How to hire the best employees
There are many subtleties in hiring people, and many people are smarter than I often wrote about this. Therefore, I will not try to cover everything. But I will pass on some of the lessons I have learned, how to hire the best people for a startup. In this article I will touch upon two questions. Criterion: what to appreciate in the candidates. Process: how to lead the hiring process, and how to correct possible mistakes.
Many will say - hire smart. This is especially true for our industry. You will read: "hire the smartest, and the success is in your pocket." I think that intelligence itself is too overrated. I did not see statistics that would confirm the relationship between pure intelligence, measured in any way (achievements in education, intelligence tests, the ability to solve logical problems) and the success of the company.
Of course, you do not need stupid, and you would like to work with smart people. But let's think about it. The main rumors about the role of intelligence in the success of the company come from drop dead successful companies - Microsoft and Google. They are famous for hiring very smart people. In Microsoft, intelligence was measured as the ability to solve logical puzzles. I don’t know if they are doing it now, after hiring MBA-managers, but at one time they did it. A classic example of an interview question was: “Why are manholes round?”. The correct answer, of course: “Who cares? We're not doing sewage! ”. (After that, I had to turn on the chair, get up and leave).
Google uses achievements in education as a measure of intelligence. Academic degree? Cool. Master? Following! Bachelor? At the end of the lineup.
And this is contrary to many years of experience, which says that people with a scientific degree are the most difficult to motivate to produce commercially successful products.
')
On the one hand, there are no questions about the success of the two companies mentioned. Maybe they are doing the right thing. But maybe, maybe - their success is connected with many other factors. Huge markets, aggressiveness, at the right time in the right place, key distribution deals, and (at least in one case) an excellent product. ( Approx. Transl. - here I want to ask the author - but where did the great product come from? After all, people did it. )
Because I do not know the second Microsoft company, built on hiring well-solved riddles of people. And another Google, which would have grown on hiring doctors of science. So perhaps there are other criteria for hiring that are just as important or even more important. I think that's what.
The first is pushing . I define it as self-motivation. People going through the walls, who do not need to be asked to achieve the goals that are in front of them. Assertive people shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake - until they reach success.
Winston Churchill on the Dunkirk operation:
Here is what you need. Some have this property, some do not. Someone the presence of this property is associated with a sense of guilt, someone with pressure from the family. Someone - with a burning desire to achieve more. Someone - with leadership. It doesn't matter, just take them.
Assertiveness does not depend on education, grades in school and socioeconomic indicators. But aren't good grades a sign of assertiveness? Well, this is a sign that a person was motivated to succeed in certain tests with clear criteria. In conditions when parents of students pay huge money for the privilege of participation in these tests. Maybe it looks like motivation in the real world, but maybe not.
Assertiveness does not depend on previous career success. Assertive people do not stay long where they cannot succeed, and simply because they did not succeed in the wrong companies, it does not follow that they will not do it for you - if they are assertive. It seems to me that this feature can be seen in the eyes of the candidate, and in his story. According to history - I wonder what a person has achieved. Not where he participated or played a role, or hung around. I look at what you did - at work or outside work. Business that you started at school. Or a charitable organization. For programmers: an open source project in which you actively participated. Anything.
If there is nothing like that, if the candidate simply followed the rules all his life, came to the right lectures and exams, and took the right steps in his career without achieving something outstanding and noticeable about their common history - he is probably not assertive. And you do not change it. It is very hard to motivate people who do not motivate themselves. But to motivate those who motivate themselves is like the wind in the back of your organization.
I like to look for people for whom work is a chance to succeed. Therefore, I love to hire people who have not done this before, but who want to do it. I also pay attention to people with a difficult life situation - difficulties in the family, the need to look for work while still in school ... Those who competed with their competitors in knowledge and skills that were obviously superior to them.
And finally, beware of people from very successful companies. There was such a saying when IBM was a major player in the market: do not hire people who come directly from IBM, let them first fail somewhere else. And when they realize that the real world is different from IBM, they can be taken. A lot of people in very successful companies were simply passionate about the flow. Career success is great, but you need to check that candidates from successful companies really did what they say. And that they understand that the real world is different from working at IBM in the 80s, at Microsoft in the 90s, or at Google these days.
The second is curiosity . In the sense that a person loves what he does. Anyone who loves his business, treats him with exceptional curiosity and interest. They read about him, study, talk with others. Immersed in it. And work hard to stay in the flow. Not because they need, but because they like it. Those who are not interested - do not like their job. And you need people who love.
Take the programmers. Ask the programmer about the ten most interesting events in the world of Internet programming. REST, SOAP, Facebook's new API, whether applications on Ruby on Rails scale, how JavaScript is developing, widget APIs from Google, Amazon S3, etc. If a candidate likes his field of work, he will have an opinion on many of these topics. And this is what you need.
You can say - well, yesterday's students have the opportunity to spend a lot of time to understand all this and stay in the stream. But what about a person with a family who works all day and cannot read blogs at night and on weekends in order to stay on topic? Well, then the work that he does, does not give him that opportunity. Do you need a person who would allow himself to stop developing and stagnating for so long? After all, thanks to the Internet, the opportunity to be in the subject line and develop is practically free ...
In my experience, assertiveness and curiosity often go together. It is easier to stay assertive when you do what you like - and you automatically show curiosity.
Third and last: ethical . This is the hardest to check. Watch out for any bad marks in a candidate’s career, or any imperfect recommendations. Unethical people stay like this always and rarely retrain. Let the priests give people a second chance, not hiring managers.
One way to test an ethical candidate is to test his reaction to something he does not know. Choose a topic in which you are well-versed, and ask the candidate more and more complex questions until you go beyond their knowledge. After that, they will either say that they do not know - or they will try to deceive you. And if they try to deceive you at the interview, they will do the same, working for you.
A candidate who is confident in his abilities and at the same time ethical, such as you need, will say “I don't know”, because they are sure that the rest of their answers will demonstrate their knowledge, and that you will not respond positively to attempts cheating. Because they, too, would not have responded positively.
First, complete the process in writing . Write it down and distribute it to everyone. I can't stop wondering how many startups hire people at random - and as a result they get random people.
Secondly, conduct a simple test of opportunities. It's amazing how many people who come to the interview, do not cope with simple tests on those topics that are described in their resume. Programmers can be tested on simple algorithms - linked lists, binary search. Just in pseudocode — it doesn't matter if they remember the correct calls to the Java libraries. But it is important whether they can depict what they teach in the first year of the theory of algorithms on the board. A lot of people come to the vacancy of the programmer, unable to program. Someone who hesitates to answer questions like linked lists is like a breath of fresh air. For other areas, the principle is the same.
The seller may try to sell you your product, from the initial contact to the completion of the transaction.
Let the marketer draw a campaign plan for launching a new product on the board.
Third, plan and write down the questions for the interview in advance . I believe that the questions that are appropriate for the desired position, you know. If not, then you probably should not engage in hiring for this position. What I'm getting at: most people do not know how to conduct an interview with a candidate. And those who know will not necessarily be able to come up with good questions on the fly. Therefore, you need to make sure that the questions are invented and recorded in advance for each interview. I myself do it myself - I always enter the negotiation room with a list of questions, because I don’t want to hope for impromptu.
And it is very convenient, because there is an opportunity to improve questions over time when interviewing subsequent candidates for such a position. This is one of the best ways to improve the hiring procedure — to improve questions, improve criteria, and ways to measure whether a person falls under the criteria.
Fourth, pay attention to the little things . These trivia in an interview swell up to huge problems when a person works for you. The man is not smiling? Probably hard to work with him. Permanently interrupts? Egomaniac, chase him. He declares that he is well acquainted with your general acquaintance, and at the same time he has no idea what he is doing now? Liar. Long answer simple questions? Not organized, not disciplined. Is chatting incessantly? Horror.
Fifth, pay attention to the little things during the collection of recommendations (because you collect recommendations?). Most people downplay the flaws of former colleagues, which they talk about in recommendations. “He’s cool, smart, lyalyalyalya” ... “Sometimes he wasn’t too motivated” - a slug, you have to kick him on the bottom every morning. “Sometimes it was hard to get along” is a very unpleasant person. “He worked better with men than with women” - a sexist. "Sometimes I was sad" - prone to depression. Well, you understand.
Sixth, correct your mistakes quickly, but not too much. If you are meticulous about the hiring process, success will accompany you in 70% of cases. If you're lucky. And this is for ordinary employees. If you hire executive directors, success will be 50% of the time. That is life. If someone convinces you of the opposite - he is a bad recruiter, and he does not know about it.
Most startups do not rush to correct their mistakes in hiring - that is, to dismiss those who have failed.
First, understand that even if the dismissal will be very unpleasant, after it you will feel much better than you can imagine.
Secondly, the backbone of your team will be glad that you do it - they knew that the person is not coping, they want to work better with their colleagues, so they will approve your action to maintain a high average level in the company.
I wrote “not too fast,” because the backbone of your team is watching how you fire people, and if you hurry, you will look capricious and capricious. But believe me, most startup managers usually have reverse problems.
Thirdly, you provide the service to be dismissed. You exempt them from a role in which they do not succeed, and give the opportunity to find a better role in another company where they may well succeed. And if they can't, then they shouldn't have hired them. There is a plus in our industry - many jobs constantly appear, so you don’t throw a person out on the street. Therefore, do not worry that you doom his family to beggary. You do not play such an important role in his life.
I can make a list of people who were laid off by me who have succeeded in other companies. This, however, does not mean that they communicate with me after that.
And, of course, appreciate those wonderful colleagues and workers who work in your team. In view of the above, they are special people.
Criteria
Many will say - hire smart. This is especially true for our industry. You will read: "hire the smartest, and the success is in your pocket." I think that intelligence itself is too overrated. I did not see statistics that would confirm the relationship between pure intelligence, measured in any way (achievements in education, intelligence tests, the ability to solve logical problems) and the success of the company.
Of course, you do not need stupid, and you would like to work with smart people. But let's think about it. The main rumors about the role of intelligence in the success of the company come from drop dead successful companies - Microsoft and Google. They are famous for hiring very smart people. In Microsoft, intelligence was measured as the ability to solve logical puzzles. I don’t know if they are doing it now, after hiring MBA-managers, but at one time they did it. A classic example of an interview question was: “Why are manholes round?”. The correct answer, of course: “Who cares? We're not doing sewage! ”. (After that, I had to turn on the chair, get up and leave).
Google uses achievements in education as a measure of intelligence. Academic degree? Cool. Master? Following! Bachelor? At the end of the lineup.
And this is contrary to many years of experience, which says that people with a scientific degree are the most difficult to motivate to produce commercially successful products.
')
On the one hand, there are no questions about the success of the two companies mentioned. Maybe they are doing the right thing. But maybe, maybe - their success is connected with many other factors. Huge markets, aggressiveness, at the right time in the right place, key distribution deals, and (at least in one case) an excellent product. ( Approx. Transl. - here I want to ask the author - but where did the great product come from? After all, people did it. )
Because I do not know the second Microsoft company, built on hiring well-solved riddles of people. And another Google, which would have grown on hiring doctors of science. So perhaps there are other criteria for hiring that are just as important or even more important. I think that's what.
The first is pushing . I define it as self-motivation. People going through the walls, who do not need to be asked to achieve the goals that are in front of them. Assertive people shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake - until they reach success.
Winston Churchill on the Dunkirk operation:
Despite the setbacks, we will not surrender and conquer. We will reach the end, we will fight in France, we will fight on the seas and oceans, we will fight with increasing confidence and growing force in the air, we will fight at the landing points, we will fight on the fields and on the streets, we will fight on the hills, we will never give up. And even if I don’t believe anything for a minute, our island or its significant part will be captured and people will die of hunger, our overseas empire, armed and guarded by the English fleet, will continue to fight.
Here is what you need. Some have this property, some do not. Someone the presence of this property is associated with a sense of guilt, someone with pressure from the family. Someone - with a burning desire to achieve more. Someone - with leadership. It doesn't matter, just take them.
Assertiveness does not depend on education, grades in school and socioeconomic indicators. But aren't good grades a sign of assertiveness? Well, this is a sign that a person was motivated to succeed in certain tests with clear criteria. In conditions when parents of students pay huge money for the privilege of participation in these tests. Maybe it looks like motivation in the real world, but maybe not.
Assertiveness does not depend on previous career success. Assertive people do not stay long where they cannot succeed, and simply because they did not succeed in the wrong companies, it does not follow that they will not do it for you - if they are assertive. It seems to me that this feature can be seen in the eyes of the candidate, and in his story. According to history - I wonder what a person has achieved. Not where he participated or played a role, or hung around. I look at what you did - at work or outside work. Business that you started at school. Or a charitable organization. For programmers: an open source project in which you actively participated. Anything.
If there is nothing like that, if the candidate simply followed the rules all his life, came to the right lectures and exams, and took the right steps in his career without achieving something outstanding and noticeable about their common history - he is probably not assertive. And you do not change it. It is very hard to motivate people who do not motivate themselves. But to motivate those who motivate themselves is like the wind in the back of your organization.
I like to look for people for whom work is a chance to succeed. Therefore, I love to hire people who have not done this before, but who want to do it. I also pay attention to people with a difficult life situation - difficulties in the family, the need to look for work while still in school ... Those who competed with their competitors in knowledge and skills that were obviously superior to them.
And finally, beware of people from very successful companies. There was such a saying when IBM was a major player in the market: do not hire people who come directly from IBM, let them first fail somewhere else. And when they realize that the real world is different from IBM, they can be taken. A lot of people in very successful companies were simply passionate about the flow. Career success is great, but you need to check that candidates from successful companies really did what they say. And that they understand that the real world is different from working at IBM in the 80s, at Microsoft in the 90s, or at Google these days.
The second is curiosity . In the sense that a person loves what he does. Anyone who loves his business, treats him with exceptional curiosity and interest. They read about him, study, talk with others. Immersed in it. And work hard to stay in the flow. Not because they need, but because they like it. Those who are not interested - do not like their job. And you need people who love.
Take the programmers. Ask the programmer about the ten most interesting events in the world of Internet programming. REST, SOAP, Facebook's new API, whether applications on Ruby on Rails scale, how JavaScript is developing, widget APIs from Google, Amazon S3, etc. If a candidate likes his field of work, he will have an opinion on many of these topics. And this is what you need.
You can say - well, yesterday's students have the opportunity to spend a lot of time to understand all this and stay in the stream. But what about a person with a family who works all day and cannot read blogs at night and on weekends in order to stay on topic? Well, then the work that he does, does not give him that opportunity. Do you need a person who would allow himself to stop developing and stagnating for so long? After all, thanks to the Internet, the opportunity to be in the subject line and develop is practically free ...
In my experience, assertiveness and curiosity often go together. It is easier to stay assertive when you do what you like - and you automatically show curiosity.
Third and last: ethical . This is the hardest to check. Watch out for any bad marks in a candidate’s career, or any imperfect recommendations. Unethical people stay like this always and rarely retrain. Let the priests give people a second chance, not hiring managers.
One way to test an ethical candidate is to test his reaction to something he does not know. Choose a topic in which you are well-versed, and ask the candidate more and more complex questions until you go beyond their knowledge. After that, they will either say that they do not know - or they will try to deceive you. And if they try to deceive you at the interview, they will do the same, working for you.
A candidate who is confident in his abilities and at the same time ethical, such as you need, will say “I don't know”, because they are sure that the rest of their answers will demonstrate their knowledge, and that you will not respond positively to attempts cheating. Because they, too, would not have responded positively.
Recruitment process
First, complete the process in writing . Write it down and distribute it to everyone. I can't stop wondering how many startups hire people at random - and as a result they get random people.
Secondly, conduct a simple test of opportunities. It's amazing how many people who come to the interview, do not cope with simple tests on those topics that are described in their resume. Programmers can be tested on simple algorithms - linked lists, binary search. Just in pseudocode — it doesn't matter if they remember the correct calls to the Java libraries. But it is important whether they can depict what they teach in the first year of the theory of algorithms on the board. A lot of people come to the vacancy of the programmer, unable to program. Someone who hesitates to answer questions like linked lists is like a breath of fresh air. For other areas, the principle is the same.
The seller may try to sell you your product, from the initial contact to the completion of the transaction.
Let the marketer draw a campaign plan for launching a new product on the board.
Third, plan and write down the questions for the interview in advance . I believe that the questions that are appropriate for the desired position, you know. If not, then you probably should not engage in hiring for this position. What I'm getting at: most people do not know how to conduct an interview with a candidate. And those who know will not necessarily be able to come up with good questions on the fly. Therefore, you need to make sure that the questions are invented and recorded in advance for each interview. I myself do it myself - I always enter the negotiation room with a list of questions, because I don’t want to hope for impromptu.
And it is very convenient, because there is an opportunity to improve questions over time when interviewing subsequent candidates for such a position. This is one of the best ways to improve the hiring procedure — to improve questions, improve criteria, and ways to measure whether a person falls under the criteria.
Fourth, pay attention to the little things . These trivia in an interview swell up to huge problems when a person works for you. The man is not smiling? Probably hard to work with him. Permanently interrupts? Egomaniac, chase him. He declares that he is well acquainted with your general acquaintance, and at the same time he has no idea what he is doing now? Liar. Long answer simple questions? Not organized, not disciplined. Is chatting incessantly? Horror.
Fifth, pay attention to the little things during the collection of recommendations (because you collect recommendations?). Most people downplay the flaws of former colleagues, which they talk about in recommendations. “He’s cool, smart, lyalyalyalya” ... “Sometimes he wasn’t too motivated” - a slug, you have to kick him on the bottom every morning. “Sometimes it was hard to get along” is a very unpleasant person. “He worked better with men than with women” - a sexist. "Sometimes I was sad" - prone to depression. Well, you understand.
Sixth, correct your mistakes quickly, but not too much. If you are meticulous about the hiring process, success will accompany you in 70% of cases. If you're lucky. And this is for ordinary employees. If you hire executive directors, success will be 50% of the time. That is life. If someone convinces you of the opposite - he is a bad recruiter, and he does not know about it.
Most startups do not rush to correct their mistakes in hiring - that is, to dismiss those who have failed.
First, understand that even if the dismissal will be very unpleasant, after it you will feel much better than you can imagine.
Secondly, the backbone of your team will be glad that you do it - they knew that the person is not coping, they want to work better with their colleagues, so they will approve your action to maintain a high average level in the company.
I wrote “not too fast,” because the backbone of your team is watching how you fire people, and if you hurry, you will look capricious and capricious. But believe me, most startup managers usually have reverse problems.
Thirdly, you provide the service to be dismissed. You exempt them from a role in which they do not succeed, and give the opportunity to find a better role in another company where they may well succeed. And if they can't, then they shouldn't have hired them. There is a plus in our industry - many jobs constantly appear, so you don’t throw a person out on the street. Therefore, do not worry that you doom his family to beggary. You do not play such an important role in his life.
I can make a list of people who were laid off by me who have succeeded in other companies. This, however, does not mean that they communicate with me after that.
And, of course, appreciate those wonderful colleagues and workers who work in your team. In view of the above, they are special people.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/238549/
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