Urgent Speed

Building Your Start-up Team: STEM is now STEMP

I generally prefer to hire super-smart Scientists, Technologists, Engineers and Mathematicians (STEM).  Start-ups are all about having and then implementing great ideas - not just one “big idea” but hundreds of innovations, deployed in rapid iterations to create real competitive advantage and customer value.  Entrenched players usually have bigger brands and deeper pockets, so a start-up needs to use intellect and hard work to win.  I’ve found STEM graduates are well-prepared for the hard work and intellectual rigor of growing a startup.

Two years ago, however, I hired a Philosophy major.  As it turns out, it could not have worked out better.  Our resident Philosophy major was no stranger to hard work and analytical rigor.

My secret’s out of the bag: Maybe I’m on to a start-up hiring trend.  Samidh Chakrabarti points out that several entrepreneurs I respect have Philosophy degrees, including Amol Sarva (Peek), Ken Reisman (TLists), Damon Horowitz (Aardvark), Patrick Byrne (Overstock), Josh Snyder (Treeline Labs), and Chris Dixon (Hunch). I can’t help but agree that students of Philosophy have many of the characteristics needed to succeed in an entrepreneurial environment.  It’s great to see that these philosophical founders have already blazed a path.  Maybe they can teach me a thing or two about where to find talent that has the desire, discipline and drive to start a company one day.

Therefore, this year, as we look for top new graduates to join our teams, we’ll be interviewing Philosophy majors in addition to the usual Science, Technology, Engineering and Math majors.  

BTW: If you’re about to graduate from a top school with a STEMP degree, and would like to try your hand in the entrepreneurial world, please call me or email me your resume.

Top 50 Job Boards for Start-ups

There is nothing more important for a tech start-up than attracting great employees.  As the economy slows, it becomes slightly easier to attract exceptional talent which is great news for start-ups. 

The first dozen hires are usually the most critical because this core group will set the culture for the next 100 hires.  A hiring mistake early on can set your start-up back months (or worst).   When possible this core group should be recruited from existing relationships. Ideally people you have worked with, or have worked directly with people you respect and trust.   The problem with this approach is it limits your choices to a much smaller pool of talent, and does not scale as your company grows.  That’s where job boards can be handy, especially in a shrinking economy.

As a general rule of thumb I find that the best employees are usually already happily employed.  In a growing economy, that means a founder must be super persuasive to get them to join his/her start-up.  But in a shrinking economy, like the one we are experiencing now, even capable talent is hitting the job boards.

2005
First Choice – Candidates I have worked with, or have worked with close associates
Second Choice – Candidates currently happily employed elsewhere
Third Choice – Candidates from Job Boards

2009
First Choice – Candidates I have worked with, or have worked with close associates
Second Choice – Candidates from Job Boards
Third Choice – Candidates currently happily employed elsewhere

I have compiled a list of the top 50 Job Boards, ranked by traffic.  A mix of well written job postings can yield hundreds of resumes and a handful of viable candidates.

1        Craigslist        http://www.craigslist.com    40,500,000
2        Monster        http://www.monster.com    27,000,000
3        CareerBuilder    http://www.careerbuilder.com    12,600,000
4        LinkedIN    http://www.linkedin.com    7,800,000
5        Indeed    http://www.indeed.com    7,000,000
6        Simply Hired    http://www.simplyhired.com    5,100,000
7        Snag a Job    http://www.snagajob.com    3,600,000
8        USAJOBS    http://www.usajobs.gov    2,800,000
9        EmploymentGuide.com    http://www.employmentguide.com   1,200,000
10        The Ladders    http://www.theladders.com    1,000,000
11        Beyond    http://www.beyond.com    982,000
12        Top USA Jobs    http://www.topusajobs.com    867,000
13        Jobs.com    http://jobs.com    864,000
14        Dice.com    http://www.dice.com    848,000
15        JobFox    http://www.jobfox.com/    670,000
16        jobster.com    http://www.jobster.com    630,000
17        thingamajob.com    http://www.thingamajob.com    565,000
18        Vault    http://www.vault.com    556,000
19        JobIrn    http://www.jobirn.com    517,000
20        JobCentral    http://www.jobcentral.com    476,000
21        Yahoo! HotJobs    http://www.hotjobs.com    418,000
22        Job Bank USA    http://www.jobbankusa.com    416,000
23        FlipDog    http://www.flipdog.com    370,000
24        HigherEdJob    http://www.higheredjobs.com    297,000
25        Net-Temps    http://www.net-temps.com    264,000
26        GoJobs.com    http://gojobs.com    263,000
27        NationJob Network    http://www.nationjob.com    231,000
28        JuJu.com    http://www.juju.com    220,000
29        America's Job Bank    http://www.jobbankinfo.org    207,000
30        sologig    http://www.sologig.com   186,000
31        brightfuse.com    http://www.brightfuse.com    163,000
32        Job Target    http://www.jobtarget.com    155,000
33        xing.com - Europe    http://www.xing.com    136,000
34        jobscore.com    http://jobscore.com/corp    130,000
35        Prohire.com    http://jobs.prohire.com    112,000
36        College Recruiter    http://www.collegerecruiter.com    98,000
37        climber.com    http://www.climber.com    93,000
38        Work Tree    http://worktree.com    74,000
39        yotify.com - linkedin alerts    http://yotify.com    73,000
40        6figurejobs.com    http://6figurejobs.com    72,000
41        Employment911.com    http://www.employment911.com    71,000
42        Jobthread    http://www.jobthread.com    71,000
43        CareerSite.com    http://www.careersite.com    65,000
44        Jobs2web.com    http://www.jobs2web.com    62,000
45        Trovix    http://www.trovix.com    62,000
46        smuz.com    http://smuz.com    59,000
47        VisualCV    http://www.visualcv.com    56,000
48        CareerShop.com    http://www.careershop.com    51,000
49        The Interview Exchange    http://www.interviewexchange.com    51,000
50        Real Match    http://www.realmatch.com    50,000

Ramping Sales in a Startup

Stu Phillips had an interesting post on Ramping sales in a start-up. This may be the best post I have read since Ed Sim talked about sales boulders.

Some of Stu’s beliefs are:

+ Hire a set of experienced sales executives who are good at breaking into new markets. 

+ These folks cope well with a missionary sell and are adept at helping the company match the product/service to what the prospect needs. 

+ Even a modest sized sales force will burn through $1.5-2M a year. 

+ This gets very painful when the revenue ramps slowly (it always ramps slower than you want!).

+ Building a direct sales force is also harder and more expensive than it was in the past.

+ It's very hard to find young, up-and-coming sales people in their late 20's or early 30's, Because the classic training grounds for those kinds of people were IBM, HP, Cisco etc. who have all become primarily distribution sales models.

+ As a result, you find sales people who have been doing the same job for a long time.  They don't do well with missionary sales and many just aren't that hungry.

I agree with Stu’s idea that “The most challenging phase in the life of an early company is ramping sales.  It's the time where the rubber meets the road”

Urgent Career has left the Launch Pad

So today we announced what we have been working on for the last 6 months: Urgent Career.  Our team is attempting to pioneer the use of linguistic technology to match sales professionals with compatible career opportunities.  Basically, we record and transcribe a phone call in which a candidate discusses his or her interests, experience and aspirations.  Then our technology digitally deconstructs the conversation into thousands of data points that are algorithmically measured on 32 key dimensions of sales compatibility.   

We put together a video to better explain the service.

The business model is simple: the service is free to Sales, Business Development and Account Management Professionals; corporate clients pay 20% of the base for each hire.  I wanted to make sure the service was performance based, because I wanted the decision to be a no-brainier for CEOs and Sales Managers.  That way we can get the best companies in the system, and concentrate our efforts on finding great sales talent.  We still have a ton of work to do, but I am proud to say, many of companies that participated in our Alpha release have already hired candidates we identified.

The Best Kept Secret in Business: More Salespeople

Most Managers and Investors understand the importance of having a great technology team, killer product, hot market and solid margins, but again and again I am amazed and how scaling the sales force never seems to be a top priority.

The best kept secret in business is simple:

        More sales people usually sell more

Turns out, there is a strong correlation between the number of people making sales calls and the amount of business won. 

This simple fact is often overlooked in growth stage companies because:

- Early in a company’s life, it is often unclear exactly what kind of sales person will be most effective, so there is a tendency to delay (retard) growth in hopes that an understanding will magically happen.

- New Sales hires burn valuable cash as they take time to learn the product and/or value proposition

- Statistically some sales hires will fail to carry their own weight, further burning precious cash

- New hires drain precious management time as they try to learn the ropes

- Early stage growth companies typically don’t yet have extensive sales support infrastructure, so new hires today will likely not ramp as quickly as new hires next year, so there is a tenancy to delay.

These are all valuable considerations --- but that does not change the fact that:

         More sales people usually sell more!

It's the destiny of math.  Five sales people calling on ten of the Fortune 50 will always beat one sales person calling on all 50.  For larger markets, 10 sales people calling on 250 accounts each a week will almost always out-perform 5 salespeople.    Think about it: are you more likely to get a sale if you talk to 2,500 prospects or 1,259?

My Philosophy is simple: Expanding the sales force is always a urgent priority.   

Please don’t delay the revenue, market share, and most important, learning, that will eventually come from a larger sales team.   

But a word of caution….. It is very, very hard to grow a sales team by more than 100%.  Doubling the team can maintain the culture, but more than that at a given time and you risk completely changing the culture of the company.

Cogmap the Org Chart Wiki - Better Enterprise Sales/Partnering?

This week I saw Brent Halliburton demo Cogmap at the NY Tech Meetup.  Brent has built a wiki for corporate organization charts.  I wish him luck.  Over the years, I have wasted months trying to figure-out who to sell to (or partner with) in large corporations. 

Wasting time trying to figure out who to deal with in a large corporation can kill a start-up!   

In the early days of Mimeo.com, it took months to find the right contacts at HP, despite the fact that they had already invested millions of dollars in our company.  

There is an obvious need for accurate organizational charts for Entrepreneurs, Recruiters, Sales and Business Development professionals.  Surprisingly, the need for this information inside big companies  themselves. 

It is not uncommon for senior level executives to disagree or even have no idea how their company is organized. I guess not all executives are political animals, but it seems to me an executive trying to build a career would want to understand the lay of the land.

At Microsoft, IBM and UPS I "discovered" entire buildings unknown to most of the organization.  But this problem is not new; my grandfather told me in the 1950s there was a 12 person team at RCA that collected checks for a year before anyone realized they were lost in a reorganization. 

Cogmap will face all the same quality challenges that any wiki face, but if they can get it working it seems like the perfect complement to Zoominfo (API anyone?)

I hope Cogmap works; then maybe Entrepreneurs can better target the right person in large corporations, and corporate executives can spend less time listening to ill targeted pitches.

Obsessive about Hiring – Start-up Tip

If you are obsessive about finding, attracting and recruiting the best talent for your startup you might like Avoid Hiring the Master of Interviews, by Martin Yate. Basically, the author asserts that the interview process should include some actual work. I must agree, it’s amazing how much you can learn about a candidate by jointly attacking a problem via computer or whiteboard. We have rejected several candidates that “cracked” under the simple task of working side by side for an hour or two.

Microsoft in the early 90’s perfected this technique by combining it with the casual interaction. I was interviewing for a position out of college and was asked to wait in a random room with coffee and donuts (not an interview room). An employee came in and the conversation went something like this:

Microsoft Guy: “Coffee and donuts - must be interview day.”

Me: “Yes, there are a bunch of us visiting from campus.”

Microsoft Guy: “Oh, great. I am Tom. I am figuring out how to price the corporate version of excel.  Did you take Economics?”

Me: “Nice to meet you. I’m Jeff, and yes I took some Economics.”

I thought it odd that he would ask me, but I quickly went into problem solving mode, asking questions, sharing ideas and before long marking up a previously clean white board.

At the end of the day, I was told he was a senior executive and that conversation was actually a critical part of my interview. A week later I was offered a job. Although I did not take it, I learned the importance of “engineering the recruiting process”.

One of an entrepreneur’s most important jobs is engineering processes to grow the business, and as I’ve discussed before, I strongly believe that hiring great people is key to a startup’s success. Though an entrepreneur may personally have a great instinct for hiring, that “raw gut feel” hiring method doesn’t scale. Entrepreneurs must put processes in place that will outlive their hands-on involvement because:

• Entrepreneurs don’t scale
• Entrepreneurs get busy, (i.e. getting customers, engineering product)
• Start-ups should be doing lots of interviews for each candidate they actually hire
• Later stage start-up may be hiring hundred of hires each year

Microsoft once took recruiting very seriously; my sense is that lately they have been off their game. When was the last time you saw press about a technology company going overboard to get great talent? I would bet the article was about D.E. Shaw, SAC or Google.

To learn more about Microsoft 90’s recruiting approach you can read; The Microsoft Way: The Real Story of How the Company Outsmarts Its Competition, by Randall E. Stross.

For more generic advice on “engineering the recruiting process” I recommend; Hiring the Best: Manager's Guide to Effective Interviewing and Recruiting, by Martin Yate and Martin John

Startups Need Energetic Team-players

Anyone who has ever worked with me knows I am passionate about hiring only the best.  I don’t understand how you can expect to double revenue every 12-18 months, year-after-year, with anyone less than superstars.  Besides, one of the main points of starting your own business is that you get to work with great people!

Joel Spolsky from JoelonSoftware recently had some good posts on recruiting that I wanted to share with my current and future co-workers.  Joel published a trilogy:

1. Sorting Resumes
2. The Phone Screen
3. The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing

I usually agree with Joel, because we share the same strategy: hire the best programmers possible and make sure they have all the tools they need to succeed.  Overall the posts were good, but I was surprised by how much I disagree with two aspects of his in person interviewing tactics. 

Joel says:

I have heard of companies that allow any interviewer to reject a candidate. This strikes me as a little bit too aggressive; I would probably allow any senior person to reject a candidate but would not reject someone just because one junior person didn’t like them.

I completely disagree... be aggressive...  if one person does not think the candidate is a fit, don’t hire them.  Your staff is smart, trust their judgment.  I have seen great developer candidates treat junior staff poorly -- this is a problem.   If anyone on your team believes that a candidate won’t excel in your company, immediately show them the door.  In fairness to them, their time is valuable (and so is yours).

At the companies I start, I always make sure a very junior person is part of the recruiting process.  As a Founder or Board Member, I get the candidate’s “best behavior.”  To build a great team, you need to see how people will interact with others who are more junior and at the same level as well as with those who are more senior.

Joel also says:

Don’t try to interview a bunch of people at the same time. It’s just not fair. Each interview should consist of one interviewer and one interviewee, in a room with a door that closes and a whiteboard.

I disagree: make sure that at least one interview is in a group.  I have seen candidates that are great charmers one-on-one, but get them in a group and their communication and social skills -- and sometimes even their analytical abilities -- blow up.  Good one-on-one interviewees are able to read the interviewer and adjust their answers and how they present themselves accordingly.  In a group, candidates act more as they naturally would as part of a team.

Also, I strongly believe in bringing a candidate in to interview multiple times.  Interviewing a bunch of people on the same day can show you how someone will act under pressure.  Life at a start-up is fast-paced and if someone is thrown by that, they probably aren’t a good fit – at least for my companies.

Why am I so committed to process? Because as Joel so eloquently points out:

It’s because it is much, much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate. A bad candidate will cost a lot of money and effort and waste other people’s time fixing all their bugs….. Bad employees demoralize the good employees.

I look forward to more posts from Joel about recruiting, although he may not always be right, we can count on Joel to keep us thinking about the all important process of recruiting.