Developing an Interview Process that Works for Your Startup
This is part seven of an eight-part series, exploring the ins and outs of growing your startup team. From attracting talent to developing an interview process, get ready for a complete crash-course in building your early-stage startup team.
Click to read all eight parts as a complete post, or download as a PDF.
By the time a candidate comes in for an interview with you, you should already feel confident that they have the required skills to do the job well. Therefore, your interview should focus on learning more about them as a person, and working out how well they would fit in with the rest of your startup team.
So how should you structure your interviews, to get the best insight about what each candidate would be like to work with?
1) INTRODUCTIONS
Sure, it’s tempting to dive right in to the interview, but remember to take a few minutes to introduce yourself and the other members of the team who will be running the interview with you. Explain how the interview will be structured (will different team members be leading different parts of the interview? Will the candidate be completing a practical task as part of the interview?), and then give them a chance to introduce themselves.
2) ASSESS CULTURE FIT
In order to ask questions that will enable you to assess a candidate for culture fit, you first need to define your startup’s key values. You can then come up with some questions that align with that value. As an example, here are some of the questions I was asked during my interview when joining Cobloom, and the values they align with:
- Transparency -> What’s more important: transparency or confidentiality? Why?
- Self-improvement -> What habits have you developed to improve yourself or your skills, personally or professionally?
- Work smarter, not harder -> What’s better, a perfect solution that takes 6 months, or an 80%-perfect solution that takes 3 months? Why?
These will help you understand candidates’ personal and professional values, as well as how they think, how they prioritise and what they’re passionate about.
Recommended weighting: 50%
3) DISCUSS THE PRACTICAL TASK
If you’ve asked your candidates to complete a practical task before the interview, it’s important to spend some time discussing this. Not only will it help them understand how the task relates to the type of work they would be doing day-to-day, it also helps you get a better insight as to how they think, how they approached the task, and how much time and effort went into completing it.
Recommended weighting: 25%
4) ASK ABOUT ON-THE-JOB PRACTICALITIES
It’s a good idea to assess the practicalities of hiring this particular candidate as part of the interview process. If they’re going to be working in-house, ask about whether the commute will be a problem for them.
Alternatively, if your startup has a completely remote team, consider timezones and ask about their work set-up: do they have a dedicated space to work at home, or will they be using a nearby coworking space, for example.
You’ll also want to ask about salary expectations. Hopefully you included compensation information in your job advert, so by the time they reach interview your candidate’s salary expectations should be aligned with yours.
Recommended weighting: 25%
5) PROVIDE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE CANDIDATE TO ASK QUESTIONS
While candidates might have asked questions throughout the interview, it’s a good idea to close out the interview by specifically asking if they have any further questions. Additionally, always give them the opportunity to contact you with follow-up questions by email after the interview — in case they forget anything, or later think of something that they’d like further clarification on.
SELECTING THE BEST-FIT CANDIDATE
The end-goal of your interviews is to enable you to select the candidate who is the best-fit for the role, and for your startup team.
The simplest, and most objective way to do this is to score your candidates based on culture fit, practical fit and their work capabilities, based on your assessment of their practical task. I’ve recommended a weighting split above: 50% culture fit; 25% practical task; 25% practical fit. In a small startup team, hiring the wrong person can irreparably damage your company, so finding someone who is a good fit for your existing team is essential.
Scoring candidates in this way makes it possible for you to objectively compare them, so you can select the candidate who will be the best-fit for your startup team.
Ready to read the whole post?
Click to read the complete post, or download it as a PDF to save for later.
