What Worked Well
Tapping into our community
We put both of our non-technical roles into the Gimkit teacher-verse and got back in return around 300 incredible applications from people who care deeply about education. Even though we didn’t end up hiring an active educator this round, we had conversations with amazing educators from all over. We were disappointed not to hire an active educator this time (Kelli, who we hired as our Head of Community Engagement, is a former teacher), but we met some truly remarkable people. Because we opened this process up to our community we now have a closer relationship with and a better understanding of the people who comprise it.
Short video call screen first
Before scheduling a full-on interview with myself and Josh, I’d set up a quick 15-minute video call with each candidate. Video calls allowed me to get a better sense of each candidate and make each short conversation a little more personal. This is not new or special, but I put a twist on it that was really helpful. Instead of using those 15 minutes to ask questions I had, I used them to answer any questions they might have.
By having candidates ask questions, I was able to address any concerns they had right away and get a sense for common questions. Most importantly, I learned way more from the questions candidates asked than I ever could have from asking them questions. I could immediately tell from the questions people had how interested they were in working with Gimkit, where their heads were at, and how much they’d thought about working with us. Candidates who came with thoughtful, in-depth questions always got a follow-up interview.
Asking for Cover Letters
This section doubles as advice for anyone applying for any job anywhere. Before we went through this hiring process I thought I knew the value of a good cover letter. But being on the other side of the equation taught me that nothing compares to a creative, thoughtful cover letter. We had applicants make videos, build web pages, and make digital art projects.
We read every single cover letter and resume we received, which made engaging cover letters not only helpful in getting to know applicants but essential for our sanity.
There were a few cover letter elements that, if we saw them, always led to a video call:
- Thoughtful, personal details that showed us the candidate’s passion for what we’re doing
- Specific solutions for challenges Gimkit is facing or will face in the future
- Creative ways of standing out (we saw hand-drawn pyramids, videos, photoshopped awards images, and more
Resumes convey what an applicant has done, but they don’t really say anything about who they are. Building Gimkit with awesome people who are passionate about education are ultimately the most important things, so we relied on cover letters that really showed us who was applying.
Getting advice from friends and peers
We knew this one already, which is why we had a bunch of these conversations in the first place. However, it’s worth noting that some of the most helpful advice we got didn’t come from blogs or articles online, but from people we knew at similar companies or friends who knew about recruiting/hiring in tech. Shannon from Dropbox, Adam from Flipgrid, Jason from Allovue, and Anthony from Pear Deck were especially helpful and generous with their time.
One of those great pieces of advice we got from both Jason and Anthony. They each suggested giving final software engineer candidates mini projects for them to either work on or to work on with them collaboratively. We did this with our top few picks for our engineer role and we were able to get a glimpse into how they work and what working on a project with them might be like. It turned out to be a great way to make a final decision!
Making Job Descriptions and Interviews Personal
Josh and I did some internet searching and used online tools to help us develop our job descriptions (Textio for the win!) and build out our interview questions, but the bulk of what we used came directly from us. Some of our favorite questions were those we came up with or that I borrowed from favorite interviews where I was the candidate. Here are two that we felt helped us really get to know candidates and how they thought:
- “You’re getting a gift for someone you don’t know. What do you get them?”
- “If they made a movie about you, who would play you?”
Just as we wanted the job descriptions to feel like Gimkit, we wanted to make sure the interview process not only helped us get to know each candidate, but also conveyed to them who we are. We were more concerned with getting to know people than we were with asking “the right” questions.
Communication
Since we were building out this process for ourselves, we were able to try to make it a positive experience for everyone involved, not just the candidates we pursued. From the first email response we sent to a candidate, whether it was to say no thank you to the application or to ask for a video call, we stayed as communicative as possible. We wanted the process to feel as enjoyable and valuable as possible, rather than means to an end.
Josh has never interviewed for a job, but one thing I always wanted more of was feedback on why I wasn’t selected. Josh and I responded to every candidate we passed on with a personal response and details about why we were going in another direction. We also responded to every response we received asking for more information or feedback. This approach helped us develop relationships with candidates that led to amazing product feedback, the beginning stages of our ambassador program, and friendships that we didn’t have before.
What Didn’t Work so Well
Head of School and District Success (HSDS)
This section could be its own post, but the short version is that we ended up not hiring for one of the three roles we initially posted. We made it all the way to the final four candidates and had many more amazing people we spoke to.
We would be lucky to have hired any of our final four candidates for our HSDS role, but we changed our mind several times about whether that role could be remote or not, which impacted their ability to work with us.
Because we knew so little about the roles we were hiring for, we learned a ton about them along the way, adjusting as we went. This ultimately meant that we had to disappoint outstanding candidates when we changed the location requirements and they were unable to move in the short time we needed.
Companies changing their hiring plan in this way is probably normal and may happen all the time, but it felt terrible.
In the end, it was better to pause hiring for that role, even at that late stage, than to hire someone when we weren’t comfortable with the situation.
It would’ve been even better if we could’ve come to our final conclusion (that every role we were hiring for should be in Seattle full time) before we posted the job descriptions. That might not have been possible, but we’ve identified a few areas where we can improve on in the future in terms of how we discuss important items and make decisions internally.
In addition to realizing the importance of the HSDS role being here in Seattle, we also realized it was more of an engagement role than we had initially thought. When we do hire for this role, it will be updated to the Head of School and District Engagement and we’ll have more data and learning around how groups use Gimkit to help inform the role.
Video interviews
As great as those quick video phone screens were, we never had a great experience conducting long-form phone or video interviews. We found using video was too hard to emotionally connect with people over a video call, especially if a 60 minute call was shortened to 45 or 50 minutes after technical issues.
A good example is one person we interviewed over a video call, then met at ISTE. On the video call this person seemed like maybe they were too stiff and formal to be a good fit with our team. In person, this person was loose, fun, and energetic — a great team fit!
If anyone has a good suggestions for tools to help with this, send them my way!
Pool Diversity
Despite getting some advice from my friend Shannon (a Dropbox recruiter who is focused on improving diversity efforts there), we still felt our pool should’ve been a lot more diverse. We used Textio for our job descriptions, reached out to specific groups and communities we thought might not otherwise see our open positions, and tried a few other small things to try to improve pool diversity, but we clearly didn’t do enough. For our next hire(s), I’m going to spend a lot more time and energy working to make sure our applicant pool is far more diverse. This is an area where I can see a lot of room for improvement and I’m committed to putting in the work.
I have a lot to learn and would love tips and ideas for how to improve pool diversity when hiring and resources for making sure we’re doing as much as we can.
I am so excited for our new team (Fadi and Kelli are 1.5 and 2.5 weeks in, respectively) and I can’t wait for everything we’ll do together.
Gimkit has already been a life-shaping experience for me, and there’s so much more to come!
