A founder (or execs) guide to hiring really really well
A founder (or execs) guide to hiring really really well
A framework for building a team of S-tier employees
You probably suck at hiring, and that’s okay. Most people suck at hiring. It’s a wishy-washy process that most organizations don’t actually take that seriously.
But it matters. A lot.
As your company scales from 10 humans to 100+ humans, you get to experience this really distinct sensation of “I don’t actually DO anything anymore”, and your world shifts to “the output of your team” is now YOUR output.
Designer makes a crappy design? That’s your design.
Sales rep tells a customer something factually incorrect? That’s coming out of your mouth.
Finance sets up your FP&A wrong? That’s your forecast.
Chances are you’ve probably already heard this message repeated 1,000 times. Hiring is important. Hiring is important. But honestly, I’ve read all the books, I talked to all of the executive coaches, nobody ever really pointed me at a resource that I found super useful.
So here’s my “ultimate guide” to hiring a team of S-Tier employees.
Core concepts:
The right butt for the right seat
Vetting the role correctly
Speed is half the game
Selling on more than compensation
Negotiating compensation
Closing candidates
Selling through the close
The right butt for the right seat
For the love of the tech gods & all things holy, it is not the candidates responsibility to understand what problems you are trying to solve. Before you throw up that JD and start interviewing people, do your absolute best to understand what problem you are trying to solve.
And you ARE trying to solve a problem. Not just hire a role.
Maybe you’re making your first sales hire. You’re not trying to “hire a sales rep” you’re trying to solve a problem.
For example:
I have a lot of inbound leads, and I need someone to close these leads and turn them into paying customers.
I don’t have any inbound leads, and need someone who can go hunt down business.
I already have 2 sales reps, and I need to give them real guidance, feedback, and to hire a few more.
I don’t know what systems to use, Hubspot, Salesforce, what’s the right phone vendor? How do I record my calls? etc.
These are all very different problems to solve (and doesn’t take into account any requirement for technical skills or specific industry knowledge). A high preforming Account Exec, might have zero interest in prospecting for new business, and no idea how to manage and hire a team.
The #1 hiring mistake I see when talking to founders is that they are hiring for a role without a strong understanding of the problem they actually want solved & the work that needs to be done.
Even for leadership roles where there is a strong requirement to “manage up” and to define your own roadmap, make sure it’s really clear what problem you want solved.
Build the product. Drive revenue growth. Invest money to create a high ROI.
The clearer this is up front, the more likely you are to make the right hire.
Vetting the role correctly
Vetting kind of sits on a spectrum between “having a couple calls & does the team like you” to having a “12 step interview process with 2 take homes & a work trial”.
Here’s a couple of key concepts to help you vet better.
First - make sure you know what great looks like. If you’re not hiring for a role that you are a technical expert in, then make sure first you talk to some people who are just absolutely killing it in that role already.
It is hard enough already to vet someone for something you know extremely well, it becomes 10x harder when you’re trying to vet someone for a role outside of your own domain.
Second - The #1 indicator of future performance, is past performance.
If they are a software engineer, did they build big hard technical stuff? Did they ship a lot of things quickly? Do other engineers admire and look up to them?
If they are a sales rep, were they consistently the top performer on their team? Can they talk about their own product extremely well?
Even outside of direct professional experience, I’ve seen so much success with people who have a history of just absolutely kicking butt. Chess champions, professional athletes, marathon runners - people who have proven they can work hard, do hard things, and win.
The tricky bit here is making sure you understand who was actually responsible for any work done or success created.
Who is the magician, and who is the magicians assistant?
Dive into the details to try and separate these, ask specific questions, grill their references on exact contributions to wins.
Third - You need to see their actual work before they are truly on the team.
There’s not a magic answer to this, but all of the vetting in the world can’t tell you what’s going to happen when rubber hits the road and you actually begin to see their real work.
Different solutions that address this:
A sales rep giving a demo of YOUR product
A one week work trial for a software engineer
A designer making a landing page
Anything that you can do to get them to give a sample of “real work” can be so incredibly impactful because that’s as close as you’re going to get to the truth of their performance.
Now - there’s a risk/reward trade off here. The more work you give them, the slower and heavier your hiring process becomes, and S-Tier talent will have 5 other offers who may not be asking for such a heavy process.
The way you want to handle this is different depending on the roles - but what I’ve found works best is to keep a VERY light work sample up front (a 2-5 hour project max), and to do my best at having a strict 30/60/90 process.
The better you can become at filtering out people who aren’t preforming with a 30/60/90, the less risk there is with moving fast and making an offer without seeing an extensive amount of work.
Fourth - don’t waste time vetting poorly.
This can happen in a lot of different ways. Talking to multiple team members who all ask the same question. Giving take homes that don’t actually provide a real world sample of what their work is going to be like. Having too many people in the process.
Don’t have a 12 step vetting process with two take homes and then the CEO makes a decision at the end of the day based on vibes.
Vet what matters, do it quickly, move fast.
Speed is half the game
The faster you move, the greater your risk, but you literally won’t close S-Tier candidates if you move slowly. By the time you set up an initial call they will already have made a decision.
Taking this to the extreme, the perfect hiring process moves quickly enough that the candidate feels like you actually DID vet them (people want to feel tested), but that you fell for them SO HARD that you just had to make them an offer asap.
Time kills all deals, and if your process is too long you will filter out your best candidates.
ONE caveat with this, is that you want to be the last person they talk to before they accept their offer.
Candidates bias extremely heavy to whoever it is they talked to last. After you make an offer if you don’t get a “yes” on the spot, make sure you understand who else they are talking to, when they are talking to them, and then follow up with the candidate after that conversation.
Selling on more than compensation
So many people truly truly drop the ball here & think that all people care about is money, and it’s simply not true. The more that you fail here, the more you are going to have to pay to attract talent, and even all the money in the world wont be enough for S-Tier talent.
People care about so much more than money.
Mission - feeling like they are doing something important. Going to mars, saving lives, helping people.
Doing amazing work - being able to do cool things, work on projects they wouldn’t have the chance to anywhere else.
Team - people want to work with amazing people. Nothing is sadder than a company where people are paid at the top 90th percentile but they all hate each other.
If you’re able to craft a story where you are executing against a giant exciting mission, doing work that can only be done at YOUR company, with a team of people that are ultra talented and super nice - you almost don’t even have to pay them.
Seriously.
I can’t tell you the number of people who have turned down job offers making 2x-10x more to come work with us, because of things that had literally nothing to do with their monetary compensation.
Not every company has a perfect story here, but the better your “non salary” narrative is the stronger candidates you will be able to attract and the less you’ll need to pay them to join.
And if you completely drop the ball here, you’re going to be left paying the absolute max because there’s no other reason to join.
Negotiating Compensation
Almost always, I try to do my absolute best to throw out the number first. This is referred to as anchoring the negotiation.
There’s a lot of advice out there along the lines of “haha, they said they’ll take $80k even though I was willing to pay $100k!”
But here’s the thing. Your absolute best candidates are probably making more than $100k. The person that’s willing to join for way less than what you’re willing to pay them, that’s not the top 10% of the candidate pool.
Anchoring is psychologically really really powerful.
“I know you’re probably being paid way more than this right now, but the pay range for this role starts at $80k, how far off are we from where you need to be?”
I usually only do this if I think the candidate is currently making way more than what our salary band is too. It is way better to start lower and then give some, then for the candidate to tell you something way higher and needing to talk them down.
A really important caveat here … anchoring can be important when closing extremely highly paid employees.
Sometimes - often with more junior roles, it can be in your favor to offer them something wildly over what they are currently making.
You can negotiate to get someone to take a way smaller package with your company … you can also negotiate to create a raving life-long die-hard cult follower.
Give someone who was making $60k, a salary of $100k, and they will follow you to the ends of the earth.
New roles can be a chance to build a team that will worship you. They can be a chance to literally change someone’s life. They are a tool to motivate.
You’re not just negotiating to get them to say yes. You’re negotiating to get them to perform. Don’t forget that there’s more value for you to capture within a salary negotiation than them simply signing on the dotted line.
Final note on this - make sure to begin this process as early as possible. You don’t need to present them the offer at the first call, but make sure you go over salary ranges to see if they make sense for both parties.
Closing candidates
When you make a candidate an offer, this is a MOMENT. It’s time to make this a BIG DEAL.
At Rupa we have offer parties, where everyone who was involved in the process hops on a call. There’s music playing. We have a fun slide congratulating the candidate. We go around in a circle where each person says something they liked about the candidate and why we are excited to work with them.
The “yes” is assumed. “We are so excited to work with you!!”
Then we kick everyone off the call and the hiring manager goes over compensation and presents the exact offer.
Afterwards, everyone texts/emails the candidate telling them how excited we are.
This is the moment their life changes. They are about to embark on a new adventure. They are about to leave the gravitational force of their current job, or that their job search process has ended.
It is a important moment in their lives. Make it special.
Don’t make offers async over email or text, don’t do it half hazardly. It is such a scary scary thing to start a new job. They are going to be thinking to themselves “do these people really even want me?”
Humans are extremely risk adverse creatures. They need to feel confident in this new job. That their risk is going to pay off.
If they get one offer carelessly given over email or text, and another one where the whole team shows up and has a party - 9 times out of 10, the candidate is going with the company that REALLY wants them.
They’ll feel the energy, they’ll feel the excitement, they’ll be pulled by the momentum of the process.
Selling through the close
You have not successfully closed your candidate until they actually have started their job.
Honestly - you haven’t truly closed the candidate until the successful completion of 90 days of work.
I can’t tell you how many candidates I’ve stolen who gave someone else a verbal yes, or who even had a signed offer letter. Or how many of my own employees that got another offer (often much higher) a month or two into the job.
It’s not over until it’s actually over, and they are fully onboard, committed, and have proven that they are going to be successful.
After you get a verbal yes, make sure the contract gets signed asap
Send out the contract as soon as you make the verbal offer
Have the team follow up with their excitement
For senior leadership have the board/VCs send a text or email
Keep messaging the candidate every other day or so until they start, keep the momentum
AFTER they start, you still have to sell the candidate, make sure they meet people, make sure they are excited about their work, now is the time where you build trust & begin to deliver on YOUR promises
The failure rate from “verbal yes” to “successful 90 days” is honestly on average fairly high, probably 30% at best. You can help reduce this by making sure that you never stop closing until “the money is in the bank”.
Combine all of these concepts (or at least steal the parts you find useful) and you’ll be able to hire way stronger employees, have a much more cash efficient business, and truly build a team that A players want to work on. 🔥
I hope you found something here useful! If you want to keep reading make sure to check out the Channels of Growth book on Amazon for a Growth Marketing Framework for Dominating Channel & Building Better Products! 🚀