What I learned from interviewing over 100 people — A Hiring Guide.

Last year I interviewed over 100 engineers in 3 months. Before that, the same number across a larger variety of roles. Now, I am helping a couple of startups fill different positions. Running well-planned and thought-through hiring processes from an early stage is fundamental to set the right foundations. Everyone in the team should master good hiring practices from the start (the later you start, the harder it is to change established behaviours — in turn, scaling suffers).

I have never found hiring enjoyable, it takes immense amounts of time which are, consistently, unpredictable. It requires a lot more discipline than it appears at first and even if you do all the right things right, spend a lot of time on selecting and persuading candidates, the final decision can still be a no. Then you start thinking that you could have spent those 10h+ doing something with a larger impact on the company. However frustrating, it’s probably the most important thing team leads can do to have an impact on outcomes in the long run.

Over time, you end up with a list of principles that you don’t compromise on, mine are:

• 120% rule (shamelessly stolen from Eiso): Unless 120% sure about a candidate, don’t hire them. Every time we compromised on this rule, the person was let go within the first 90 days. And learn to trust your gut feeling, for the good and the bad.

There are so many examples of this rule, ie. if you wouldn’t spend a flight or a dinner with this person don’t hire them, or Stripe’s famous “would you be likely to come into the office on a Sunday because you want to hang out with this person?” question, etc.

• Smart/Intelligent > Specific Abilities (especially at an early stage): Roles evolve quickly and companies pivot often. As a general rule of thumb, people take a lot longer to adapt. Unless you want to be hiring a new team every couple of months, favour smart and practical problem — solvers who have the ability to learn quickly and grow at the company’s pace.
• Large and varied pool of interviewers: One or two people in the team are not enough to decide on a candidate. The process should always include a large, gender and seniority balanced pool of interviewers.
• See examples of work: Either through an assignment or a couple of days of paid work, always make sure to see how the candidate works, reasons and solves problems.

What comes below is a quick checklist I use for each part of the process. This helps me not forget anything from one role to the next :-)

1. Getting Started 🎬

Whether you are supporting a hiring manager/team or running the process for your team, there are some basic to-do’s that need to be done and defined upfront.

1.1. Scorecard, Adapted from The Who*

The role’s scorecard should summarise what you will be looking for and serve as a guide to whoever gets involved in the interviewing process. You should involve all key stakeholders in the process to avoid misalignment.

It should include:

• Mission of the role: Why does it exist?
• Outcomes: The O’s of the OKR’s of this person for their first 12 months.
• Competencies: This will turn into requirements on the job description.

1.2. Compensation

Ideally, this has been decided as part of the year’s Hiring Plan and does not take long to pull together.

Define compensation early-on, not only a salary range but also whether or not there is a bonus or some sort of relocation/signing amount and finally, the equity package.

1.3. Job Description

Needless to say that the longer you think through the scorecard, the easier this step becomes, especially if you have a skeleton from previous openings.

Many formats that work well and after a little research, you can easily find your go-to career pages when in need of some inspiration. How these are written should reflect your team and the company’s culture as much as possible — it should sound exciting without the need for buzzwords :-)

I am a big fan of, at least:

• About the Company.
• About the Role: Scorecard’s mission + Context needed for someone external to understand what the team works on and exists in the bigger scheme of the company.
• What the candidate will accomplish: Scorecard’s outcomes.
• About the candidate: Scorecard’s competencies + defining Culture traits.
• Compensation: Always disclose and publish salary, even if it’s a range, and the wider package and benefits.

1.4. Interview Process

• Define the stages, the owners of each of them and what each is checking for. They should be exhaustive and non-repetitive — it sounds obvious but most times one defines the steps and forgets to clearly outline what the output of each of them is. You end up with different people having the same doubts across all interview stages.
• If there is no Recruiter/HoTalent/HoOps in charge of managing the process throughout, pick someone — just one person for every candidate in the same process, no matter what channels they come through — who serves as the main point of contact and feedback collection.
• Each stage should be “optimised for fast rejection” — your goal should be to find red flags on things you will not compromise on and discard candidates as early as possible. The longer it takes to find out about a candidate’s red flags, the more you have “wasted” yours, theirs and your team’s time. While you should be happy with dedicating (or “wasting”) time with initial calls if you are unsure about someone’s profile, passing a candidate onto any other stage after the first screen, needs to be a deliberate, ready-to-be-justified, hard yes.

1.5. Tracking

If you don’t have the resources to or do not want to spend on an ATS, a simple spreadsheet does the job. If you want to get started with an ATS that works without getting charged 5k+ on the usual suspects, Google Hire does a great job for ~1k/year.

If you, and your team, are well-organised and have more time than cash, a spreadsheet works wonders.

I have a hard time tracking for the sake of tracking, the data needs to help make decisions and move faster than without it. I personally care about:

At a funnel/channels level:

• Am I seeing enough candidates?
• Are there enough candidates in the process (currently)?
• Which channels are performing well? Which ones should be killed?

At a process level:

• Am I passing on too many candidates from the initial call to the next step?
• How long does it take for candidates to move through the funnel?

All of it can be tracked with a spreadsheet that takes nothing to build. The hard part is to maintain it :-)

Please feel free to copy and modify this template to fit individual use-cases.

2. Executing 🏃

2.1. Identifying

Pick channels that have worked in the past first but quickly expand to include as many as you can process and digest. In no particular order:

• Posting: Company website, Job boards, Social Media (if it makes sense for the particular role). Posting is usually the least effective channel, especially for engineering roles, but definitely one that forces you to write-up a proper role description.
• Recruiters: If you have the resources (usually that means patience, even more than cash), they can be of great help. It takes time to find the gems but once you do, it can make your life easier. Like any other business partner/supplier, it takes time to brief them, give them feedback and learn to work together:

Briefing: 30min call where you tell them all about the company (Goals, existing team, future hiring plan, culture, etc.), the roles you’re hiring for (Hard/soft requirements, biases you may have, etc.) and the hiring process. Agree on the terms on the phone (I personally only work with the first hire at a reduced rate and 100% rebate over 90 days — I am looking for long-term relationships and find it easier accept mistakes at the beginning with both of the above).

Follow-up: Share with them the job description(s), compensation(s) and an updated deck on the company or a one-pager that summarises what you just told them over the phone regarding the company — explicitly tell them whether they can share it with candidates or not. You should also specify how you want to receive candidates (I always ask for: 1 email thread = 1 candidate; subject line = name of candidate + role; LinkedIn and GitHub profiles; and finally that the hiring manager for each role is copied into each thread). Finally, share “do’s and don’ts” that you may have (Personally, no posting roles on job boards, and others, is a very critical don’t — I don’t want third parties owning the narrative of our job ads).

Provide quick and actionable feedback: Screen all candidates sent within a couple of hours and offer good feedback, it’s the only way to help them help you.

Acknowledge when it’s not working: Set a timeframe to test each new recruiter you start working with and revoke the contract if it is not working. Mine is 2 months, 1 offer — I believe that 8 weeks should be enough to make an offer to a candidate and if that doesn’t happen, then it should come really close to one. Otherwise, they’re out. It’s a waste of time for you, but ultimately for them as well, to drag things longer.

• Network: Investors, advisors, fellow founders, etc. — have a list of people that you always keep updated, to which you can easily forward new job descriptions.
• Manual sourcing: Nothing beats spending 1h/day manually identifying and reaching out to candidates with personalised messages. You should always try and do it where the best candidates might be, which isn’t always LinkedIn, a lot of times you’re better off on GitHub, Twitter, IG, etc., and then still cross-checking on LinkedIn :-) Figuring out someone’s email address, even their personal ones (say how), is easy so even LinkedIn can be a free resource.
• Internal Referrals: Make it easy for everyone in the team to send through potential candidates. Convey the urgency of the process and spend time explaining new roles in all your all-hands (over and over again). Make time to individually go through their networks with them and help them craft initial messages. Most times having a template available is all they need but having a well-thought referral and incentive scheme is even better.

If these are done right, you should start receiving candidates 2–3 days later. When receiving an application/referral/candidate, always decide on the spot and take 2 minutes to write-up why not. If there’s no reason to reject, have an initial call — especially with the first candidates, there are still adjustments and learnings to be derived. Spend as much time as you can maximising the funnel early on, timing is everything when recruiting and you need to be speaking to best candidates all at the same time.

2.2. Interviewing

Every team, company and role are different, there are thousands of possibilities when it comes to the process. However, below are a few of what I believe to be must-haves.

• Screening Calls ☎️

Duration: 20–30min

Goals: Sell, sell and sell. Understand what the person cares about. Understand what they are looking for in their next role. Take note of salary expectations and notice period.

Always focus on pitching the company and team during the first call. You have one shot at getting candidates really excited about the opportunity as well as wanting to dedicate time effort to a process.
The second part of the call focuses on understanding whether both the company/team and the role itself can offer what the candidate is looking for, in the way they enjoy working, meeting the career growth and path they envision for the next years. If this doesn’t match what you can offer, it’s better to know early-on and even discard someone based on that. It’s important to maximise the chances of getting offers accepted and, excluding candidates that are maximising for compensation which you also don’t want, if you can’t offer what they are looking for, even if some may progress throughout the process, it’s unlikely they accept an offer.

• Take-Home Assignment 📝

Duration: Variable and may be timed-boxed, or not.

Goal: Can they do the job? Are they smart? Will the team enjoy working with them? It can vary a lot depending on the role, but it shouldn’t vary with seniority; instead, expectations about the outcome should.

I am a big believer in assignments that help understand how candidates reason, how they structure their thinking, how they go about solving problems, etc. I find that tasks that mimic the exact work are not necessarily the best at understanding the above and may be perceived as rather disrespectful towards the candidates’ time (unless they are paid). Any design or engineering work that may be added to production sends the wrong message to the candidate and, in my view, is very hard to assess a candidate on. As you have so much more information about your business, industry, etc. it is unlikely that you will look at the output with unbiased eyes and fully appreciate reasoning, process and problem-solving abilities. The context of the task is the least important.

• Founder(s)/CEO 🥁

At some point throughout the process, no matter the role and seniority, the founder(s) and/or CEO needs to spend time with the candidate. When scaling rapidly and optimising founders’ time, it’s easy to forget this stage. However, when asking candidates at which point they knew that, everything else looking fine, they wanted to join the team, all of them answered that it was when speaking to the founder/CEO. Nothing beats long-term vision explained by the founder/CEO in getting someone excited about the opportunity.

• Team Q&A 📣

The more team members the candidate meets, the more opportunities they will have to learn about the company but also clarify doubts and ask questions they sometimes fear to ask during the more “formal” interviews. Arrange for lunch/coffee with 2–3 team members who are not part of the process and let both sides speak freely. Ask your team to remember any questions that sounded slightly off, you’d be surprised how insightful these are!

Remind yourself that while for you this is a process like any other in the company, and “a number’s game”, this is also a life-changing event for the person on the other end. It affects them and potentially their family. Never underestimate the power of being nice, listening and adjusting to great candidates. Processes are there to help, to serve as a base of rules, but they should be broken for the right reasons. If you find yourself breaking them too much though, you should definitely go back to step 1 and review the entire process in the first place :-)

2.3. Closing 🎯

Offers should not come as a surprise to candidates, feedback and compensation can, but overall they should be expecting it and you should know and be ready to address their last concerns, if any, prior to talking to them.

When ready to make an offer, I follow a very strict process:

• Call

a. Get their feedback on their overall experience and last interview;

b. Give them feedback;

c. Recap the role, the individual people they will be working with and main challenges ahead;

d. Explain our compensation packages: base salary, bonus if any and equity;

When thinking through compensation, I always try and be as inclusive as possible. I am a fan of what I call “inverted sliders”, offering a range in base salary that negatively correlates with an equity range. It takes longer to put together and longer to explain but it gives candidates full transparency into how we think about compensation and lets them decide and be in charge. If they recently started a family, they may favour cash and liquidity over equity. That’s completely understandable but there’s no way you can know for sure and assuming so by making different offers based on some likely criteria is a recipe for disaster. This way, they can pick.

I spend enormous amounts of time explaining how equity works, especially early on, when cash is scarce and equity offers are generous, candidates need to understand what the value of their options are. But the opposite is also true, later on, when those options are increasingly more likely to convert into an interesting upside, everyone needs to fully understand how it works.

e. Why now is a great time to join;

f. Address any personal situations and offer all your support;

If the candidate has a family, this will most definitely impact them, be mindful. If they are relocating for you, be supportive upfront, share your experience and that of other team members. They are changing their lives for you.

Try to schedule most of these in the evening, either the same day or, worst-case, the day after their last round. You will find that candidates are more relaxed when they are at home plus, if relevant, it allows them to discuss it with their partners straight away when they are still excited about the call they just had. And at that time, you also know that you won’t have to run out and can spend as much time answering questions as needed.

• Email

As soon as you hang up, send all of the above on an email. Having it drafted before the call allows you to structure the message and have the numbers in front of you.

Always copy relevant people to that thread so everyone gets a chance to show them how excited they are and offer their time via phone/writing to answer any questions. If you don’t have a transparent compensation policy, you can send a separate email with everyone copied.

If you have more candidates in the pipeline waiting for the first person’s answer, consider giving them a certain timeframe to get back to you with an answer.

3. What’s Next 📅

From the moment a candidate accepts an offer, a lot can still happen. In countries like the UK, or France, where 3-month notice periods are common, you need a proper strategy to deal with this interim period. If all of the above ran smoothly and they are extremely excited, you probably have nothing to worry but then again, how can you ever be sure?

I always put reminders to send them, at least, one email per week. If the candidate is in your same location, make sure to invite them to team outings from that moment on and consider including them in the fun team emails and company-wide updates — but no work asks :-) If they are relocating, there is so much you can and should do! Helping them navigate everything from housing, paperwork, the actual move, and, if relevant, partners’ new job, etc.

Always be mindful of each person’s individual situations — when we were hiring recent graduates who were moving abroad, we realised early on they had a hard time covering upfront housing deposits. We started offering up to 3 months of salary upfront, deducted over the first six months of their employment. It made a massive difference to them, none to the company.

If, on the other hand, the candidate rejects the offer, always make sure to understand why — scheduling a call is usually the best way to get the real reasons and sometimes re-cover these decisions.

4. Final Thoughts 💡

Take the time…

… to go through your notes and do a “retrospective” on each role’s interviewing process — even if just with yourself :-) Improve your own checklists for future roles. You’ll likely not remember what worked well and what didn’t when you’re hiring for a future role if you don’t do it on the spot.

… to organise your tracking sheet. Keep candidates’ latest status updated and add notes to the ones you’d like to re-engage at a later stage. Unless it’s a very specific role, you’ll likely have to re-hire for the same position and it will make your life easier.

… to set calendar reminders for the ones you definitely want to re-engage every couple of months. Especially for the ones abroad, so that when you’re travelling you can invite them for lunches/dinners, or other team members can do so when they are travelling. Hiring the best is a v.e.r.y. long process and you want to make sure you minimise “process time” when you need the talent.

… to work on your team’s brand, and its individual contributors’. Every day. There’s nothing that compounds over time more than content that can be found and shared over and over again. There are many ways you can do it, but none will get done without planning and a place in the team’s OKRs, as the return is not linear nor quick to collect. Consider maintaining a team blog (for example, for a 12 people team, that means each person just needs to write 1 article per quarter to have a new one every week!), encouraging open-source, promote CFPs submissions and fund those trips if needed when talks are accepted, etc. Help everyone contribute equally and individually, everyone wants to work with the smartest.

Further Readings 📚

If you only read one thing…

• The Who: The A Method for Hiring, Geoff Smart and Randy Street.

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Thank you Valentina, Eiso and Manuel for reviewing multiple drafts of this post! 🙏