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  • What are the important attributes to assess in an interview?
  • Working with recruiters

I find recruiters pretty annoying - the key is finding the non-condescending ones that believe their own LinkedIn posts.

Realistic fees are 10-20%. Anything quoted over 20% is disrespectful, so ignore that.

  • Develop an assessment process.
  • No twat policy
  • Dealing with poor performance

283 28th of july onwards Thursday 28th - shocks changed on Mondeo

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Interview processes for early stage SaaS roles

The main objective from any technical hiring process is to find the best fit from the talent pool, ensure that they have the right skills and attitude for your startup, whilst also being respectful to the candidates time and not interogating them.

Don't be a dick​

This is the golden rule with interviewing. Don't be that interviewer with the unanswerable questions. Any experienced engineer will have a story to tell of some narcatist interviewer who wanted to inflate their ego by setting some technical question that only they could answer.

When engaging in the recruitment process, it's crucial to approach it with sensitivity and inclusivity. Recognize that the decisions you make have a personal impact on individuals, as you assess them based on various criteria. It can be challenging not to take this personally. Your ultimate goal is to hire individuals who can effectively drive progress with a good balance of speed and quality. However, it's important to ensure that the hiring process does not cause distress to the candidates you choose not to hire. Keep in mind that the startup community is relatively small, and word spreads quickly. Therefore, it's essential to treat candidates respectfully, just as you would want to be treated if you were in their position and facing rejection. It's crucial to be mindful that many people may be actively seeking employment due to recent layoffs, which can lead to heightened stress levels and sensitivities.

Interviewing is a deeply personal and stressful thing, and you should always work towards making it as smooth and positive as possible. Whilst that particular candidate may not be a good fit for the role, their best friend may be, and word gets around. Last thing you want is a negative Glassdoor review.

I've only ever canned an interview midway through, and that was when someone used offensive language to describe people who require accessible websites, and they found accessibility boring. I told them that it was a good point to wrap the interview, as this would not be a great fit for them.

A model interview process

Decide on your process early on. Think of a colleague/friend who you would love to have on the team, and see if they are willing to role play your interview process with you. Assuming it is someone you have worked with before, and you know they'd be a great fit, you need to make sure your process gets the best from them.

Ideal is three stages:

  • Screening call - quick intro, does it seem like you'd want to work together?
  • Technical stage - a programming problem, that's very typical of the type of work you do on a daily basis. If front end dev, built a simple react app that gets data from an API and render that. This assesses the basic, day-to-day one

What to look for

Red Flags

  • Candidate fell out with previous companies.
  • Late for interview.
  • Not looked into what you do as a company.
  • Don't be blinded by very specific experience. We hired an engineer that had been working with the exact API we were integrating with. Great. Except they worked slowly, and incompotently with the API we were integratng with.

Test it - think

Make sure you