A Players: Recruiting, Screening And Onboarding

There are many deep resources on this topic, so we will just highlight a few tips and further reading. Assembling a strong mix of backgrounds, skillsets and inclinations is critical to positive org health momentum. In other words, ‘empowering your people’ means surrounding them with other A players.

Here are a few tips from our experience.

Recruiting

Great candidates are often already gainfully employed. You have to go find them. Recruiters can sometimes help, but building your own internal chops at sourcing passive candidates is even better. Here are a few talent sourcing hacks:

• Reference farming sessions: hiring managers should regularly meet with their individual team members and walk through their direct network to drum up potential candidates. Contact promising prospects on the spot. The act of meeting will force action that otherwise won’t happen.
• VCs and advisors: this is what they are there for! Share the job description with them and have a concrete ‘ask’. If they have significant hiring experience, get them involved with interviews and reference checking at least at the senior team level.
• LinkedIn: good old-fashioned profile stalking — this is the OG network and it’s still shockingly effective.
• Referral program: start with informal perks and build up to a formalized program as your organization matures. A relatively small cash reward (e.g. $500) can go a long way to motivate people. Turn all of your employees into talent spotters, and then consider expanding to the broader stakeholder group including former employees, friends, business associates, etc.
• Internal recruiting team: if you growing rapidly and have a large number of open roles on a consistent basis, consider building your own internal recruiting team. Make sure to compensate them like a top outside firm so that you can attract the best recruiters.
• Targeted job/discussion boards: try posting on AngelList (the world’s largest startup community) and/or apply guerilla tactics to relevant forums on Reddit, Quora, Facebook Groups, etc.
• Be kind: remember you are leaving a brand impression in the ecosystem, just like a sales process. It may not seem a priority to you to acknowledge job applications, keep people up to date with where you are in your decisions, and send polite and friendly rejection notes, but it is important to candidates.

Screening

• Test for mission, vision, values (MVV)fit: ideal candidates will have some level of personal connection to the products and change your company is making. When people care about your mission, they work a little harder and care more about the details. This is the #1 way to solve the recruiting challenge: give a prospect a higher reason for joining beyond title or compensation. If you neglect this, expect low acceptance rates, low success rates with new hires, and to generally overpay for talent because that’s your only offer.
• Test for hard skills upfront: filtering early in the process can save everyone time. This naturally applies to technical contributor roles such as software engineering and accounting. There are varying opinions on whether to use general aptitude tests in the hiring process. In our experience, they do help predict performance in certain roles when used correctly. Just beware of assuming a false sense of precision: if you do use a general aptitude test, consider setting a bar vs. stratifying of performance into levels. Importantly, these tests should be considered as just one input factor among many when considering a candidate.
• Pick an evaluation methodology: there are a number of good ones out there. We like The A Method for its simplicity. A well-crafted scorecard is critical. If you’re short on time, see a useful summary here.
• Filter out cultural clashes: ensure that your evaluation process deliberately tests for cultural fit. Dig into past behavior that aligns or clashes with the company’s core values. The latter tends to be less subjective (i.e. filter out vs. filter in). One important nuance from the A Method summary linked above: “While the A Players you bring in need to be attuned to your culture, the culture needs enough elasticity to embrace the A Players who can challenge you in areas where you need to be challenged. Seeing it all come together is truly a beautiful thing.” Culture fit tests don’t have to be elaborate. Discord, a unicorn that started in the social gaming space, observes how candidates treat the waitstaff and engage with the general public when they take them out to lunch or dinner. They want to see how a candidate interacts with people that aren’t important in the hiring process, as this aligns with the team culture they’ve built.
• Take reference checking seriously: reference checks can be even more valuable than interviews. Yet, most of the time this is treated purely as a check-the-box step. Do not outsource this step to a recruiter. References should provide critical insights, but you have to know how to get past the typical niceties. We outline some of the specific tips and questions to ask during reference checks here. Graham Duncan has an excellent essay on the topic in which he highlights:

“I now consider in-person references with someone who knows the candidate well 5x more valuable than an interview.” — Graham Duncan

• Seal the deal: once an offer is made, pull out all the stops. It’s not easy to get a candidate to this point! The A method has some good tips here as well.

Onboarding — the 3 pillars

• Culture: see the MVV onboarding section of this guidebook
• Admin: as a starting point, check out this new hire checklist by Betterteam
• Job training: this will vary by situation. Ask your managers to creating simple training kits for the individual contributor roles — these will save time and ensure consistency.

Further reading:

• Startup Hiring Guide (Workable)
• Top Pre-Employment Assessment Tools (see technical skills tests only)
• The A Method — Book Summary
• New hire checklist (Betterteam)

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