Doing The Job
This essay is the fifth in a series documenting lessons learned from my time at Electric Objects. Follow me on Medium to find out when the next essay is published.
In a recent email exchange with one of my former teammates, we reflected on the caliber of people we were able to assemble at Electric Objects. Bringing this group together is probably what I’m most proud of, and I’ll be lucky to work with a team that brilliant, that creative, and that passionate again.
Even so, it probably won’t surprise anyone that one of my major lessons has to do with hiring and team building. Growing a successful organization means hiring people who know a lot more than you do about their area of expertise. But if you’re trying to find someone to do a job that you’ve never even seen done before, how do you know what experience that person should have, what they should be good at, or in what direction they should want to grow their career?
The biggest problem for me wasn’t so much recruiting great people, as it was knowing which great people to try and recruit. I tried to mitigate my lack of experience by bringing on advisors and consultants to help me vet candidates and make hiring decisions. Looking back, I think this time and money could have been better spent.
The best advice I’ve come across on this subject is from Ben Horowitz in his blog post, Hiring Executives:
The very best way to know what you want is to act in the role. Not just in title, but in real action — run the team meeting, hold 1:1s with the staff, set objectives, etc. In my career, I’ve been acting VP of HR, CFO, and VP of Sales. Often CEOs resist acting in functional roles, because they worry that they lack the appropriate knowledge. This worry is precisely why you should act — to get the appropriate knowledge. In fact, acting is really the only way to get all of the knowledge that you need to make the hire, because you are looking for the right executive for your company today not a generic executive.
It never felt like I had the time or expertise to “act in the role.” Looking back, I can’t think of a better use of my time, and developing expertise is exactly the point of the exercise.
Consistent with this point of view is the advice that you should hire for the problems you need solved today, not the problems that may or may not need solved tomorrow. In an ideal world, you can find someone who can handle both. But we don’t live in an ideal world.
Lastly, if ever in doubt about an open position in those murky days pre-product/market fit, hire an entrepreneur. Find someone who would otherwise be starting their own company, and unleash them on a problem that they’re interested in solving. They’ll figure out how to solve it, and by the time they’re ready to move on to the next problem (or next company), you’ll know exactly who you need to help scale.
