The Best Advice on Finding, Closing, and Growing Incredible Startup Talent

From working with and studying 300+ startups growing their teams beyond the initial founders and scaling their hiring through hypergrowth, I have put together a crowdsourced set of tips for finding, closing, and growing incredible startup talent.

Finding candidates

Inbound top of funnel

Many founders mistakenly believe that the candidate experience begins with the first interview. In reality, it begins with the job posting and any other interactions with the site and virtual brand of the firm. Make sure to write thoughtful, tailored job postings to attract the right candidates and get them excited about the role and company from the very beginning.

Be mindful of using inclusive language in job postings (Textio helps companies craft the perfect message for recruitment marketing)

Take advantage of funding announcements and other press opportunities to share job postings. Work with the writers and editors of your funding announcement articles to really sell your company not just to customers and future investors but also candidates and include a mention that you are hiring in these features.

Track how candidates came across the job posting and be strategic around creating a high caliber and democratized top-of-funnel. Include a question with a drop down menu to understand how candidates are finding out about your company and opportunities and ensure that you are going through the best and most diverse channels to recruit applicants.

Outbound top of funnel

The first ~10 hires of a team are largely found through personal or other specialized networks, rather than generic job boards. For example, in hiring for a gaming developer evangelist, perhaps look toward popular gaming forums. Determine where the ideal candidate would be most active and take time to understand your target audience.

Some cross-sector connections may be less obvious. For example, in hiring for a fintech team, perhaps look toward people with experience in healthcare given the large overlap in regulatory hurdles.

Ask your investors for recruiting help in your investor updates.

Give kudos to investors who add value in this way or others. Use the kudos section of your investor update (a periodic email update sent by founders to their investors to share the latest business metrics/progress) as a way to incentivize investor help.

Have a rather specific (but not overly narrow or limiting) idea of an ideal candidate, including sample dream profiles or score card to better filter through top-of-funnel candidates and make more strategic and disciplined in-network asks.

Ultimately, the founder tells the company’s story best. Craft personalized, thoughtful emails (rather than generic InMails) and focus on quality over quantity in reaching out to candidates.

Interviewing and evaluating candidates

Interviews

Set expectations clearly ahead of in person interviews. In this way, you can further democratize opportunity access as well.

This is especially crucial for women and underrepresented minorities who may not be connected to people who can share industry secrets on what to expect in the application process. Make it clear what will happen and demystify next steps.

Remember that the interview is always 2-sided. It is a way for you to better get to know the candidate and a way for the candidate to better get to know your firm. Be mindful of the implications of various actions. Hold the candidate to high standards but also ensure that your team provides a similar level of transparency, responsiveness, and reliable follow-through.

In some cases, candidates may not be aware that a potential position (outside of one they initially applied for) may be aligned with their strengths, interests, and goals. Through understanding the skills a candidate hopes to develop, you can better understand the role they may be most interested in, even if it is distinct from the one for which they first applied.

See experience as just one data point. Relevant experience and years of experience may get the candidate an interview, but during the interview process, aim to emphasize and pay special attention to crucial soft skills, such as EQ, responsiveness, communication ability, and attitude.

Ask questions specifically geared to understanding these traits, such as questions around how the candidate went above and beyond in their prior role or how they would improve their previous company.

Hold your team to KPIs in crafting a superior candidate experience. Even if you do not accept someone, having provided a great candidate experience will pay dividends in building goodwill with them and their network.

Assignments

In case study assignments and interviews, provide enough room for candidates to show their creativity. Have a baseline requirement but also empower, encourage, and take note of candidates going above and beyond in finding creative ways to add value toward the broader goal of the assignment.

Be reasonable in assignment expectations and compensate candidates for value-added work when needed. Test candidate’s diligence but do not use or exploit candidates as a major source of free labor. Doing so will negatively affect your brand for future hires.

Reference Checking

When back-channeling and conducting reference checks on candidates, avoid overweighting any one person’s opinion and make sure to keep an open mind, gathering as many data points as possible to find the full truth.

In this process, start with more softball questions and phrase questions strategically to make people feel more comfortable about sharing details. For example, ask, “people have said X about this candidate — have you had similar or different experiences?” In this way, the question is targeted while taking the burden of reveal off the reference.

Ask open ended questions as well, particularly toward the end of the conversation (“any final thoughts?”), for references to share useful details you may have neglected to explicitly request.

Engaging and growing talent

Compensation

Provide clarity around compensation, not only in the number itself but in the data driven justification. Take the time to understand industry standards and candidate backgrounds and avoid undercompensating someone simply because you failed to understand the role and their value add.

Have a standardized system and clear, objective guide line around all forms of compensation, including and especially equity. Provide transparency and explanation to employees around their complete package (Carta provides a great example in their Better Job Offer Letter Template).

Get to know the financial goals of each candidate. For example, they may be recent graduates with student loan repayments. Perhaps their options exercise timing can be adjusted for more near term student debt relief.

Closing

Ultimately, choosing a job is an emotional decision rather than a purely rational one. Candidates frequently choose the company where they had the greatest sense of community, positive feeling, and team alignment. Be mindful of creating this atmosphere through each touchpoint with the candidate. For example, for more senior level hires, be open to involving their spouse in discussions, particularly around compensation and relocation. Give a thoughtful, personalized gift showing you got to know the candidate throughout the interview process.

Use your VCs or other high profile, networked people you know to close candidates, especially more senior candidates. Third person stories and praise of your company, especially linked to specific examples and stories can be meaningful and powerful for candidates.

Onboarding

Do not underestimate the importance of crafting a superior onboarding experience. The first 30 days of an employee’s experience on a job has major implications for their long term retention.

Include bios of each team member in an accessible repository for everyone to get to know each other outside of working contexts.

Assign each new employee a “sherpa” to guide them around their first few days: showing them how to get in and out of the building, where the bathroom is, where the kitchen is, etc. New employees can feel free to ask questions they may feel are dumb and can have an automatic friend to eat with at lunch.

Spread out the more monotonous parts of onboarding (i.e. paperwork) over the course of a few days to provide a more balanced first few weeks.

Prepopulate new team members’ calendars with one on one meetings for them to get to know core team members, including cross-functional team members. For example, ensure that new engineers take time to sit with customer support to better understand customer needs to create better products.

Show each team member the typical path of promotion, as measured and benchmarked by skills gained and performance achieved. This provides clarity to all team members around promotion expectations and a skills and performance based goal map for them to add strategic value.