4-min read

Techstars Talent hosted a workshop with Nick Cromydas, CEO and co-founder of Hunt Club, to talk about the top five mistakes founders make when hiring and how to solve them. If you missed the workshop, you can watch the recording here.

Learn more about the Techstars Talent partnership with Hunt Club.  

Mistake #1: Failing to assess candidates against your functional needs.

Solution: Identify your actual needs by using one of two frameworks: Leverage-based hiring, or needs-based hiring.

• Leverage-based hiring is a model best for Seed and Series-A stage companies. The activity entails mapping your team’s strengths and charting the monthly work being done by your team—including the hours spent on a task and the required “skill-level.” From there you can identify the low-skill, high time-consuming tasks and choose to hire new employees to buy-back time in those areas. You can also use this framework to identify skill gaps and choose to hire new employees who will balance the weaknesses of your team. 

• The needs-based hiring model can be applied across any company stage and is arguably the most common method for early-stage hiring. Nick recommends identifying skill gaps in your business by looking at similar companies in similar industries who are one stage bigger than yours. If you’re a Seed stage company, look to a Series-A stage company that you respect in your industry and draw parallels between your talent. A great way to fill some of those gaps is to meet with leaders who have scaled these types of companies and have a candid conversation about mistakes and pitfalls that you might avoid.  You might also use this approach to define and prioritize your business objectives that are necessary for you to hit the next fundraising cycle and look for talent to help you fill those gaps. 

Mistake #2: Hiring for pedigree over culture.

Solution: Assess candidates on capability, values alignment, and passion. These qualities will blow pedigree out of the water in a growth-stage environment. 

• Nick emphasizes that building relationships should be a core competency across your organization and not just among the founding-team. Your staff is your largest and best resource for making connections and advocating for your company. It’s your role as a founder or manager to empower the team to bring those relationships to the table and facilitate connections. 

Mistake #3: Not seeing there are multiple ways to solve a functional hiring problem.

Solution: Get creative! Think about how you can separate functions or outsource some of the immediate work that needs to be done. 

• This is where network-effects come in handy. Nick points out that just because you want to hire your dream CMO, it doesn’t mean you can’t level up by hiring a key customer acquisition manager in the meantime. If you don’t have the perfect person to fill your role, there is more than one way to accomplish what you need. 

• Something else to keep in mind as you scale is how you’re communicating with your network, specifically your investors. Nick recommends making a plan to send weekly, biweekly, or even monthly updates about your business and include asks for help. Make your updates honest, transparent and interesting to read—you know, like you’re talking to other human beings. Help them understand what you really need and why you need it and you’ll start to see the give-to-get model play out naturally. The more engaged they are, the more active they will be to help you out. 

Mistake #4: Not educating candidates.

Solution: Remember to get the candidate interested in your company first and foremost and give them an outlet to continuously learn about your business after you connect.   

• People typically lose interest in opportunities because they don’t know enough about them. Nick recommends creating an outlet that gives candidates a chance to learn about your business over days, weeks or months. And it doesn’t have to be complex, it can be a simple, free employer branding page on LinkedIn or Glassdoor. 

• Most people won’t turn down something they thoroughly understand and feel interested in. The challenge is when founders get excited about a great candidate and they jump to making an offer too soon. It’s vital to educate the candidate both about your company - what your growth plan is, the traction in the market, etc.—and about the role—what the responsibilities are, what does success look like, etc. so that they feel the right amount of comfort when you make an offer. 

Mistake #5: Lingering on a hiring decision.

Solution: Deliver an exceptional candidate experience from start to close. 

• Nick outlined several steps to delivering an exceptional experience from start to close including: drop your ego, know the role, stick to a schedule, be transparent, and several more. The biggest takeaway here is to remember that every candidate in your process should be weighted equally. Nick refers to this as “resisting gravity” and it means that you shouldn’t only focus on the top 1 - 2 candidates who have the highest probability of getting hired. Focusing all your efforts on those candidates creates the risk that you’re losing other candidates who might be a better fit culturally or otherwise by not giving them the same attention. 

The final and most important takeaway is to say “thank you” to every candidate you interact with. Nick emphasizes that it’s vital to thank candidates no matter what outcome they had because they invested their time into learning about your company. And you never know which candidates may come back to you in a few months. 

Learn more about the Techstars Talent partnership with Hunt Club.   

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