

Hiring your startup’s next great employee - 0cool
http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/06/06/4-rules-for-hiring-your-startups-next-great-employee-and-avoiding-the-duds/

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tptacek
I've read some useless hiring advice posts here, but this one resets the bar.
Have a nontechnical person in your technical interviews so that you can be
sure at least one person on your interviewing team is human. If you're hiring
for a role and meet someone "great" that doesn't work for the role, fuck it,
hire them with no role, because a Jim Collins book talked about that. "Ask
real life questions", like they do at an interview for a retail job at Best
Buy. Oh and here's the "scoring system" you should use for "soft no hard no".

Now, go forth and build an awesome company.

~~~
dhimes
Agree. Article is _at best_ a waste of time.

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Peroni
The advice in general is reasonably solid but this particular point is
absolute madness:

 _Around 8 people is perfect to interview a candidate_

Half that number is perfect for interviewing a candidate. You simply don't
need 8 different opinions to get a gauge on technical ability and culture fit.

I wouldn't even dream of jumping through so many hoops for a job. Finding good
people is difficult, adding hurdles like an intense or lengthy interview
process just makes it more difficult.

~~~
hkarthik
I had the same reaction, but when he got to the point about the Hard Yes (+2)
and Hard No (-4), I assumed the number of interviewers was closely tied to
having enough of a sample size to using this scoring system effectively.

But yes, I agree that 8 people is a crazy amount of interviews. In this market
you can't expect to do that unless you either have a stellar reputation and an
influx of excellent candidates that you're trying to sift through.

Very few startups are in such a position today.

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joshthewanderer
> Me- “Tell me about the last time you got involved in a > debate on
> HackerNews.” > > Candidate- “Hmm, I don’t really talk to people online. I >
> don’t see the value in talking to people I don’t know.’ > > She didn’t get
> the job.

It seems that they were interviewing for a "Technical Community Manager", in
which case I can see the logic behind not hiring them.

But if they weren't, I wouldn't suggest that was a "hard no". A lot of people
don't get involved on social news sites, for a variety of reasons (maybe they
have done in the past and don't like being attacked by a bunch of strangers
for their opinions). If they had never heard of HN, I might have to think
twice, but I certainly wouldn't rule someone out for not getting involved in
"debates" (all too often flamewars) on social news sites.

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Zild
<< Soft No(-2) means “Nah, there’s just something that doesn’t feel right” <<
or “Loved her, just not for this role”

<<So remember this when hiring: the person you are interviewing may be
<<terrible for the role, but perfect for your company. <<When you find that
awesome person, hire them.

I hope there was a little bit more consistency between the rules explained
here.

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victoriap
Leveraging your own network may mitigate some of the risks in this article.

<<"Rule #1- It’s much better to say ‘no’ to the right person, than ‘yes’ to
the wrong one"

The rule #1 increases the chances of your hire to be a great person, but slows
down your hiring, which may mean missed business opportunities.

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shrughes
This is crazy. Hire engineers that can talk to non-technical people, but then
have one of these engineers interview non-technical people to make sure that
non-technical people can talk to engineers? But the engineer can already talk
to non-technical people, so that wouldn't work!

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7Figures2Commas
It's amazing that just about every single one of these "how to hire" articles
presumes that the perfect employee is wandering around out there waiting to be
discovered. Very, very few seem to consider that great employees are
_developed_.

