My key takeaways from Startup Recruiting Bootcamp — week #1
Last week was the #1 week of Startup Recruiting Bootcamp that I am attending this month. And I must say — I am super excited about that!
Wait, Startup Recruiting what? Startup Recruiting Bootcamp is an educational program for startup builders to learn world-class hiring — from top industry experts and a community of peers. You might expect this program to be dedicated to recruiters only. Quite the opposite is true. Recruiters and talent leaders are part of the program, for sure. Still, there are also founders willing to level up their hiring game in my working group. And there are also hiring managers who realize how critical role they are playing in the hiring process and are eager to get better in this crucial business skill.
Why did I decide to join Bootcamp? 🤔
I’ve decided to attend the Bootcamp mainly because I felt I needed:
- A new impulse and inspiration to my recruiting thinking. And Jennifer Kim, who is the founder and leader of this unique Bootcamp is one of the best if not the best at anything People&Talent related, especially in the startup environment out there
- (To be honest) Validation for some of my recruiting concepts and revoking some of the concepts of mine that might be already outdated
- And last but not least — being the only people&talent person in the early stage of a startup can be a pretty lonely job, and having a community of other folks passionate about recruiting sounded like a fantastic opportunity for me
I decided to write down a summary of my notes and learnings after the end of every week. I believe it might be a great way to recap every week for me and an excellent way to share at least some of the most exciting insights with you guys. Win-win! Let’s do it.
👑 Context is the king!
You folks who know me personally might not be surprised — I am a big context lover — understanding the why behind things, decisions, situations is what I enjoy and need. And so, for example, Netflix’s principle ‘Lead with Context, not Control’ resonates so much with me!
Anyway, Jen started the first core lecture by setting up the context for the current situation in the talent market. Where we are, what are the trends, and why it often feels like recruiting is broken… The first thing that would be fair to face — hiring is hard! And yet it is quite often underestimated in organizations. I often feel like that many people out there are telling how much people are important for them, but then it is simply not aligned with how they act when hiring. It is hard, and many people still don’t realize how challenging it is and how much time they will have to dedicate to it to make it right.
❓So why is recruiting broken (at startups)?
Evaluating and selling should be done simultaneously throughout the hiring process
Most startups (and not only startups) think that the first stage when you get a candidate into the process is mainly about evaluating. The next step — extending the offer — is about selling. These activities should be done both at the same time.
Tangible benefits are standard, focus on intangible benefits 🙌
The times when it was enough for Google to show cool offices with slides and candidates were mainly attracted by other ‘tangible’ benefits (salary, benefits, cool office, title) are gone. With all the millennials and Gen Z just entering the market, candidates are increasingly looking for ‘intangible benefits’ such as impact, mission, growth, and (culture/value) fit to the company. The power dynamic in the relationship candidate <> company changed similarly as it has changed in the relationship customer <> consumer due to the internet and general access to information.
One magical pill to solve it all? 💊
Jen mentioned that when working with startups, she is often asked: ‘Hey, so what are the best tips&tricks for recruiting?’ Many founders, hiring managers, and even recruiters are still looking for something like a magic diet pill to solve all their hiring-related problems. There is no magic pill. There is no way to make it easy and right at the same time. It needs an investment of money and time from the people & talent team, hiring managers, interviewers, and founders in the early stages, which means basically everyone in the company.
YOU are NOT Google either Facebook ❌
It is tempting to try implementing hiring strategies that FANG are following. But it is the same as if you would try to repair an airplane with the knowledge of how to fix a bicycle — both airplane and bike are ‘transport machines,’ but they are just entirely different. Lack of playbooks, best practices, and the fact that every startup is unique makes it even harder. And copy-pasting what FANG does is a complete miss in startups in most of the cases — you are living in a completely different context!
You can check some of the thoughts Jen presented in this lecture, which are accessible in this video on the Bootcamp website! 🤩 (recorded back in 2018, since then the context changed even more, but definitely still worth watching it!)
🕺🏾💃🏼 What Diversity, Equity & Inclusion means not only to your party?
A big topic in recent years and definitely many more years to come!
This topic is still hard to crack for me, so I was so grateful for the opportunity to learn more about it from industry experts. I perceive the context of DE&I activities to be very much influenced by specific regions. For example, in Prague, generally, in Central Europe, where I am based, the context might be different than in Silicon Valley. However, the tactics for improving it in the company might be very similar.
However, one thing stood out for me. At the Bootcamp, there are mainly people from US-based companies. For me, the US and especially the tech bubble in the US is much further in the thinking about the DE&I topic. Although quite a lot of participants of the Bootcamp vulnerably shared how much it is a challenging topic for them as well. My key takeaway from this is rather a feeling than a specific formula or framework. So here we go — feeling bad that DE&I is not perfect in your company does not help. It is a challenge for all companies out there with specific regional challenges. However, the effort and the commitment to get better in this area is something that counts and matters a lot!
Although I would like to remember one specific learning and that is the analogy that Jen used to help us navigate the nuances between the meaning (or definitions if you want) of diversity, equity, and inclusion by looking at these terms through the lense of having a party:
- Diversity = being invited to the party 🤗
- Inclusion = being asked to dance 💃
- Equity = the ability to add songs to the party playlist 🎶 OR making sure your party is held in an accessible location so people with mobility issues can come 🦽
Planning, planning, planning — that always comes first!
And also this ☝️ is the order suggested by Jen Kim in which we all should be doing our hiring activities. That being said, firstly, proper planning, then attracting, then evaluating, and finally closing. I’ve often seen companies, specific hiring managers, or recruiters going over the planning and attracting stages way too quickly and jumping almost right to evaluating stage. So many people might think — but evaluating is a core job to be done when hiring people, right? I can hear it: ‘We need to pick the best! And so we need to simply ‘get inspiration’ from the job description in another company (read this as copy-paste the job description from another company 🙃), flood all the job boards out there with this JD, and then MAINLY come up with the best interview questions to pick the amazing new team member!’
Actually, this approach is so common yet can not be farther from what I believe is the right approach. At least if you mean it seriously with hiring the right people for your organization, or basically with people and how much you care about them in general in your organization.
Proper planning means approaching hiring as a core business activity. For example, would you do a product without at least some product roadmap? I don’t think so.
One great tip that Jen mentioned and that I've already shared internally at AhoyConnect as I would like to implement it once it is possible is hiring in cohorts! Imagine you found your mythical product-market fit, you got fundraising for further scaling, and you know you will be hiring many new folks to the team. In such a situation, create the plan. And as you will be creating one, try to squeeze hiring of at least some of the roles together. What I mean by this is that if you know you will be hiring three frontend engineers in the next nine months rather than hiring one frontend engineer every three months and constantly closing and re-opening the role, again and again, try to hire all 3 of them together. Why? It is better operation-wise, you can focus on boosting the pipeline in a specific time-frame, it will be much easier in terms of onboarding all these three engineers at the same time, their engagement and overall satisfaction might tend to be much higher as they will be in the ‘new hire’ role together and last but not least it could be a strong tactic for hiring people from underrepresented groups.
I know I will be repeating myself but I am truly excited about the content and the energy of Bootcamp and can’t wait for the following weeks! 🙏
