How to build your dream team

Parent Post

People-related decisions are among the most consequential decisions founders make in the company-building journey.

Talent is your principal asset; hire the right people and they will find solutions to difficult problems, discover business models, recognize new opportunities, build new products, shape the company culture, and ultimately recruit other talented people.

Double-click on what someone

Double-click on what someone has done, how they think, learn, and approach challenges.

This will yield insight into how a candidate will likely perform in different situations where evolving fast and figuring things out before others is more important than static knowledge.

Deeply understand their actual accomplishments, personality traits, capabilities, and fit to the specific context that you were hiring for.

Own and run the

Own and run the process yourself

The importance of recruiting should be reflected in the time you personally allocate to it.

By meeting a wide range of candidates yourself, you will gain clarity on what you really value and what trade-offs you might need to make given the available talent pool.

Once you have clarity, leverage others to assist with process, but retain ownership of judgment/evaluation.

CompensationGetting leadership hires right

Compensation

Getting leadership hires right is priceless, especially because one great hire usually ends up making 3-5 more in quick succession.

So work extra hard to build conviction and if you ‘know’ that this is the right hire, stretch on compensation if that’s what it takes.

A clarifying question to ask yourself if you’re struggling with compensation is ‘will this person really move the needle for our company’?

Identifying and assessingRecognize the

Identifying and assessing

Recognize the phase your company is in, as this really impacts the type of people you should hire.

In thinking about what the right candidate looks like, be as specific as possible, and ask yourself “For the 10 key decisions this person is expected to make in the next 6-12 months, is s/he likely to get most of them right?”

Be paranoid and alert

Be paranoid and alert from the time a candidate accepts your offer letter to the they join.

Talented people will not easily be let go by their current employers so it’s really important to engage them throughout this period and ideally even start looping them in on evenings and weekends.

If all of this sounds painful and challenging, it is! But getting people decisions right is worth its weight in gold.

Leverage your network, especially

Leverage your network, especially your highest performing team members, to recruit.

When it’s time to expand beyond your network, complement network-driven searches with a recruiter-driven search so you can benchmark and see the full range of talent that’s out there.

Don’t hire just for what you need today.

Reference thoroughly to build

Reference thoroughly to build conviction, avoid mistakes and understand how to set a new hire up for success.

Speak to people that you know well, have experienced high-quality people, and will tell you the truth.
Know what questions to ask based on what you are looking for and your own assessment of the candidate. Tailor the questions and go off-script to really understand a candidate.
Form a holistic/360 image of the candidate by speaking with peers, managers and people she/he managed.
Don’t go looking to confirm your bias. Go for what you might have missed and be prepared to pull on threads even though you might not like what you hear.
If referencing does not support your instincts, do not hire! Let intuition lead you, but support your intuition with data.

PlanningLook into the future

Planning

Look into the future and around corners. Consider the following questions:

What are the most important things your company will need to accomplish over the next 18-24 months?
What capabilities will you need to accomplish those things?
Where are your capabilities currently strong and where are they weak?
What does that mean for the capabilities you need to build and the types of people you will need to hire?

Ask yourself what you

Ask yourself what you value in the following areas:

Personality traits like curious, hungry, collaborative, intense.
Specific domain experience like financial services, education, healthcare
Specific capabilities including problem-solving, sales, attracting talent
What someone has seen like rapid scaling, driving monetization, business model discovery etc