Some Thoughts on Hiring at a New Startup
I&#x27;m absolutely amazed that there isn&#x27;t a single mention of referencing in here. It&#x27;s by far the most important thing we do in our hiring cycle.<p>Here&#x27;s what we do, which is a little different:<p>1&#x2F; We&#x27;ll spend in the order of 5-6 hours with a mid-to-senior hire before we recruit them. We pick one topic from their CV (the project they&#x27;re proudest of or happiest with), and dive into it in huge detail: everything from the people involved to the outcomes and recognition of success. It helps to illustrate what the person is truly like.<p>2&#x2F; Where it&#x27;s possible, we&#x27;ll pay the person a pro rata salary equivalent to spend a day with us actually working in the role. I know a couple of other companies doing this and it&#x27;s really great.<p>3&#x2F; If we like the person we immediately throw out whatever references they provide and spend a few hours dredging up people they worked with from our networks. We also look at the people they named in the project example. Once we&#x27;ve got a list of 6-10 people, we ask the candidate if we can reference using those people.<p>4&#x2F; Typically at this point we&#x27;ve decided that on paper we want to make an offer. Referencing is the last opportunity we have to really assess the person&#x27;s ability to cope under pressure, how quickly they drop their &quot;new job&quot; act and get into being themselves, and crucially what &quot;themselves&quot; is like. I nearly always only ask questions which could be perceived as negative at this point -- what makes them throw their laptop across the room? What stresses them out? How do they communicate when under pressure? What are the things you told them they need to work on in their last review?<p>Referencing probably only accounts for 10-20% of the time I spend on a candidate, but the weighting I give it is huge when it comes to working with and managing that candidate when they&#x27;re on the team.<p>A million different ways of doing things -- but referencing is so often overlooked and I&#x27;ve never understood why.