Having the resolve to hire the top 1% of talent is only part of the equation. Your ability to identify them is another part. Doing this well requires a carefully crafted interview process that allows you to separate the good from the great. Fortunately, decades of research on the topic offer definitive guidance on what works best and what does not. This chapter highlights these best practices and pinpoints common mistakes to avoid.
If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.
The first step in the hiring process is to clearly define what you're looking for. Put together simple rubric to describe it in writing and clarify the ambiguous. The rubric is your north star anchoring your evaluation on what’s important and guiding your interview team on what a perfect candidates looks like. A good rubric allows you to score each candidate you interview and rank-order them. If you've interviewed 10 candidates, it would help you determine who's your number one, number two, and so on. If the top candidates exceed the threshold scores on the rubric, it gives you a strong signal that they are potentially a great hire.
Here is what a sample rubric for a Founding Engineer could look like:
| Experience/Skills | Competencies | |
|---|---|---|
| Must Have | Experience building production web applications end-to-end |
Experience in early stage startups of 1-20 people
Has 5+ years in the field | Operates with initiative and autonomy
Strives with ambiguity
Detail oriented and asks good questions
Excellent communication skills
Cross-functional collaboration
Excited about working in person
Works until completion |
| Nice to Have | Experience with AWS
Experience with Python
Experience with Vue.js | Leadership mentality
Passion for our your industry
|
Another advantage of having a rubric is the clarity it brings to designing your interview process. The interview process itself is just a way of determining whether a candidate is right for the role you have. The rubric will help you remove the uncertainty and make an informed decision.
Each stage and each question of the interview process should get you closer to coming up with accurate scores in various parts of your rubric. If you're looking for someone with 5 years of experience, you can just ask that. If you're looking to evaluate someone's integrity, asking that won't do. Instead, you can come up with a series of topics you could discuss so that by the end, you have a good enough idea whether the person has integrity.
With this rubric, the next step is to craft the interview process that allows us to evaluate every item on the list.
With the rubric done the next step is to craft the interview process that allows us to evaluate every item on the list.
In his book “Work Rules”, former Google Chief HR, Laszlo Bock, candidly notes that many interviews are a waste of time, with common interview questions you'd find on the internet being completely worthless:
The challenge with them is that they don't evaluate anything in particular. At best, they are conversation starters that let you connect with the person and learn what they think about themselves, offering no insight into their fit for the role.
Structured Interviews are a systematic approach to interviewing designed to evaluate every candidate consistently, assessing how well they score on a pre-determined hiring rubric. The process may vary based on the role, but it often comes down to the following interview steps: