Ask HN: How did you find your first hire? - nomadigital
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gamedna
My most interesting first hire: There was a user that absolutely loved our
product, so much that he was a major promoter. Early on, he volunteered to
help us with on boarding others and even support. Long story short, he was
then hired with a significant signing bonus.

~~~
swyx
Did you use any resources to make your first hire? What do you wish you had
known?

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gamedna
I don't understand your question in relation to my anecdote. Maybe you can re-
phrase?

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wpietri
Thinking back over a few companies, the common categories are a) former
colleagues, b) friends, and c) people I have met through meetups. Eventually I
run out of people I trust and start hiring more traditionally, but the first
hire's always somebody I have reason to believe is reliable.

~~~
swyx
How many hires is that before you run out of people you trust and have to hire
at "arms length"? 5? 10?

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latte
May I ask as a non-native English speaker - does this mean "how did you find
your first employee" (like, assuming that you are a founder) or "your first
job"?

I intuitively interpreted is as the former but it seems that many commenters
here interpret it as the latter.

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thaumasiotes
Speaking as a native English speaker (US/California), I agree with you. "Your
first hire" would be someone you hired, not (barring context) a job you were
hired to do.

But... as I read the comments just 5 minutes after you posted yours, they also
are overwhelmingly in favor of this interpretation. What are you seeing that
has you confused?

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latte
Just too much time had passed since I decided to post that comment until I
finally posted it :) When I first opened the comment section, there were a
couple of comments that confused me at the top.

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chrisvalleybay
Someone I knew from Uni. Later I hired friends of that person.

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snovv_crash
Not what I did, but what I wish I did: put ads on stackoverflow targeting the
skills I was after.

After months of searching, finally we get a bunch of hits of people with the
exact skillset we are after, all from newly placed ads on stackoverflow. Major
facepalm moment.

What I actually did: ads on LinkedIn and local job portals. Mostly
applications from India with none of the required skills listed in the job
description. After a bunch of manual reading finally found a couple people
with the background we need, but the time I spent looking was a major
opportunity cost, not just from not having the people but as a time sink on my
side as well.

~~~
swyx
interesting, so Stackoverflow > Linkedin. Were you targeting a certain # of
years of experience or were you more concerned about tech stack?

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snovv_crash
Both. Experience in the stack is kind of required, since we were trying to get
a few seniors to build a team around.

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sleet
It's usually someone I have worked with in the past.

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Endy
All joking aside, most of the hiring I've been part of has been as a third-
party recruiter. I was that guy who trawled LinkedIn for keywords and only
sent out InMail if I couldn't find your email and phone number elsewhere. I
was the guy who went through piles of resumes on Indeed, again scanning for
locations and keywords.

I've never been the one to 'pull the trigger' on a hire, though I did have no-
go authority most of the time. I've been the guy who made sure you didn't get
through if you didn't look right; I was the human alternative to an ATS.

~~~
swyx
"look right"? seems quite arbitrary.

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DanBC
We know that hiring process is totally broken, for exactly this reason. People
use hunches and feelings and a whole range of subjective stuff instead of the
only thing that actually works: a work sample.

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Endy
In programming this is absolutely correct - but when it's for a management
role, you can't just ask for some kind of work sample of a management
decision. You have to go based on anecdotes and references. You do usually
need to be able to define how this person specifically drove the company's
profits when no one else did - because that's how you close to an in-house
hiring manager or to upper management / ownership. But again, all you're
likely to have is stories.

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source99
Just hired a boot camp/immersive graduate. Going well but it’s a bit early.

Boot camps have lists of students and you can post jobs on their sites.

Worked out well for me because I was looking for Somone junior.

~~~
swyx
How did you interview them since there are a lot of bootcamp grads with
similar skill levels? (i am a bootcamp grad, just curious)

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source99
I did 2 skype interviews - a non technical and a technical. Skill levels
varied quite a bit.

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therealasdf
I met an old friend at a restaurant. I had just graduated. He asked for my CV
and got me an interview. The same company had no available positions on their
website.

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kumartanmay
Ideas are great but taking the first step to develop the product is very
tiring. People just won’t have time to join your time. That’s common in India!

We were Always on the hunt for someone who could believe in launching the
minimum sellable product. We met a lot of people and eventually we landed up
with 2 Freshman developers from Waterloo. I had known one of them before he
joined Waterloo and he brought in his friend.

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mrchutiya
I put an Ad in newspaper. I got a lot of calls. I picked one of them up and to
my great surprise it was exactly what I was looking for?

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neals
Interns! We are a small company (6 people on the Payroll) and we always have 3
of 4 interns. With us, everybody can get an itern to teach and offload work
to.

Most interns leave when they're done. But every now and then, one sticks and
we get to keep'em! 3 of our regulars got in that way and 2 of our current
batch are going to stick around.

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ensignavenger
How long do your internships last? Are you hiring students or recent graduates
to be interns?

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SmellyGeekBoy
As much as recruiters get a bad rap in our industry, my first 2 came through a
small 2-main recruitment agency that we happen to share an office building
with. The team has expanded to 5 now and those first 2 employees have taken to
more senior roles with no problem at all. They're the absolute backbone of our
small operation.

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partingshots
Largely through word of mouth and referrals from friends. This has generally
garnered the best signal for me personally.

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codegeek
My first hire is my brother.I hired him not because he is my brother, but he
is really good at what I needed him for. Initially no one wanted to join me as
a solo unknown founder of a bootstrapped company. So I poached him from his
well paying corporate job. Great hire so far.

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motdiem
Reached out to someone after reading a blogpost about them. Was initially
interested to learn more about their process. First call they let out they
were currently looking for a job - several weeks & exchanges later i hired
them.

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secfirstmd
Sent out a challenge on Hacker News. Met for coffee in London. Went from
there!

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pm
Met through a mutual friend at a party at the bar where I used to work. We got
along like a house on fire, so figured it was worth a shot.

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partisan
We posted on Craigslist.

We tried Indeed, but were not happy with the caliber of applicant.

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lazyjones
One of the VCs suggested a relative. Yes, I'm serious.

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swyx
did you consider other people and the relative happened to win out fair and
square? or did you just wing it

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lazyjones
I was a solo founder with no real network of suitable people for this kind of
job, the first employee was secretary/marketing assistance. I didn't have time
or experience for serious recruiting and didn't particularly care about it at
that point (was busy planning for scalability, writing forum software...).
Thus I was grateful for the help and considered the VCs responsible for the
result, the employee was paid with their money anyway. So everyone involved
was OK with the outcome, I suppose.

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brobdingnagians
Posted on FB, friend knew someone looking for a job.

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mmorrison4
Friend or a family is the first way to go.

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Artemix
Surprisingly, by going to directly tell a CEO that his website was deeply
flawed and that I managed to access root credentials in a few minutes. Two
weeks later, I had a job, the job I'm currently at, and I have this CEO in my
list of good friends.

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Kiro
Nice story but I think you got the question backwards.

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viraptor
(misread, off topic, ignore)

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yelnatz
I think you read the question wrong.

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viraptor
Indeed, thanks :-)

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buixuanquy
Just do interviews a lot, then one day I finally can answer all of their
questions.

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godelmachine
May I ask if you are speaking as an employer or an employee?

