Building Teams: Hire People, Not Skills

http://bostinnovation.com/2011/04/13/building-teams-why-i-hire-people-not-skills/

by chezral • 15 years ago

67 23 15 years ago

Peroni2• 15 years ago

This is real 'back to basics' stuff but the issue is how do you figure out who will be a good cultural fit in an hour long interview where nine times out of ten the person is going out of their way to impress you anyway.

The final paragraph really nails it. A candidate will fulfil the stereotype of an interviewee when in an interview scenario, meet them at a hacker meet-up or even for an informal coffee chat and the candidate will feel less obliged to act like your potential employee and more inclined to be themselves.

It's just as important for your potential employee to like you as it is for you to like them so you have a reciprocal duty to try and be yourself when meeting a candidate. Formal, stuffy interviews tend to generate formal, stuffy conversations.

Killah9113• 15 years ago

I agree with the article. Hiring based on skill alone doesn't work. I usually look for the most agile person. Someone comfortable wearing many hats. Unfortunately, there's no quick way of figuring this out. After many painful lessons, I've changed how I hire. I used to put candidates thru grueling interviews. I now instead, show the candidates the what I do, hire based on a quick interview on a contract to perm basis. In the ensuing probation/contract period, I get to see actual work, and if the whole team likes working with the new hire, they go perm with a pay bump & some benefits. Working out well so far.

danilocampos• 15 years ago

Do you operate in a demanding market? As a candidate, I'd be very skeptical of such an arrangement, assuming another company I liked equally was standing by with an offer for a real position right off the bat.

edabobojr• 15 years ago

Would you care to expand on your experiences with this? I keep hearing of people who take this approach, but I've always been skeptical on how well it really works out.

Assume that I have a job. What you would be offering me would be an opportunity to quit my job in return for a temporary job that might or might not convert to full time. During the transition, I will lose my benefits. Your assumption of a pay bump when going permanent also seems to indicate that I wouldn't be compensated for the risk of a permanent position not being offered.

What do you see as the value proposition for an already-employed person in this arrangement?

erin_bury• 15 years ago

Love the breakdown - "scrappiness and drive" at 35%. To me resourcefulness is #1 - I don't care if someone has the experience, I care that they can go out and figure it out on their own.

kemiller• 15 years ago

You don't think experience helps with that?

It frustrates me that our profession seems to have no real career path. It's great that you can hit the ground running, but we do seem to systematically devalue experience. And it DOES matter, though it's obviously not just about years. (I've certainly known plenty of folks who had been doing bad work for decades.) But we don't have any kind of formal mentoring system like you'd see in other professions, and I think we're worse off for it.

kenjackson• 15 years ago

but we do seem to systematically devalue experience

Yes, it does seem like the only mainstream profession where having 20 years of real experience means virtually nothing.

IOW, our profession is so shallow that virtually anyone can do your job if they want to.

joevandyk• 15 years ago

Wouldn't it be easier to "figure it out on their own" if they had, say, 20 years of solving similar problems?

spartanfan10• 15 years ago

I'd really enjoy seeing a follow up post on this with more detail on the process. This article describes the general feeling I've had, even outside of start ups. I do feel like the "actually coming through" part of scrappiness is the most important, especially when it comes down to coming up with solutions that are elegant and not just hack work. There has to be some middle ground that mixes this approach with a set of skill/intelligence factors in the interview.

codeglomeration• 15 years ago

Mark Suster has a more in depth post about hiring based on attitude not aptitude. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/03/17/whom-should-yo...

lysium• 15 years ago

I like the focus on people.

I'm wondering if salary is also selected according to this breakdown and not on skills (as it is usually done).

jswinghammer• 15 years ago

What typically differentiates the people I get excited about versus the people I'm indifferent about is their answer to: "So what books are you reading now or what's the last book you've read?" Everyone who I have worked with has had pretty good answers for this question and has gone on to be pretty impressive. It's sort of sad but most people don't bother to read anything at all.

Duff2• 15 years ago

This stuff is a great demonstration of the type of advantages that a small organization has over a larger one.

The problem with weighting more subjective assessments of people like "cultural fit" higher than more objective assessments like "experience" is that the assessor's bias will become a problem. By problem, I mean that you're going to get successfully sued for some form of discrimination.

jdp232• 15 years ago

The key here is "You need a mix of people with differing perspectives but shared values." to which I would also add differing demographic backgrounds. As the article says, you need at team that is cohesive because of its differences.

Duff2• 15 years ago

Absolutely. That's where the small organization shines. Once you get big, where big == more than a couple of hundred people, subcultures start to develop that may not share positive values. A few key negative people can poison an organization.

jdp232• 15 years ago

Also, "experience" is (a) inherently age-biased and (b) often somewhat subjective, so prone to assessor's bias. An example where experience is subjective is how to count something in an adjacent field -- businesspeople going into politics or vice versa, or a PR person being considered for a marketing role. So it's not a panacea.

waynecolvin• 15 years ago

I don't think these guidelines would apply the same way at a larger established company instead of a startup. Skillset would have comparably more interest to a company already invested in legacy systems which wouldn't be the case with a start-up.

meterplech• 15 years ago

I definitely think this is the best long term solution. I think culture is incredibly important to an organization. And, I liked the article overall.

But- there is some glossing over of technical ability. I am one to believe that the best software engineers and programmers are 10-100x better than the average. I think that is a belief shared on this site. Would I rather have a programmer who is 100x better who doesn't match the culture I want exactly, or the average programmer who does? Within reason, I think the 100x better guy.

It's easy to say I want the 100x programmer who matches the startup culture and also doesn't want to get paid a lot or take a ton of equity. But, hiring isn't that easy.

gaoshan• 15 years ago

There needs to be a certain level of skill but frankly, looking at the long term and with the right individual, I'd take a carpenter over a rockstar any day.

Building Teams: Hire People, Not Skills

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