Recruiting Rules Everything Around You Recruiters suck! On this we can all agree. You dont need to set up a honeypot to know the majority are just lurking LinkedIn and spamming software engineers for their next lottery ticket. Most people think recruiting is about “hiring talent”, but founders should be actually building acult.Now that youve raised some money Congrats! the first thing your new bosses will ask is that you “grow the team”. Weve got the future to build! And its gonna require a lot of bodies. And thats why youll fail.Recruiting isnt about filing seats. By the time most founders think about recruiting approximately 3-6 months after funding and not being able to hire anyone its too late. You need to create a solid recruiting process that reflects your unique personality and company culture, and one thats scalable and repeatable. Oh, youve already been using external recruiters? Or youve got someone doing recruiting but not delivering results. Now you have to call in a specialist to fix everything wrong with your recruiting process, do what I call catch-up-recruiting and thats a really rough road. Ive done it. And itll cost you more (time and money) for me to clean up someone elses mess.So how should you think about recruiting? Well lets go back in timeStages Of Growth1) 0 to 2 Youve got an idea and youve got a partner (or two). Most startups end up in divorce. Marry well. The core/founding team is your foundation and every subsequent hire will reflect this. This is why VCs like to fund Founders from Stanford, Harvard or MIT.2) 2 to 20 Building the base, hire all your friends! Search your natural network until its tapped out. Then go outside your comfort zone.3) 20 to 100+ Create the recruiting machine, keep it running, feed the beast. Dont let HR take over. No, its not the same thing as recruiting.You Got Recruiting ProblemsAnd I feel bad for you son. I got 99 engineers and you all want one. “Just get us one.” Thats what the emails all say. We just need one Google Engineer, one Facebook Hacker, one ex-YC Founder who almost made it and is now dead broke. If you think about recruiting one hire at a time, youll never build a proper team. There are some common pitfalls that Founders fall into, and they are:1) Hiring too slow. Talent Capital. VCs breathing down your neck. Ive never met a startup thats hiring “on plan”. Even the most popular startups with awesome teams and unlimited press mentions have trouble recruiting quickly while maintaining the highest quality that made them the hot startup in the first place.2) Hiring too fast. Scaling before youre ready. More engineers != more code shipped. Founders who brag about the size of their team are doing it wrong. More people means more burn, which requires more money, which usually means fundraising, which puts you on the hook for more hiring. Having 5 engineers in the earliest stage pre-funding doesnt actually mean youll code 5x as fast, or ship product thats 5x better. Dont grow before youre ready, but be ready to grow at all times.3) Hiring poorly. This will be the death of your startup, guaranteed.Save Us From OurselvesSo what do we do now? No ones doing recruiting right. If youre not a big company, why are you using big company recruiting? Pipeline, filters, resumes, reviews, phone screens, code challenges and interviews. Volume doesnt naturally bring quality. Once HR is involved your startup is now a “company” for better or for worse. “But Google hires the best engineers!”, youll protest. Okay, but does your startup do *anything else* exactly like Google?1) Always Be Recruiting. Its Job #1 for Founders. People join your startup because of you, not because of salary, funding, equity or perks.2) Recruiting is too important to be left to Recruiters. How many recruiters do you need? Well how many employees do you have? Its everyones job to grow the company. Give them the tools and responsibility to do so.3) Build strong teams. Strong teams get stronger over time, weak teams get weaker.Retention is half the battle in this current “war for talent”. Even your friends and Co-Founders will leave you. Make sure youre okay with that. Better yet, plan for it.招聘主宰一切我们都同意招聘人员会干一些很令人厌烦的事情。不用太多想象就可以知道，大部分的招聘人员会潜伏在LinkedIn上，不停的给工程师发骚扰信息，期待能撞大运找到合适的人选。绝大多数人认为招聘是在寻找天才，然而对于公司的创始人来讲，创建一家公司实际上是创建一个宗教。现在你得到了一些资金，接下来第一件事就是招聘人马。因为你的投资者会告诉你一个渲染过的美好未来，只有招聘更多的人，才能获得成功。而事实是，你就是这么失败的。招人可不是简单的填充空白职位在经历过3-6个月都无法成功找到合适人选后，大部分的创始人终会理解到这一点，只是已经晚了。你需要在实施招聘前就指定严格的流程以反应创始人本人的性格特点和公司文化，这些公司的内在品质需要是可扩展和可重复的。哦，你已经雇佣了一个外部招聘团队？或者你让某人行使招聘职责，但是却没有任何效果？那么好吧，你现在必须请一个专家来修正你所有在招聘中犯下的错误，这是非常痛苦的。我以前做过这样的事情，修正他人的错误将耗费更多的金钱和时间。那么你应该如何看待招聘呢？我们顺着时间一项一项看：成长阶段：1）0-2 这时你有一个主意，有了一个或两个合伙人。大部分的创业公司都以分手而告吹。俗话说的好，要嫁个好人家。创业公司的核心初创团队非常重要，而每一次找人又都会影响你的团队。这就是为什么VC们都喜欢Stanford Havard或者MIT的。2）2-20 构建基础的时候，招聘所有你的朋友，找遍你生活中的关系网络，然后再向外扩展到你有把握的圈子。3）20-100+ 简历招聘机制，保持它的正常运转以源源