At the beginning of starting a business, you must first find outstanding talents who can fight side by side with you.

How to recruit Sam Altman, the most famous incubator in Silicon Valley, USA,

I gave you 15 tips on this issue that you may never have thought of.

For example, choose people who are willing to work overtime with them on Sundays. For example, let candidates who apply for engineers work with you first. For example, candidates who satisfy you recommend others who can come to work for you. ......

For you who are in urgent need of talents to join, it will certainly inspire you.

0 1

Spend more time

Most entrepreneurs don't spend enough time on recruiting people.

After you figure out your vision, you should spend one-third to half of your time recruiting employees.

It sounds crazy, especially if you have to have a lot of other things.

But this is the most powerful thing you can do. A great company is always, always made up of awesome people.

You can't outsource this-you should take the time to evaluate every candidate and make them willing to work in your company and meet in person.

Keith Rabois believes that when a company does not reach the scale of 500 people,

The founder should participate in the interview of every candidate.

02

At first, do some dirty work.

Speaking of spending time, you should know the job content of each position before recruitment.

If you don't understand, it is difficult to recruit the right person.

The most typical example is that a CEO with a technical background wants to recruit a vice president of sales.

You can't do some dirty work by yourself for this position.

He should learn how to do sales by himself first, and then make the whole details clear.

Later, when making a decision among the final candidates, he can refer to the advice of the board of directors or investors.

03

Looking for smart and efficient people

Every specific post always has some specific requirements, but cleverness and efficiency are necessary.

Surprisingly, people often give up these standards easily.

You don't have to think that such employees can't survive in early startups.

Fortunately, these qualities are not difficult to detect.

Ask the candidate what he has done in the past.

Ask them what their greatest project achievement is.

To be more specific, ask him how he arranged his daily time and what he did last month.

Then go deep into one direction and ask him what his specific task is-it is easy to take the credit for a successful project on yourself.

Ask them how to solve some problems you will encounter when recruiting this position.

Combine some questions you ask when you do background check, and you will know whether this person is efficient in most cases.

Usually you can judge whether he is smart by talking for more than an hour.

If you don't learn anything from the interview yourself, the interview is a failure. A good interview should be like a conversation, not a question and answer.

Remember, this is a startup company, and everyone you recruit may do something brand-new in the next three to six months.

Only smart and efficient people can adapt.

04

Let the interviewer play the role of that position.

Not just interviewing them.

This is the most important advice I know.

It's hard for you to see how you work with this person through several interviews, but it's easy to know after working with them.

Before you hire someone, if possible (which is always possible), find an evening or weekend and work with TA for a day or two.

Suppose you recruit a developer and let him participate in writing the code of a real project.

Of course, it is a less critical project.

Public relations position, let TA write a press release and push it to the media.

Just like the normal process, sign a cooperation agreement with them and pay them.

You will really gain a lot, and see more clearly what it's like to work with this person than the interview, and whether TA is qualified for this position.

Of course, TA can also experience the feeling of working in your company.

05

Use the right channels to find candidates.

This basically boils down to "make more use of your social circle".

I can assure you that the best candidate I have ever met is my friend or a friend of a friend.

Even if you think you can't find these people, keep looking, even if the success rate is only 5%, it's worth it.

All the outstanding entrepreneurs I know will take longer to recruit people in this way than most people think.

Most bad startups will make excuses not to do so.

If you find the right person once, you should sit down and let TA name all the people that TA thinks you should hire.

You have to work very hard to do this.

Generally speaking, if you want to find excellent people, you must take the initiative. You can't just look at people looking for jobs. They may not be looking for a job.

But the question is coming, how to start with acquaintances, and I don't have a good answer.

A friend said: attacking acquaintances in Silicon Valley is tantamount to sneak attack.

It is even worse to recruit technicians. Recruitment publicity is generally not good, but it will be better.

Holding some interesting technical forums will be beneficial to the recruitment of technical talents.

If you have a certain scale, campus recruitment should work.

Don't just look at your own place, especially the Bay Area. Many people want to move.

Look for talents as a long-term investment. Maybe the person sitting opposite you now is someone you met a year ago or earlier but didn't say anything about looking for a job at all.

06

far-sighted

Get ready to sell it to people.

In order to recruit people, you have to have a vision.

Besides wanting to work with excellent people, the applicant should also agree with your vision-that is, understand why this job is more important than other jobs that he can do himself?

A sense of mission can bring people passion, which is also the best way to find an excellent team before the company becomes what it is.

As a founder, you may think that everyone will be as passionate about this company as you are.

But the opposite is true.

It will take you a long time to get them excited about your vision.

If you have a good eye, you can fool it.

Then you will find that some people are slightly above your standards.

Of course, for some fast-growing startups, they will soon start to do a position that they find challenging.

Finally, you should get candidates through the board of directors or investors.

Once you decide to hire someone, you must enter the "get it done mode".

The boss of the new employee (ideally CEO) should talk to TA every day and try to get closer.

07

Recruit people you like.

Do you work overtime on Sunday because you want to be with people?

In Stripe, they call it "Sunday test".

Liking your colleagues is an important culture of the company.

Only a few times, some candidates I don't like turned out to be very nice people. I hired one of them, which was a mistake.

Speaking of which, you also need some different thinking.

But there are some characteristics you will want-integrity, intelligence and so on. Some people say you want different things.

08

When you find yourself recruiting,

Some values that will be adhered to.

Take time to think about the values you need (there are some good examples online) and make sure that the whole company understands and agrees with them.

Everyone you hire should adapt to this culture.

Andrew Mei Sen (founder of Groupon) once said, "Values are the framework for you to make a decision when the founder is faced with a conflict of interest" (for example, whether to develop rapidly or improve customer satisfaction).

Take one's own values as beliefs.

Consider the candidate according to these values, even if he is excellent in other aspects, if he can't adapt to this culture, you should learn to give up.

It's good to have diverse opinions and some characteristics (for example, you want nerds and athletes), but it's not good if the startup's values are different.

Some people always do things in their own way instead of following your values, and you will eventually fire them.

It should be noted here that telecommuting employees should be avoided at the beginning of their business.

Because the cultural atmosphere at this time is still in the process of construction, you should make sure that everyone can blend in.

09

intransigence

In the process of being tortured by entrepreneurship, you will always be faced with whether to recruit people who are not so smart or who are not suitable for your company's cultural atmosphere.

Because you really need to do a specific thing.

Especially in the early days of starting a business, never compromise.

Because the hidden danger left by a failed recruitment is enough to destroy a company.

It is better to lose a business or postpone a product development than to leave an ordinary employee.

Black is close to ink. Once you have a poor employee, this will happen one after another.

10

Be generous with your salary.

But this is more about fairness.

At the beginning of your business, you should save money everywhere, but the reward for excellent employees should be an exception.

Where should I be generous? Equity.

Ideally, the salary you pay your employees may be slightly lower than the market, but you can give them a generous option plan.

"Old people" usually spend more by themselves, so sometimes they have to pay more.

But generally speaking, great companies are not created by "old people" (except for a few really important specific roles).

I think I will be criticized for saying this, but the fact is,

If you want a job with a salary higher than the market, you should go to a big company with no potential equity income.

Generally speaking, the salary you have to pay employees is only to meet their normal life.

Stocks are difficult, but there is a rule that the top 20 employees can be twice as many as your investors suggest.

In a well-developed company without explosive growth, the data I saw were probably the first engineer 1.5% and the 20th engineer's 0.25%, but different companies were quite different.

By the way, in a successful YC investment company, the salaries of engineers are generally not high.

They can actually earn more elsewhere, but they understand that stocks are more valuable, so they are happy to work.

People who are willing to accept such salary are the employees you need when you start a business.

Unless something really goes wrong, these engineers actually earn much more money than other places, not to mention how good their working atmosphere is.

You may want to negotiate a little and learn to do so.

Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to break your predetermined salary structure in order to hire people, because once the news gets out, everyone will be dissatisfied.

1 1

Watch out for red flags and trust your instincts.

Pay attention to some details when interviewing or negotiating, because it usually means that this person is not suitable for a startup company.

Paying attention to your job title is an example.

Paying attention to "how many people will I manage in the future" is a worse example.

You will gradually find your senses and recognize such danger signals. Don't ignore them.

If it is difficult for you to say why you want to refuse this person, then refuse TA.

12

Always recruiting people

Unfortunately, recruitment is usually not like a transaction.

You should treat it as a long-term business, not something that needs filling.

There are many unforeseen things in recruitment. If you find a very suitable person, don't wait two months to hire TA.

13

Quick dismissal

I have never seen a new founder get fired quickly, but I have never seen a founder who still doesn't understand after several years.

Your recruitment decision will not be 100% correct.

When the recruitment is really wrong, it is basically difficult to reverse it.

It's good for everyone to cut the gordian knot. Don't always expect things to get better unrealistically.

This is especially true for people you should fire,

If they have only worked in your company for a few months, it won't have much impact on their future interviews.

And the rest of the company may find this person unsuitable before you do.

For a founder, firing a person may be one of the most difficult things. But you have to solve it as soon as possible, because you are sleeping.

14

Be strict in the recruitment process.

Let everyone in your team participate in the recruitment and write down their own ideas.

If you make a mistake, you can check it again.

It's best to sit down and discuss with the whole team after the interview.

Find someone to take the interviewer to lunch or dinner, and make sure everyone has time to prepare and attend the interview on time.

Make sure that every interviewer leaves with a good impression of your company.

Be organized-there must be one person in charge of the whole recruitment process, make sure that every topic you want to cover is mentioned, and lead everyone to discuss after the interview.

Also, make a choice framework-do you need everyone to agree?

Remember, just because a person does well in his own field doesn't mean that he is also a good interviewer, so it is also important to teach your team how to interview.

15

Stop talking.

Many entrepreneurs always feel that when asked how many employees are cool, they always recruit.

Generally speaking, small companies do better.

Think about how much work you need to do at least, and then try to have as few people as possible.

Don't recruit for recruitment's sake.

Only when there is really no other way to do what you want should you use recruitment.

—— summary—

Good luck. Recruitment is really important and difficult.

Don't forget to keep them after employment and be a good manager.

For example, hold regular staff meetings to keep employees happy and challenging.

The way to retain excellent employees is to keep a motivation in your company. Give employees some new tasks every six months or so

Of course, remember to keep discovering new and great people-this alone can keep people.

This is not as sexy as solving a new problem, but it is really important for your success.