

Principles of Recruiting from Keith Rabois - jonbischke
http://blog.entelo.com/8-principles-of-recruiting-from-keith-rabois

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tptacek
A lot of these sound like conventional wisdom (although "it should be
reflected on your calendar" is smart), but the "Fifth Principle" \--- "To be
extraordinary at recruiting, it is crucial to be extra-ordinary at assessing
candidates" \--- is I think absolutely true, and not said often enough.

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birken
Sorry for this buzzkill comment, but this is one reason hanging out with
startup founders can be intolerable in some cases.

Now I don't think focusing on recruiting or only going to events in which you
are actively recruiting people is wrong, it isn't. You are more than entitled
to do everything in your power to help your company succeed, and recruiting is
obviously a major part of that. However, go too crazy with it and you start to
get into the realm of people who knock on random doors and proselytize their
religion.

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peter_l_downs
I was recently at a hostel on the other side of the world and received not one
but two startup pitches from Bay-area "innovators". The exact type of behavior
I had been trying to escape... absolutely ruined that evening in my mind.

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Jormundir
I wish there was some lip-service to the actual interviewing process. The
interviewing process seems to be the pain point in recruiting with the vast
majority of startups I've been to.

Nothing telegraph's a company's poor management like a silly interview
process. Make sure there's a purpose to each stage of your interview process,
don't just throw your whole team, one by one, into a conference room with a
candidate with no direction.

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withdavidli
Interview process at startups, never had the pleasure, but keep in mind that
they are new by definition. It's arguable that many large corporations don't
have a good interview process. Imagine a limited funded startup. The amount of
time to train a person to be a good interviewer, coming up with relavent
questions, calibrating what a typical answer actually is vs. the answers you
think you'll get.

If the company is rapidly growing then they may require employees who never
been an interviewer to become interviewers (hopefully some shadowing and
training is involved).

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withdavidli
Summary: Article about how everyone in a company should be recruiting.

Recruited/recruiting for some notable companies. Current managers are heavily
engaged in recruiting and I'm quite lucky . Working with some other companies,
managers were MIA(missing in action) for long periods of time. Example,
present candidates, don't hear back from managers for over a month x_X.

For extremely large corporations the recruitment function is increasingly
being outsourced, in fact a candidate might not even know they're talking to
an outsourced company. Here's my post on this:

[http://withdavidli.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-is-rpo-
recruitm...](http://withdavidli.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-is-rpo-recruitment-
process.html)

Use of agencies, RPOs, and high amounts of contracted recruiters gives a
company more flexibility with their budget, as headcounts can change
dramatically in any given year.

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optimusclimb
Maybe companies wouldn't have much trouble recruiting engineers if they tried
to lure us with, _gasp_ , higher pay, and not just free drinks, video game
nights, and vapid promises.

When companies stop treating devs as juveniles, or people who desire to work
"on cool problems" without care for compensation (while those working in
sales/business roles, and founders, sure care about making money), they'll
have an easier time hiring.

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timr
_" When companies stop treating devs as juveniles"_

The problem, of course, is that most devs _are_ juveniles. At least in
startupland.

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Iftheshoefits
I don't know about "most", but the _target_ of most startups is definitely on
the lower end of the age spectrum. It's easier pay and treat them worse,
because they don't know any better and generally haven't sufficient experience
to recognize that "the next big thing" they're working on isn't.

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arctansusan
Interviewing a candidate well is a separate skill set from knowing how to code
well. Most companies who select the interviewers confuse the two types of
skills.

