
How to hire an idiot  - tyn
http://nukemanbill.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
======
jwallaceparker
Wow a similar thing happened to a friend of mine in what he calls the "flying
dragon" story.

About 5 years ago my friend Bob (not his real name - real name is Andrew)
started an entertainment business to do shows like Cirque du Soleil.

He advertised on websites looking for acts. A man came in saying he was an
agent that represented a flying dragon. Bob was incredulous. He asked to see
the dragon. The agent told him the dragon would only come out for
performances.

Bob paid the agent $1000 up front and spent another $3000 on marketing for the
dragon's first performance. On the night of the performance, the agent called
Bob and told him the dragon was sick but that he could definitely do a better,
bigger show the following week.

Bob paid another $1000 but the dragon didn't show up again. Three weeks later
the agent told Bob that the dragon died but had already spent the $2000 on his
lair.

Bob now says, "Make them show you the dragon," as advice for almost any
situation.

~~~
alanh
> _Bob (not his real name - real name is Andrew)_

Uh. What?

~~~
xnxn
I've identified this as a form of humor. _Homines sapientes_ react to it like
this: Ho! Ho!

------
wdrwilson
The hiring process and possibly placing too much trust in a new employee can
be dangerous without the proper due diligence. However I think there is
something else that has to do with technical people running their businesses
that is worth mentioning.

Being a technical person in sales can be bloody scary, I run a software
company and at the beginning I was scared to death about both sales and
marketing. So much so that I would avoid it, and only do it when absolutely
necessary. Which lead to basically working on whatever came along. Not ideal,
and I was basically working for myself, with no real growth.

While working at a co-working space I met a fellow entrepreneur who had a
sales and marketing company mainly focused on lead generation and online
marketing. I hired his company to help with new messaging for our company.
However this engagement quickly turned into sales coaching 101: how to build a
sales funnel, effective proposal writing, understanding buying signals,
targeting ideal customers, the whole works.

The whole time we worked through this process I was learning and
understanding, and becoming less and less scared. One of the books that he
recommended to me was 'Customer Centric Selling', it's a good read and I think
is ideally suited to technical folks finding themselves in sales roles. It
talks about sales as a process, and not a "who you know" connections mystical
black box. you know.. Like the VP of the 100 million dollar company wanted to
do. Connections always help, but the process is there to make sure that the
optimism that the sales people will undoubtedly assign to each deal can be
measured and verified. I find you don't get into these situations where a
sales person feeds you a loaded forecast with nothing to back it up.

As the founder you need to know what works for your business, and don't hire a
sales person hoping they will have magical powers and be instantly able to
sell your product/service. Learn and create the process yourself, then hire a
sales person and have them execute and refine your process. You know your
business best. Others can help, but at the end of the day it's on you!

------
tokenadult
There is an art to checking references. Even if a company has a policy of
giving bare minimum information, find out a TELEPHONE NUMBER of someone in
that company who knows your candidate and start a conversation. I was given a
specific script of questions to ask back in the 1990s when I was a community
volunteer for my local public school district, doing reference checks on
superintendent candidates. A consultant advised the school district (and
through the district, me) on how to do this. If you talk to someone directly
by voice, and have a good list of specific questions to ask about the
candidate, you will be AMAZED at what people say, policy or no policy. Company
policies don't keep people from sharing stories with curious listeners. The
key is to learn what questions are legal to ask and reveal the most
interesting stories about the person you are thinking of hiring. There are
consultants who can advise you about checking references, and, as several
comments here say, they are a lot less expensive than making a wrong hiring
decision, and once you've learned the questions, you know what to ask.

I've just asked my consultant Google, and he suggests several sets of useful
questions to ask when checking references:

[http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-
hi...](http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-
advice/job-screening-techniques/reference-checking-questions.aspx)

<http://www.drgnyc.com/list_serve/Jan24_2005.htm>

[http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/hr/Employment/InfoForHiringOffici...](http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/hr/Employment/InfoForHiringOfficials/HiringPersonnel/Exempt/TelephoneReferenceChecks.pdf)

[http://www.best-job-interview.com/reference-check-
questions....](http://www.best-job-interview.com/reference-check-
questions.html)

<http://www.k-state.edu/hr/employment/referencecheck.htm>

[http://pbsbo.ucsc.edu/personnel_payroll/staff/recruit/ref_ch...](http://pbsbo.ucsc.edu/personnel_payroll/staff/recruit/ref_check.html)

[http://www.bridgestar.org/Library/HiringToolkit/ReferenceChe...](http://www.bridgestar.org/Library/HiringToolkit/ReferenceCheck.aspx)

[http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referencesrecommendations/a/re...](http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referencesrecommendations/a/refercheck.htm)

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Also, our own Peroni (IIRC) mentioned that "is $candidate eligible for rehire
by your organization" will be answered by nearly all employers. And it's quite
useful.

[I have no personal experience, just passing this along.]

~~~
AppSec
I would be careful with that question. I worked at one company where they were
very much against re-hiring anyone that left based on where they went/were
going.

Another factor is personal differences can lead to that same false positives
(negatives?) about that person.

I guess I'm simply trying to say: that question is not always answered based
on work ethic or product.

------
jaredsohn
Comments from a previous time this was posted (three years ago):
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=263599>

"How do you find a good salesperson?":
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=264282>

~~~
wcchandler
Thank you. After the 4th paragraph I was hit by deja vu. Had to scroll to the
top to check if it was stolen.

------
fleitz
The more important lesson to learn is that if you're confident, likable, and
remember people's names you can be VP of a $100 million dollar company. Now if
you're competent as well, imagine how far you could go...

~~~
apaprocki
Reminds me of this guy:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravi_Desai>

At a company in SF we interviewed him and I can only imagine what would have
happened if he was hired. Luckily everyone who talked to him thought he was
nuts. Cramer talks about him in his book.

------
MaxGabriel
I think you can still do this: "-- Hire people smarter than myself, who get
things done! \-- Trust them to do their job, let them do their job and give
them enough resources to do it! \-- Pay them WELL and offer great benefits!
Work at home! Sure, why not? \-- Give people second chances! Don't throw out
resumes because of lack of buzzwords! Or disjointed writing! Or lack of
education! It's all about Smart People who Get Things Done, not interviews or
resumes or formalities! Have an open mind!"

You just need a way to check if they can get things done, like looking at past
apps they've coded. Nothing like that was done here. Really, if he _just_ did
an interview, one thing from that list of things he didn't want to do, this
probably wouldn't have happened.

~~~
Periodic
The problem is that he took "VP of a $100M company" to be stuff having been
done and other people thinking the ex-VP was smart. He never verified it
though. He took a secondary indicator of ability to make a sale (VP status)
and used it to infer a bunch of primary indicators (stuff done, intelligence,
actual ability to close a sale) without actually checking any of that.

------
lukev
So he was a highschool dropout. How do you not notice something like that on a
resume?

College degrees are _always_ listed on resumes, and while they aren't that
important in most cases, it should at least be brought up as an interview
conversation point if it's missing entirely (and from there, launch into a
discussion of how a person gained their skills, which would have completely
unveiled this guy).

~~~
ianl
The point was he didn't have a resume nor did he do any background checks
because he was obsessed with the fact that this guy must be good because he
was a former vp of a $100m company.

~~~
wisty
VP of sales is the worst proxy for start-up skills you can think of. Firstly,
a salesman in a big company might be good at reading off a script, or writing
a highly polished script for worker bees to read off; but they aren't
necessarily a good all-rounder. Second, it's common practice to give a VP
position to _anyone_ who asks for it, because it helps them convince customers
that they are a mover and shaker in the company:

"Look, I'll ask the engineers to put it in the next patch." ... "Well, I'm a
VP - they should listen."

------
tptacek
The moral of this story, which virtually every startup founder in the history
of the universe has heard or told a variant of, is:

CHECK. REFERENCES.

~~~
lotharbot
Further, "check references" needs to be deeper than just asking if the guy
actually worked there. Ask about his role and responsibilities. Ask how he
helped the company's bottom line. Ask real questions.

~~~
jarek
The problem is a lot of places will not make any further comment beyond
confirming the employee worked there and perhaps the circumstances of their
departure (resignation/laid off/fired). This is often for legal reasons.

~~~
m0nastic
I've posted about this before, but I wanted to again bring it up as a note of
caution for people who might be looking for work.

My present employer (who I've finally decided to try and make my former) has a
policy forbidding any employee from serving as a reference to any former
employee. They are literally not allowed to comment in any way, but are told
to forward all inquiries to a phone number which will verify employment (a
number that no one actually seems to know).

Ostensibly, this is to protect the corporation from potential lawsuits; but it
has a chilling effect on employees who are looking to leave.

So I'd warn anyone to be careful about working at a place like this, as it can
make leaving much more difficult. A policy like this isn't something you'd
generally think to ask about while interviewing, so I don't know how you'd
find out about it ahead of time, but it's probably worth asking about.

I've had companies ask me if I could violate the policy and provide them
references anyway, which I'm not a big fan of. As anti-employee as I consider
the policy, I think it's important to follow the stuff you've agreed to (and
I'm not sure what it says about a company who is that willing to have you
violate the policies at your existing company).

~~~
tptacek
I understand how the company arrived at it, but that's a horrible, damaging
rule.

~~~
m0nastic
As I've now been discovering lately. I don't think it's very common (I haven't
heard of any other companies that do it, for instance), but I'd really hate
for other people to wind up in the same situation.

~~~
cshesse
Ericsson has this policy as well

------
freejack
The lesson here is to never rely on someone else's hiring process to do your
screening. Big Corps VP can easily become your douchebag if you aren't on the
ball.

This is a great startup story - I think the original poster got off easy. For
the price of some pens, a dinner and a whole bunch of wasted time (and perhaps
a small hit on credibility) the truth was found. I've seen situations much,
much worse.

This is _exactly_ why hiring is described as the most important thing a
manager/executive/founder can do.

------
coenhyde
Everyone pay attention, this seems to be one of those lessons everyone learns
the hard way.

I'd made a similar mistakes with my first hire. Basically I hired the first
guy who said he was awesome at php. Great I said. Do this, this and this. You
can do some work from home, set your own hours at the office etc. He stopped
coming into the office to work from home instead. I was so over capacity that
i didn't check on his work for about 2 months (fool is me). When I finally did
I discovered a horrible horrible mess. The app was completely useless and the
'awesome php dude' was completely incompetent. Lessons learned:

1\. Do your own investigation into a potential hire to see if they are
actually capable.

2\. Watch new hires carefully

3\. It costs more to fix hiring mistakes than to prevent them from happening.

Actually my second hire was pretty shit too. This time I made sure the dude
was technically competent but he didn't fit the company culture I wanted. I
don't like egos or office politics.

After those few bad mistakes my subsequent hires were great.

~~~
sunsu
I'll second the "watch new hires carefully".

You can save yourself a lot of problems if you just keep an eye on your new
people for the first month. Obviously you don't need to be overbearing, but at
the end of that first month you should do a detailed work evaluation (code
review if a programmer). If the employee shows signs of producing crap in
their first month, get rid of her/him then. Do not wait unless there is a
really, really good reason to.

~~~
mattdeboard
Yep, I have been very surprised in recent weeks at how bold people will be in
their lies about their professional capabilities and/or history.

------
nhebb
The author, Bill, answered questions about this on Joel on Software:

[http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.665091.3...](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.665091.31)

Key comment:

 _"[..] when you're in your spare bedroom alone slaving away for 5-6 years,
then someone comes along with deep connections to the industry (proven from
asking around), who everybody in the niche knows, and who was 'part of a team'
responsible for booking $100 million in sales in a single year... it is easy
to not go through all that due dilligence and just accept someone like that at
face value."_

------
rphlx
Titles are bullshit. At some companies almost every salesperson is a VP of
Sales, Western Antarctica (or whatever) -- it's a free way to make customers
feel important.

~~~
philwelch
Likewise, I've been cold-called or cold-emailed by many a "senior recruiter",
but never a "junior recruiter" or even simply a "recruiter".

~~~
mrb
Job-title inflation is real. A decade or two ago, titles were more modest.

~~~
lurker17
Everyone at staff level in financial sector has been a VP since as long as I
have known the financial sector existed.

------
algoshift
The reason you get head nods when you relate this experience, in my opinion,
is that versions of this sort of thing are all too common when hiring sales
people. Sorry to be biased, but I'll go as far as saying that there's a
certain separate species in the sales world. By now I recognize a lot of the
signs, but it cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of lost
business to get there. Just ask fellow entrepreneurs "What's the secret to
hiring a sales person?" and watch as the first reaction is eyes rolling.

If business where easy everyone would be doing it. Don't give up, you'll
figure it out.

~~~
tptacek
EVERYBODY HAS THIS PROBLEM HIRING DIRECT ENTERPRISE SALES PEOPLE.

 _Everyone_.

It's hard to hire good direct sales people into a new sales organization for
the same reason that it's hard to find an effective SEO consultant on the open
market: the people that have this skill can make it rain money and are not
looking for jobs. So you can safely assume that almost everyone you're talking
to for your first sales hire is a product of adverse selection.

------
shn
Unfortunately I have encountered those "sales" people quite a few time during
my long career (in financial industry.) They sell themselves very well,
they're very good at with people, they make a lot of jokes, laugh a lot, they
use their own families (dinner parties etc.) for getting closer to people and,
dresses very very well for all occasions. They play politics in the office
very well as well. When it comes to deliver something, you always see delays,
they quickly offload responsibility to those who can actually do it (and they
are very good with them as well). They suck up, but when it comes down to it,
they kick down hard especially those who helped them in the past. They all
disliked me, since I was very blunt to them. It is easy to detect them, since
if he is really someone to deliver he will do it very soon, otherwise they
play endless delay tactics.

------
rdl
A founder should not be delegating sales to a hire, and if you have multiple
cofounders, it is moronic to have only one of them aware of sales (with 3
people, you could maybe get away with 2 people knowing about most of the
clients, or a different subset of 2 for each client, but even then).

------
sarcasmatron
As a hiring manager, I always try to either (a) hire 90 day contract to full-
time; or (b) hire under a 90-day trial or probationary period. At the end of
the period I ask myself if I would still hire that person. If my instinct is
"no", I trust my instinct. It's good for morale when everyone knows that the
90 days is a meaningful evaluation period.

As a job-seeker, I always make sure that I contact my references and give them
a heads-up that the call is coming in, along with a copy of the resume I
submitted for the job and the job posting. It's out of courtesy to the person
I'm asking to provide me with a reference.

------
steve_cronin
Excellent post. Mirrors my own experience a lot. How many life-savings and
great business ideas have been burnt beyond repair by doofus business losers
only god can imagine.

------
ericflo
What I'm taking away from this is that it really is important to check up on
the background and specific accomplishments of new hires, regardless of prior
accolade or title.

------
dangrover
This is exactly what happened to me with Etude and why I ended up selling when
I did.

------
grinnbearit
Have you met Frank? <http://businessofsoftware.org/video_10_pkenny.aspx>

------
kevinalexbrown
Maybe the rule is "don't be embarrassed about asking questions when your
business/reputation is on the line." Kind of easy to get starstruck, I guess.

------
matdwyer
I don't think anyone gets it right the first time. My first two "hires" were
horrific. I ended up learning from the experience and better shaping what I
wanted, what I needed to do differently, etc.

Most recent hire has been a much better fit into that mould, but still not
perfect. HR isn't at all my specialty, and I know it will be years before I
perfect it.

Glad to hear that the company recovered - one of mine didn't.

------
xarien
It's a shame OP had to learn the hard way given that he stated he was not
going to buy into resume hype and ended up doing so anyways albeit in a less
formal fashion.

While stories like this would any employer cringe, the very opposite scenario
occurs as well. I've personally been part of the receiving and giving end of
that type of scenario.

------
erikb
It's funny how the boss actually was the idiot for buying that guy. Even his
goals in the beginning were stupid. I can only learn from this article that my
goals are probably shit, too. At least as long as I don't have some experience
as people manager.

------
iand
Number one rule of hiring: take up references

~~~
rdl
I'm curious how people feel about (criminal, credit) background checks. Our
lawyers suggested that both those and drug tests are sometimes done, but might
not be appropriate in silicon valley. We're pretty anti drug-tests, but
especially for an infosec company or someone with access to sensitive customer
data, running at least a criminal check and possibly credit check makes sense.
I wouldn't say having previous convictions necessarily excludes someone, but
refusing to disclose and being unable to explain something is probably a big
problem.

~~~
earl
I've turned down job offers over required background checks, for a variety of
reasons. I could see how they would be appropriate if someone were involved in
handling money or deals or some such, but for a plain dev, it's silly.

I'd _consider_ just a plain criminal background check, but for the rest of it,
my credit is none of anybody's damn business. The demand to call all my
previous employers and verify salaries is similarly horseshit -- my previous
salaries don't matter a damn, all that matters is our agreement on what an
employer is going to pay me. The weird thing is companies get indignant if you
turn them down for this reason, and pissy when you characterize the demand for
such a check as a lack of trust. Particularly since my previous 3 bosses are
references. While I suppose someone could fake references, it's hard to do
with linkedin, especially since someone doing a reference call to an arbitrary
phone number could just ask for a verification email from corporate email.

~~~
rdl
I think the purpose with credit checks is to catch "irresponsible behavior",
like a huge mountain of credit card debt, because it could make someone
willing to steal.

It never really made a whole lot of sense to me, since most people in the tech
industry in debt got that way through a failed startup, or maybe a divorce, or
medical expenses, or something like that; none of which makes you a less good
candidate. Maybe a lot of charge-offs would be an issue for a CFO.

My general philosophy on references is they only really count if they're
strong mutually known parties; a random manager at IBM vouching for someone is
pretty meaningless to me. The first circle is founders' personal contacts,
then people introduced by their contacts, and people who are introduced by
people known to early employees. That scales pretty far if you're hiring in a
specific domain.

------
16s
People like this who know a lot of folks and who get along and are likeable
can be a huge asset. You may not want them selling for you, but you certainly
want them to mingle, talk to potential clients and take them to dinner, etc.

They aren't _idiots_ , they are very valuable employees when used
appropriately. He would make an excellent client relations manager.

------
anjc
Alternative title: How to hire like an idiot

------
Mordor
No time for any of them - called out the sales director for being a
bullshitter and amazingly kept my job for several years. Sold nothing, was
like watching a galaxy imploding into a black hole. Stayed for the
entertainment. Was well worth it.

------
3pt14159
Dude was a psychopath. I've been tricked by them before, cost me at least
$20k. They lie. Straight to your face. They are often terrible at spelling,
grammar, and just general "this document should look right" skills.

~~~
rcthompson
Does that mean he was also faking his regret when he finally got "caught" so
he could get off scot-free?

~~~
evan_
Of course he was.

The whole story about how he was into drugs and crime and turned his life
around and worked his way up from the bottom, maybe that happened and maybe it
didn't- but the story about how he's just a simple mook from Circumstances was
calculated to gain sympathy and shift the blame away from himself.

>Well, at least he was honest. He wasn't trying to deceive me, and he really
thought he could do it, he explained. No hard feelings.

And it worked!

------
abbasmehdi
This is one if the things that could happen when you try to compensate for a
cofounder with an employee/contractor.

------
yesreally
"business executives are sometimes just full of shit!"

not just business executives.

------
willpower101
"Every time I relate this experience, I get a lot of head nods."

o.O is what you get from me. Is everyone you relate this story to you a half-
wit? Quite simply, who hires without adequate research? (apparently many more
people than I realized)

------
evanmoran
Anyone who will work for free may not be worth the price.

------
biot
I think I've worked with that guy before...

------
robot
Anyone know who this is, or his company?

------
bomatson
He should of at least Googled the guy!

------
chipocabra
As an idiot I take offence

------
jsavimbi
The author fails to mention how much his own greed played into this.

------
gautaml
I cringed every time this came up in every paragraph.

But... he was the VP of a $100 million company, after all!

------
maeon3
The Bozo Explosion, and how to prevent it:
[http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_prevent_.html#axz...](http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_prevent_.html#axzz1bgeuuSk4)

------
TruthElixirX
"Sadly, I could have found out all of that by simply asking him before
offering him the deal."

Wow. Really?

