Talent for Tech: Scaling, and scaling fast
It’s a feeling many startup founders have experienced, particularly after closing on a new round of funding. It’s that excitement when you know the status quo is changing and your company is headed for rapid growth and tremendous change.
This is what Toronto-based startup Achievers experienced in early 2011 when they grew from 70 to 160 employees in 12 months. Similarly, mobile-app development company Xtreme Labs hired an astounding 35 full-time engineers in 2011, and it continues to onboard 50 co-op students each quarter.
But how does a startup double its headcount in a few short months, while continuing to attract top talent that meshes with the company’s culture? Here are a few suggestions:
Think like a marketer
It’s easy to overlook a company when they haven’t established a brand name, particularly when they are competing against the likes of Google and Facebook for talent. Achievers did a study last year and found that 88% of graduating students know what company they want to work for. If candidates aren’t thinking about you, then you’ve already missed a huge talent pool. At Achievers, they run recruiting out of the marketing department. For them, the idea is to think about hiring “like a marketer.” Marketers traditionally think about low-cost means to win sales, so why not think about low-cost ways to win talent?
At Xtreme Labs, VP of Engineering Farhan Thawar makes a point of being out of the office several times a week promoting the company. If he is not attending an event, then he’s giving a talk. “The subjects I talk about vary. It’s everything from managing engineers to innovative workspaces.” Thawar says he does this outreach in an effort to meet people. “If I meet someone I like, I tell them to come in to the office for a tour, which can often lead to an opportunity.”
Showing off your space by giving tours is another great way to attract candidates. Thawar gives at least three to four tours per week, believing that “it helps give people a connection once they see Xtreme Labs has a pretty cool environment.” At Achievers’ Toronto-based office, they regularly host open houses, allowing anyone who is interested to come in, meet staff, hear presentations and get a quick interview on the spot.
Achievers felt the pain of being an unrecognized brand when they opened their San Francisco office late last year. They deployed an aggressive marketing campaign which included hosting drink nights at the W Hotel. Holley Tiessen, VP of Client Success, says “it was a way for people to come out and learn about what we do, since there isn’t a lot of information available online for a candidate to research themselves.”
Thawar also makes it a point to attend DemoCamp at Ryerson University every quarter, which has over 300 people in attendance. “The first year I attended, I walked down to the front of the room and wrote ‘XTREME LABS IS HIRING, EMAIL ME’ on the whiteboard. Guess how many other companies did that? Zero.” Thawar strongly believes that startups should constantly advocate that they’re hiring, getting their name out there and building up that brand recognition. What happened the second year Thawar attended DemoCamp? “Nothing. I thought someone would copy my tactic, but no one did!”
Don’t over-focus on the hiring process
For Thawar, he stays focused on the end result―making a job offer―instead of the hiring process itself. “You can interview someone all day, but until they start the job, you can’t tell if they’re going to be any good.”
While at a recent University of Toronto job fair, Thawar had a booth set up amongst other startups, most of whom were handing out t-shirts and other swag. “We had no swag to give away. Instead, we gave out coding tests to people and if they were good, we gave them an offer on the spot. I managed to hire seven people in one day!” Thawar brought these people in on a contractual basis and ended up giving three of them full-time offers.
The “hire-slow-fire-fast” mantra is often touted for startups but, for Thawar, hiring fast is his claim-to-fame. “There is no substantial data that a prolonged interview process will result in a good candidate. We feel interviews are a very poor predictor of performance, but we do them because it’s the only thing you have.” Thawar favours hiring candidates on a trial basis to see if they are a fit.
When interviewing, Thawar uses creative methods to test a candidate’s work ethic. “I use little tricks to see if they have propensity to action. I’ll put whiteboard markers on the table between us and begin asking questions. I wait to see if they will get up and use the whiteboard to explain their answers. It shows me whether they have energy and are willing to do work.”
Tap into your employees’ network
Achiever’s ability to scale so well stems from an impressive program they created called Recruiting Rockstars. It involves tapping into the networks of their employees to source job candidates. It is more than a loose ‘hey do you know anyone’ type thing, but rather encourages staff to donate their contacts by providing prize incentives. As Tiessen tells us, “employees get $25 worth of points for any type of referral they submit. If that referral gets through to the next round, then the employee gets a $100 Visa card. If that referral gets hired, the employee is given an all-expense-paid weekend away.”
The momentum that this program has created for Achievers has brought in huge numbers of candidates, and proven to be a very effective way for them to ramp up so quickly. Says Tiessen, “it works well when you’ve got enough people in the organization whose networks you can tap into.” Even with all the prizes and trips, Tiessen says this program is much more cost-effective than other methods, such as paying a recruiter. Moreover, tapping into the networks of existing employees makes it easier for Achievers to find candidates with that cultural fit.
In the Valley, this form of recruiting is widely used. Suneel Acharya, formerly with TalentBin (a “social recruiting” business) says, “even if you have a small five-person company, obtaining everyone’s contacts from across both LinkedIn and Facebook should give you close to 5000 potential candidates.” The way Acharya sees it, “convincing employees to donate their contacts shouldn’t be hard. You can either offer cash incentives, or play on the idea of them getting to work with their friends!”
Before the Recruiting Rockstars program, Achievers used traditional approaches such as job boards and recruitment agencies. “That was OK for the hiring volume at the time,” says Tiessen. “However, when it came time to ramping up quickly, we needed a way to accelerate hiring.”
Don’t stop interviewing
Just as you should never stop networking, Thawar believes you should never stop interviewing. “People call me out on this and ask why I’m interviewing if I’m not even hiring. My answer is that tomorrow I could be hiring.” Thawar has built up a list of excellent candidates he has interviewed across different domains such as engineering, human resources and graphic design. “When Xtreme Labs does have an opening, I ping them, tell them I’m building a team and bring them in.”
