[Internet Archive: “How to Hire the Best People” by Marc Andreessen]
There are a lot of great articles on the internet which early stage founders can read to improve their knowledge, today I’m sharing with some of you an old article published by Marc Andreeseen from 2007 - “How to Hire the Best People.”
This article is definitely not your usual “how to hire” article, in fact, it covers only 2 areas regarding hiring, but it brings incredible value and truth. Let’s begin with the Marc’s first area of interest:
To hire the best people, it’s about #Criteria: what to value when evaluating candidates.
Most startups make the mistake of copying how successful companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon hire, making their decision mostly based on intelligence, aka degrees and qualifications. But there are many other factors that contribute to outstanding employees, and these factors play a much bigger role than intelligence.
Much like Venture Capital investing, one of the most important factors we look for in a founder is their motivation, or as Marc calls it - #Drive. Hiring for drive rather than intelligence will bring much more to your startup, simply because driven people are self-motivated and motivating unmotivated people is not easy.
The next important criteria to hire for is #Curiosity, simply put - passion for their craft. Anyone who is passionate about what they do, will be eager to learn, read, practice, and continuously immerse themselves in the craft, stay current with the trend or perhaps ahead of the trend, passionate people simply do this because they love what they do.
“The easiest way to be driven is to be in a field that you love, and you'll automatically be curious.” If you are a founder, this is the type of people you want to hire. If you are an employee, find a field that you truly loves and finds interesting, then, staying driven and curious will be easy. Would you rather be skiing uphill or downhill? One is exciting and fun, and the other is simply impossible.
The last but certainly not the least, is #Ethics. This is a hard one to tell simply from an interview, so background checks are a must. Marc warns us heavily about people with bad ethics, much like unmotivated people, unethical people are very unlikely to change. Marc suggests picking a topic which you know really well and ask hard questions, when they lie about the answer rather than admitting they don’t know, you should avoid these liars with a ten-foot pole.
To hire the best people, it’s about #Process: the logistics of the hiring
I won’t go too deep into this part, you can read the original article for better details. But to summarize, write down your process and questions you’d like to ask during the interview. Having consistency helps you and your team to Iterate, and only by refining your process and questions you’ll get a better match between candidates and the position.
Marc also warn us about not paying enough attention to red flags during the interview or reference checks. People often downplay the answers they receive or signals during the interview. From Marc’s experience, these signals are usually right, so unless you are completely convinced, you shouldn’t hire them.
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It is not easy to get great talent, so once they come onboard, make sure to treat them well!! Getting great talent is one of the hardest part of being an early stage founder. I’ve only really covered 1/3 of the article, so I hope you’ll read the full text and take actions to improve your hiring process.
By Jack An
Analyst, AppWorks
Image by Katie White from Pixabay
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