
Idea: Y Combinator for Startup Recruiting - adamsmith
http://blog.adamsmith.cc/2011/01/idea-y-combinator-for-startup-recruiting.html
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ryanwaggoner
_College students are irrationally risk averse._

Sorry, but not joining the typical startup for a below-market salary, a
handful of options that will likely never pay off, and an expectation that you
work 80 hrs a week may be "risk-averse" but it's hardly irrational. The main
benefit to working at a startup with those conditions (not all are!) is that
you want to start your own company and want to learn and build your network.
But even then, a lot of these recent grads would be better off just starting a
company now.

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pg
In my experience most undergrads are so risk averse that they don't even get
as far as making that calculation. The reason most don't go to work for
startups is the same as the reason most don't think of starting them: that
those alternatives don't even seem real. We're talking about a phenomenon much
deeper than calculations of expected value.

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donall
I think you're right about the options not seeming real, but I don't know if
the reason is primarily risk aversion. I think the majority of CS graduates
just don't realise it is an option.

In my university, the big software houses all do serious recruiting on campus.
The cream of the crop are generally offered jobs before they graduate (some
are also hand picked by the faculty for postgraduate research). The careers
office goes out of its way to try and ensure a seamless transition between
school and work. In that sort of environment, somebody wishing to work for a
startup would have to consciously reject the idea of working for
Google/microsoft/IBM/whatever and actively seek something else (and you won't
come across most startup jobs on Monster).

I think it boils down to the job offerings being good enough. Microsoft, for
example, offer a fancy graduate program with a lot of travelling to
interesting places where they certify you in all their main technologies. That
training is supposed to seem like an extension of the college life, except it
pays well. And its being offered to you before you sit your finals. Just about
everybody you know thinks it's a great opportunity. Why go digging for hard to
find jobs in companies that might not even exist tomorrow? (Rhetorical!)

Then again, my university is in Dublin, where we have a real shortage of
programming talent, a few big name computing companies and almost no startup
culture whatsoever. YMMV.

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pg
We've funded two startups that are partly aimed at solving this problem, one
in the s2010 batch and one in w2011. (Neither is launched yet.)

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johngarang
This is along the lines of a startup idea I've been kicking around for a bit
as well. Interested to hear (eventually) what tacks the two YC teams are
taking.

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acgourley
Same here. It shouldn't come as a surprise, it's a problem most of us have
faced from _both_ sides, and it's a problem that has a direct monetization
path. Finally, recruiting is something only a small % of technical people are
really good at, so it makes sense to let them sell their comparative
advantage.

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russell_h
One idea I had during my internship with Cloudkick this summer was an "Intern
at a Startup" program, vaguely modeled on YC's "Work at a Startup".

Basically a bunch of startups would have their interns make a short
presentation about interning at a startup. When the interns return to school
they go around and present to any classes or groups that they can, and
generally do their best to recruit more interns for the sponsoring startups.

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etree
I think this is a great idea though i did think it was worthwhile to comment
on some of the things that I think are actually problems versus the ones that
aren't really problems.

Real Problems: 1\. Difficult for students to find startups interested in
interns. Sounds like a number of folks are working on this which is awesome.

2\. Speed. Startups and universities move at different speeds. A y-combinator
like organization could go a long way toward solving this problem.

Things that are not really problems: 1\. "Many of the best college students at
MIT are risk averse and think short term." I work as a Program Manager at the
MIT Entrepreneurship Center and was a CS grad Berkeley and neither place is
short on risk-oriented CS students. In fact most of the CS students i went to
school with either wanted to start their own company or work at a startup. If
they ended up at Google it was because they couldn't find a startup that was a
good fit or because the startups that would have been a good fit didn't want
to hire straight out of school. I graduated about 5 years ago and i think
students are even more interested in startups now than they were then.

2\. "Startups are missing brand value for parents, relatives, and friends.
This is also highly cultural." This certainly isn't true for "friends" and i
think it is largely untrue for parents/relatives. With a whole generation now
of young and successful entrepreneurs like Gates and Zuckerberg, I think many
parents are starting to realize the prestige of working at a startup. Obama's
National Entrepreneur's Day this has been brought even further into the
mainstream. There is plenty more we should do here to continue celebrating
entrepreneurs, but i don't think this is what prevents people from joining
startups fresh out of school or for an internship in school.

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leelin
This could work for internships, I agree, but I think it will be a tough sell
for permanent employment.

You are setting up a trade. Work somewhere that you normally wouldn't work,
because you have other great options and very few Summers until graduation. In
return, we will ensure you learn a lot, work on cool stuff, AND receive
prestigious branding to put on your resume in the future. Here is why I'm
skeptical on intern-to-fulltime conversion.

I remember when I was an undergrad, two of the most prestigious Summer
internships in tech were IBM's Extreme Blue and Microsoft (hard to believe
now). While I don't have the hard data, all my anecdotal evidence suggests the
number of intern-to-fulltime conversions were amazingly high at Microsoft and
atrocious at IBM.

Why? My theory is Microsoft interns expected their fulltime experience at
Microsoft to be more or less the same as their internships (whether or not
that's true is another story). However, all the Extreme Blue interns knew that
they were in a special, experimental IBM program and if they were to join
fulltime, it would definitely not feel like Extreme Blue all year long.
However, as a resume brand and an educational Summer, both options were still
attractive.

Which brings us back to the proposal. The program is giving the interns a
taste of something they can't quite get by joining up full-time with the
startups. If a guy had his pick of places to intern, he might intern at the
"Extreme Startup Internship" to learn all about how to found his own startup
while doing cool stuff, or he might go because it will help him land the
Google / Facebook job. Either way, when graduation comes around, my guess is
he's either founding a startup or acing his job interviews. The more he loves
interning at the startup, the more he should love the thought of founding one,
and the other cohorts in the Summer program are the perfect pool of co-
founders.

Very cool idea though; it would be a great success to have the Extreme Blue of
startups internships, and even a few conversions would be a big win.

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rossgrady
Heh. I've worked on staff at IBM Extreme Blue for four years, and actually,
our conversion rate is well above atrocious. (I'm guessing your undergrad
years were a few years back, though, since you mention us & Microsoft but not
our biggest rival for talent, Google).

In any case, though, you're right on the money in the bulk of what you're
saying. Top-quality interns are highly aware of what they're doing, and what
their goals are for a given internship. A prestigious internship should
deliver on all of the following: exciting challenges, a high level of
autonomy/entrepreneurship, a decent salary, _and_ an impressive top line in
the "experience" section of your resume.

From my perspective, here's what a company must do in order to attract top
interns, and convert them to full-time hires:

* Be a great place to work (for interns _and_ full-timers). Your interns will be with you for at least three months. They'll know within three days whether you treat your employees well.

* Give the interns real meaningful work to do, where they can clearly see the impact to the company's customers & its bottom line.

If you can do those two things, you'll attract great interns, and should be
able to net some great full-timers as well.

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tomh-
This article focusses on new college grads. The questions remain, are college
grads the right choice for startups and are startups the right choice for
college grads. The answer will probably depend on the type of startup, the
grad and time available for mentoring and training the new grad. Though I
suspect the majority of silicon valley startups concentrate on hiring
experienced people in the early stage before they have the resources and time
to invest in new grads.

Personally I would prefer to work a couple of years for a more established
company to become expert in certain technologies and learn how stuff happens
at "real" companies.

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acgourley
There are tons of different startups. I feel like you're talking about
extremely early stage startups, or startups started by college students
themselves.

A startup founded by seasoned founders that's been alive a year or so is
actually quite a good learning environment for a recent college grad. They
will have good coding process in place, good communication, etc.

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conjectures
Maybe part of the issue is "Many of the best college students at MIT are risk
averse and think short term." The top students at the top universit[y|ies]
form quite a narrow recruiting pool. Are you sure the people you are looking
for can only be found within this group? You've also just helped to alienate
the top 1% of students from long tail universities, or none at all (why waste
time on a program that will sift based on your alma mater rather than your
abilities? - I mean what are you actually looking for from recruits?)

Also, if that is your target group it's bizarre to exhibit any sort of
surprise that there is fierce competition from other recruiters (Wall Street,
Google), and that statups might not fare well against them (who has more $$$
to offer?).

"Too Many Startups / Choice Paradox. Students have no idea how to pick the
right startups. Even if they did, there are an overwhelming number of choices.
This is classic paradox of choice." I expect that anyone who knows how to pick
the right startups should consider moving into venture capital.

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venturebros
is he talking about something like this: <http://www.techstars.org/hackstars/>

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adamsmith
Wow, what a great find!! Sadly I don't think this will work, though I would
love to be proven wrong.

A brand new, two person startup in my (limited) experience isn't able to give
an intern the support they need.

At Xobni we had a one-month intern from MIT when it was just Matt and I. I
still regret that we weren't able to give him the full startup experience. He
wouldn't be around long so he couldn't work on anything core, which meant that
his work didn't really get much support from me. And he was burning the
midnight oil side by side with us, with no definite long term stake in the
company.

But who knows. Anyone been through the HackStars program and able to share
their feedback?

I also imagined better pay -- like a $90k equivalent salary.

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jfi
Adam, great post. We are aiming to do that with www.collegejobconnect.com.
Undergraduate recruiting needs more diversity and a better way for students to
connect with a whole host of employers, not just those in consulting, finance,
or the big tech companies (although these are great places to work too, I
myself went to Wall Street before jumping into startup land). Startups offer a
great place to work, you'll likely not a find a place where you'll work harder
or learn more. I think pay and uncertainty are strong detractors, however.

The overall point is there should be more optionality and more exposure. I'd
be happy to chat further, we have some cool stuff going on and I'd like to get
your thoughts. In November we generated 50 interview offers to companies that
never have the opportunity to recruit on campus and we just signed up a big
player in the geo-social space. Hit me up at jeff _at_ collegejobconnect _dot_
com

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EGreg
I disagree that "college students are irrationally risk averse".

College students are just students whose parents care that they get a nice
career out of college. The brand name and perception of companies therefore
dictates where most of them go. When asked, "so what did you end up doing
after college?" most college kids, at least subconsciously, want to be able to
say "I am working for great company X" and have the listener know what they
are talking about.

That listener is typically their family.

Thus if you want more college kids to join startups, you should make it
attractive to their families to do so. You'll still have the brand problem,
but maybe the word "startup" will be like the word "wall street" ;-)

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pdelgallego
This is a great idea, when I was in the US under a F1 visa I didnt know how to
get in contact with startups. I tried through recruiter, indeed it resulted
into an epic fail.

Now I still looking but from EU makes thing even more difficult.

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johnrob
Why would a smart college grad want to join this program and not the real YC?

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ig1
Because they need a salary or because they don't have the expertise to be the
lead dev on a project ?

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yters
What I need is a startup recruiter for people working with time to spare. If
you don't assume someone has to take the complete step of faith and quit job
cold turkey, you have a very large talent pool, tho you'll need an innovative
work strategy. Patio11 has seen success here, as we know.

My .02, and would work with such a recruiter if existed. Email eric dot
holloway at gmail if wishing to converse w/ me.

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earbitscom
www.Students4Startups.com is taking the first step at this in Los Angeles, by
vetting interns and startups and connecting each other. John Shiple is their
CTO and is a great technologist.

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maxstoller
It exists: <http://hackny.org>. I was one of the students in the first class
this past summer.

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samd
It also seems like if you're good enough for a startup to want you then you're
good enough to start your own startup.

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acgourley
I really disagree with this.

You can be a well rounded engineer (important for working at a startup)
without being a) financially stable and b) risk tolerant (important for
starting a startup)

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ig1
<http://www.enternships.com/>

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kongqiu
This is a great idea.

