
Ask HN: Tell us how you hire - esharef
We're HireArt (YC W'12), a marketplace for jobs. We're doing a survey to assess how different companies hire (e.g., success rate per applicant, processes used, types of candidates hired etc). We hope the results of this survey will help companies figure out how they compare (e.g, perhaps you're getting way more/less applicants than the average start-up).<p>The survey is mostly focused on non-technical hiring as that's what our company primarily recruits for.<p>Please fill this out and we'll publish the results. Would really appreciate your help!<p>http://hireartsurvey.wufoo.com/forms/please-tell-us-how-you-hire/
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rdl
This is a pretty bad survey. It asks if I have hired any non-technical people
or technical people, then 100% of the deeper questions are about non-technical
hires. Yet, there was no way to enter "n/a" for MOST of those questions, so
instead, I polluted your data, unfortunately.

(I have zero desire to hire non-technical hires for as long as possible. I
pray I can put that off for well over another year. Even sales can be replaced
with Sales Engineer or Sales Analyst, Palantir-style. We outsource the useless
non-differentiated parts of the business -- hr, accounting, compliance.)

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tptacek
I had the same problem, FWIW. I gave up about 3 pages in. I've hired a lot of
technical people, but no non-technical people.

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barry-cotter
Matasano's careers page is the best I have ever seen.

<http://matasano.com/careers/>

~~~
tptacek
Thank you!

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pixeloution
This is a very poorly written survey; you post on Hacker News and you make it
very difficult for someone who does 100% technical hires (not unusual for this
board) to fill out your survey. I just left one abandoned.

If you're looking for information on non-technical position hiring, this is
probably not the place to gather it.

~~~
rdl
Founders often do have to hire non-tech people. The first non-tech hires are
some of the most difficult for tech founders. HN is a pretty decent place to
find technical founders of companies.

It's just a badly written survey, not a bad idea to post the survey. They
should fix the survey and re-ask, or just make it entirely and explicitly
about "hiring early non-technical hires", which is what I think they care
about.

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etrain
I will tell you my favorite hiring trick, by far. Before I do, though, I'll
set the scene. I was looking for a new gig a few years back. I was mostly
happy at my job, doing interesting stuff, not killing myself, and making good
money, but itching to do something new. Wanted to get in the startup scene,
etc. So I see a new company's job posting, and it looks like a perfect fit
(location, mission, everything). I meet with the CEO, have a few conversations
with investors and employees, and things are looking good. Then they throw me
a curve ball - "We want you to do something interesting with our product." - I
spent the next two weeks working my ass off nights and weekends. Mind you, not
compromising my full time position in any way. In the end, I did something
interesting, and it turned out to be a great thing for the company. More
importantly, it let me get to know their product deeply, and I understood the
kind of environment I'd be entering.

The moral of that story - when hiring, challenge people to do something for
you. Give them a week to work with you. Pay them even. Just see how they
actually work. It'll work well for you, and them - even if your rate of hiring
is lower than you'd like.

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whichdan
Did they compensate you?

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etrain
In this situation, I did not receive compensation because of my employment
agreement with my then-current employer. That was my choice, and I'm sure we
could have figured something else out.

I have seen candidates handle it differently, though - one potential hire we
paid for a 3-week engagement as a contractor, for example.

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seancron
As others have stated, this probably isn't the best way to do a survey. At the
very least, you're going to have some bias from posting this on HN late at
night (in the US).

If you want a more representative answer to the question "How do companies
hire?", I'd recommend using Google Consumer Surveys
(<http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/home>)

You'll be able to survey a much larger audience, get more responses, and have
statistically significant results. In addition, Google has a nice dashboard
which lets you compare answers according to various demographic information
such as gender, age, location, income, etc.

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mrtron
Very interesting hiring approach. The space has seemed ripe for innovation for
years and years.

Highly motivated job seekers willing to jump through a lot of hoops seem to be
on the bottom side of talent. How do you solve this issue?

~~~
woah
Wait, are you saying that more talented people aren't going to bust their ass
to prove themselves to you? Puzzling.

~~~
michaelt
There's a theory that says top tier candidates aren't often on the market, as
their employers are keen to retain them and people in their personal networks
are keen to offer them work.

It makes sense to me that an employed, well paid person who isn't actively
seeking a job wouldn't be as motivated as an unemployed, unpaid person who is
actively seeking a job.

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redguava
Why are "None" and "Not Applicable" grouped into one answer? Surely they are
significantly different responses.

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nsedlet
Hyperlink to the survey: [http://hireartsurvey.wufoo.com/forms/please-tell-us-
how-you-...](http://hireartsurvey.wufoo.com/forms/please-tell-us-how-you-
hire/)

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tokenadult
This link to an earlier HN comment from 59 days ago is not a response to your
survey, but it includes tips about hiring processes in general.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543>

Read this for background. Check all the linked articles mentioned in the
comment for more details.

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onewong
Interested to find out the results of this!

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esharef
will share with you when it's done. thank you!

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onewong
Thanks! You should add Product Managers to the survey.

