Recruiting

Anyone that has worked at a fast growing early stage startup will tell you that recruiting is the hardest and possibly most important part of growing. This has been my experience so far.

Hiring great talent raises the bar and amplifies your ability to grow by magnitudes you didn’t expect. Hiring bad fits has the opposite effect and can set you back worse than you thought.

I haven’t been actively hiring for the last 6 months since I’ve handed off my previous team. I’ve been interviewing and helping out other departments, but I haven’t served as hiring manager in quite a bit.

I’m now starting the recruiting process again for my new team and admittedly I’m a bit rusty. I’ve had to pump the brakes a bit and do a quick reset as I go through candidates and set-up an interview process.

I learned early on that you need to come up with a set process in order to be as objective as possible on candidates. Humans are naturally emotional and we like/dislike people for various reasons. Some of these reasons may be warranted and some may be a blindspot.

Following a process is much more difficult and takes more time than going with your gut. But everything is worth it when you hire that all-star candidate.