Hiring the simple way

Having seen thousands of resumes and interviewed hundred of candidates during my career in companies such Apple among others, I thought that I’d share my experiences here in case they help other fellow founders with their interviews.

Hiring is never a simple task. In fact is really difficult and you shouldn’t compromise on it, specially in early stage startups.
Your first employees, will be the founders of your company culture so it’s extremely important that you get the right combination of skills and behaviours in every role.

How do you achieve that?
Samples of work along with psychometric tests and structured interviews are the best predictors of success when it comes to predict the future at hiring. I personally don’t use (nor recommend) psychometric tests as they may be expensive for small companies and some research says that are biased towards certain demographics. So a good combination of work samples and interviews are your allies.

For technical and design roles, ask candidates to complete a small sample of work that allows you to evaluate the quality of their craft and if it meets the standards of your company. Think of a project that the candidate would be working on, and assign them one or two tasks to see how do they do. Give them a deadline and if they don’t come back before that time or the quality of what you receive isn’t good enough, thank them for their time and move on to the next candidate. You’re measuring here quality of work and ability to meet deadlines.

For interviewing, I strongly recommend to prepare well in advance. Identify the things that are important for you as a company (teamwork, ability to work independently, etc) and think (or google) some questions that would help you to understand if the candidate is a good fit or not. These questions should always be behavioural (Describe a situation where you had to complete a project without any direction and how you handled it) or situational (Tell me about a situation where you exceded your sales targets and how did you achieve it).
What you want to measure here is the reasoning behind the answers. What’s the train of thought behind the answers that led this person resolve the situation that way instead of a different way. Don’t accept the first answer, keep following up and digging until you see how this person thinks and reacts under a stressful situation such an interview (ps. don’t be a jerk).
If possible, include in the interview people who will report to this role (if any) and colleagues.

This combination of samples of work + structured interviews will dramatically increase your chances of hiring good performers and avoid bringing in somebody that could poison your culture.

In case of doubt, keep searching and don’t settle for a mediocre candidate for the sake of speed.

Hope it helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have! :)

Juan
Maker @Mentory