I love the stuff that the First Round Capital guys put on their blog, and their most recent piece about Survey Monkey founder Dave Goldberg is no exception. From the very beginning, we’ve been preaching about a lot of what was said. My favorite quote from that story:
Corporate culture isn’t your company’s ping-pong table. It’s not your catered lunch. It’s not the posters you tape onto the office walls. A real culture is the cumulative effect of productive relationships among employees.
To build a culture like this Goldberg (smart guy) takes folks who are smart, talented, and motivated, and trains them on company time and on the company dime. Sound familiar? He chooses fit over credentials, and even notes that his worst hiring decisions have come from hiring people with the right skills but the wrong personality. He’s not alone. Tony Hsieh hires for culture too, and says that bad hires early on have probably cost his company $100M.
So how can you hire for culture, and more importantly, how can you avoid that terrible hire that costs your company time and money?
Build a network. Then hire from it.
We’ve been involved in the tech careers industry for a few years now, and if there’s one thing we know, it’s that you’ll (always) find your best hires from personal networks and referrals. They’re just perfect. Company employs developer A, who is friends with developer B. Developer A really likes his job, and he thinks developer B would be a great fit, so he encourages the company to hire her. What’s great about all this is that developer A, whom the company already presumably loves, is the screen for developer B, and developer A, as a friend of developer B, is the screen for the company too. Developer A is the best pre-screener imaginable, because he does it from both sides. Perfect.
Since this path is so effective, we recommend you do everything you can to nurture it. Start a referral program if you don’t have one already, and for goodness sake make it easy for employees to use. We’ve seen way too many clients who have a referral program but don’t make it very easy for their employees to use. Consider making landing pages for each of your job openings so that it’s easy for your employees to share on their social networks without too much work. Do stuff to build your network. Send your developers to conferences if they want to go. Host meetups in your office. Buy pizza for the local user groups. All of these things go a long way toward building a network of “known entities” that you can tap into when you’re ready to hire.
Recruiting strangers? Work with them first.
At some point, the networks start to wear a bit thin and you have to recruit folks with whom you’re less familiar. This is risky business. The problem is that the traditional method for hiring these folks–the interview–turns out to be a pretty shitty way to figure out if someone fits culturally. The problem is that it’s just not a genuine environment. Everyone is on their best behavior, and the technical questions are contrived, and the behavioral questions are contrived, and you just can’t get a really feeling for personality.
What beats an interview, hands down, is working with candidates our in the real world. You figure out technical ability, and personality, and fit, and none of it is fake or contrived. So how can you do that? You can hire interns. It’s expensive, but you’ll avoid making the wrong hire decision. You can go to or conduct your own hackathon. Give people the chance to work with your technology, or with their own technology, and work right alongside them for a weekend. Do you have an API? Offer tutorials or have a contest. Get to know the people who are using it. Present at a local meetup. Walk folks through some application, and then follow-up afterward.
All of these things (except maybe hiring interns) help you build a network and give you the chance to work with folks before you hire them. Awesome right?
You knew this was coming, right?
Kufikia lets you do it all. It’s a great way to expand your network. As a cohort sponsor, you’ll work with up to 30 different developers, many with backgrounds that are slightly different than yours. And Kufikia also gives you the chance to work right alongside potential hires. You won’t do it for a long time–just an hour each week–but when you do, it won’t be contrived. It’ll be as close as you can get to the real world without actually hiring someone.
And no, not all participants will be looking for jobs, but enough will, and you’ll get the unique opportunity to work with them and recruit the ones who really fit your organization. It’s early, but so far the vast majority of our program applicants say there’s at least a small chance (25% or better) that they’ll take new jobs in their own region from a company sponsor that they really like. More than 60% say those chances are better than 50/50.
Interested in Kufikia and want to be a sponsor? Sign up here. Want to participate? Sign up here.