Startup Culture – Hire Slow

Today, I’ll kick off a detailed discussion of the Corporate Culture of AccelerEyes. No culture gets very far without attention to the people that join the company. So we start off our culture list with, “Hire Slow.”

Note that this is not listed in the more grammatically correct form “Hire Slowly” because it has a follow-on corollary of “Fire Fast” (to be discussed tomorrow).  The mantra “Hire slow; Fire fast” has been beaten to death in other blogs.  Today I just want to share how we “Hire Slow” at AccelerEyes:

• We only hire top technical talent. This is not just a hand-wavy statement. We literally require all engineers to pass through rigorous technical screening with parallel programming exercises and code reviews before they are even considered for an interview. Less than ten percent of candidates that undertake the exercises actually pass technical muster to move forward.
• The only in-person interviews we do are to assess personality compatibility and culture alignment. If there is any doubt at this stage, we do not proceed with the candidate. All interviewers must be in agreement to proceed with a candidate.

Shortly after our first product sale in Jan 2009, I determined to hire engineers to help grow our product. At the time, we had less than $20,000 in the bank. Here’s how the hiring experience went for our first batch of employees:

• We decided to hire above our ability to pay. In other words, we didn’t have enough money in the bank to justify growing the head count with any stability. But, we were upfront with the candidates, letting them know that this was a startup. All of our butts were on the line, not just theirs.
• We put up flyers in the Georgia Tech College of Computing building and received over 30 applications in just a few days.
• I personally interviewed over 30 candidates. My co-founders were all busy with other commitments, so I did almost all the vetting myself. That was a mistake. We did not have a good hiring process at the time.
• We were only interested in people that would take a low salary ($12/hr) in return for increased equity stakes.
• We decided to make 5 offers thinking that only 1 or 2 would actually be willing to take the low salary.
• All 5 accepted! One of the big benefits of starting a business during a downturn is the ability to find people willing to work with startup wages.
• Since all 5 accepted, we had to tactfully figure out how to whittle down to the 2 that we could afford.
• Sales took off and we ended up hiring even more people shortly after this initial batch.

Lessons learned from that early experience:

• Don’t send out offer letters unless you’re willing to onboard everyone.
• Sometimes you have to hire into the dark. Just be upfront with the candidates about the riskiness (and potential upside) of a startup company.
• Invest more in the early hiring process. Do more than rely on resumes and soft interviews. Find out if they can execute.

When possible, it is great to do internships or other short-term projects with people to help deepen the vetting process. Internships and contract work have since worked well for us, and we’ve onboarded really awesome people. This is the single greatest part about working at AccelerEyes.

What processes do you use to hire? Do you have ways to evaluate developer competencies?

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