Some Thoughts on Hiring at a New Startup
Here&#x27;s my perspective.<p>(I am writing in a snarky way to convey a message)<p>1. If you&#x27;re using recruiters, you&#x27;re already losing. Especially if those are recruiting agencies that &quot;hide&quot; the name of the companies.<p>The cold emails are just ridiculously hideous.<p>2. Use as little hyped up words as you possibly can. You might change the world, but everyone else is saying the same thing and people are getting sensitive about it.<p>3. Impact - Emphasize what is the impact of the role. Why do you need <i>my</i> skills, Not just an <i>engineer</i> skills, why do you need <i>me</i>. If you don&#x27;t need me I don&#x27;t care what you need, post on LinkedIn for all I care.<p>4. The mail needs to come from the CTO with as many details as possible about the company. Not how much money you raised and from which VCs, everybody raised money and everybody as VCs behind them. I could care less. What are the technical challenges, what&#x27;s the roadmap, what challenges are you facing that you need me to solve and help with.<p>5. Compensation - &quot;Competitive salary&quot; means nothing. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s relevant to me at all. You need to be specific about the compensation levels. If you wanna give a range, that&#x27;s also fine. If your range stops at X and I am making X+50%, I know we are too far apart, we could save each other the trouble.<p>6. Interview - If the interview requires more than a single day, I don&#x27;t care. If it requires whiteboard, I don&#x27;t care, If it requires multiple processes and screens, I don&#x27;t care.<p>It&#x27;s all about managing friction. Just like acquiring a customer on Google or Facebook. If the process has too much friction, I don&#x27;t want to go through it. I just don&#x27;t. I&#x27;m happy where I am and it&#x27;s not worth my trouble.<p>All of these may sound elitist, I get that. I really do. But if you want really senior engineers the targeting is different than people that just finished bootcamp or have 2-3 years of experience.