A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Back in the early 1980s when there were no cellphones, no email, no WWW and Apple was the hot young company with the great perks a friend of mine interviewed with them.
She was a very talented programmer and Apple wanted her badly.
When I asked her how it went she said it was the dumbest interview she had ever had.
All the manager talked about was how “cool it was to work there” and “the great perks, like the group’s own foosball table” and how much money she would make her and on and on about the stock.
While all that was true, what the manager didn’t spend much time on was the work itself, what she would do, what she could learn, what value she brought and what her career path might look like.
In other words, she was looking for substance and the manager spent almost the entire interview on fluff.
She said he was very surprised when she turned down the offer.
I know it wasn’t that she was female, because I knew many guys who had similar interviews.
And it wasn’t just that manager.
It happened over and over because the perks and stock were constantly spotlighted in the media, like Google and Facebook today, although Apple is the granddaddy of cool perks culture, and the people who worked there couldn’t believe anyone would turn down a chance to join.
The lesson here is that focusing an interview on what the media (real and social) finds noteworthy is not necessarily what attracts people and may cost you real talent.
Michael Cascio, a former executive at the National Geographic Channel, A&E and Animal Planet, who now runs M&C Media, has a favorite interview question.
Early on he asks, “What did you do in the summers during college and high school?”
Not a question most candidates are expecting, but one that stems from Cascio’s personal experience.
He worked two summers as a janitor at the Wolf Trap event venue while he was getting his MBA.
You might not expect that would be a defining experience for a “middle-class college kid headed for a white-collar life,” but it was.
Cascio says it was in that job that he learned the basics of a great career and it was his janitorial boss who gave him the best career advice.
The basics:
You have to show up every day, and on time. You have to appreciate everyone who works around you. You should acknowledge — and learn to deal with — the pecking order in the working world. You have to exert yourself in ways you may not have learned in school. And you often have to do things that have nothing — and everything — to do with your career and your life ahead.
The best advice:
“Never turn down a chance to take on more responsibility.”
The point is that it’s not just about what candidates have done, but what they learned from the experience that matters—no matter what it was.
Why would investors buy illiquid stock in a company with no revenues?
What does knowing how many piano tuners there are in the world have to do with being a productive contributor?
There was a time when both these scenarios would have been greeted with you’ve-got-to-be-kidding laughter, but times have changed.
Cynk’s valuation is the result of its claim to sell introductions to famous people.
The interview questions were Google’s, and, as we all know, Google only does smart stuff.
These examples prove that jumping on the wagon to avoid missing out or because an idea/action is sourced from/endorsed by a name brand isn’t always a smart way to go.
Blind stupidity is best avoided through individual, critical thinking.
In other words, that’s the best way to avoid being dressed like the emperor.
Sales people present their product as the solution to customers’ “problems/pain”.
As a candidate you should do both.
The smartest candidates recognize this and position themselves as high-value solutions that will make the manager look good to the higher-ups.
Steve Blank’s video explains how to identify and evaluate the value proposition of your product or service, but with very little tweaking you can apply it to yourself.
Candidates who focus primarily on what the company will do for them a la compensation, stock, benefits, promotions, etc., will miss many of the best opportunities, because managers see that attitude as a form of narcissism.
In other words, managers have problems and hire the best solution, i.e., candidate, to solve them.
Or to paraphrase JFK, think not what the manager/company can do for you, but what you can do for the manager/company.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
Ask any recruiter or manager who has been around for awhile and they’ll tell you there is only one guarantee when it comes to talent: supply and demand are always at odds.
The danger is highest for those to whom hiring is newest and founders can be especially vulnerable.
Obviously, founders and others in a startup are excited and high on what they are creating or they wouldn’t be there.
And therein lays the danger.
In the heat of competition from other startups and the excitement of converting the candidate to their vision interviewers forget or avoid asking certain questions.
Worse, if the candidate is super-hot or possesses badly needed skills interviewers often avoid asking anything that might spoil the deal or turn the candidate off.
But it is of little use to hire even extraordinary talent if they don’t stay or bring in someone who will trash the culture and tear the team apart.
Which questions are most often ignored?
The tough questions, which are, by definition, any question to which you don’t want to hear the answer.
Simply stated, tough questions are the ones that bring a negative answer when you want a positive one and vice versa—in effect killing the deal.
Here are some sample tough questions and their potentially deal-killing answers:
Q: Does the project turn you on?
A: Not particularly.
Q: Then why are you here?
A: I heard I could make a lot of money and get a ton of stock options.
Q: What do you find attractive about the position?
A: The perks are awesome.
Q: Do you like our location?
A: Well, it’s about an hour from where I live.
Q: How soon after accepting can you start?
A: I’m in the middle of a project and would have to finish, and I’d like to take a couple of weeks off—say, about three or four months.
Money questions are often a minefield.
Q: What kind of compensation package do you want?
A: Well, I just got a raise, a promotion, and a large stock grant and currently I have six weeks of vacation, and I’d like to improve on that.
Q: Our salary range goes to $100,000.
A: Oh, I’m currently making 95 and have a review due in a couple of weeks.
The important thing to keep in mind about tough questions is that if the response kills the deal or raises serious red flags you are better off to know it sooner rather than later, before you spend time crafting an offer or having to contend with a hire who damages the company.
There are other important benefits from asking though questions.
Bringing potential problems out in the open gives you the opportunity to solve them, but first you have to identify them.
Finally, the discussion itself is valuable.
You learn more about a person’s priorities, ethical structure, style, and personality when discussing difficulties and solving them is the beginning of the bond that is the basis for the most productive relationships.
When people mess up they have one of two reactions, guilt or shame.
What is important to understand is that they neither the same nor is one the flip side of the other.
Whereas someone who feels guilty feels bad about a specific mistake and wants to make amends, a person who’s ashamed of a mistake feels bad about himself or herself and shrinks away from the error.
In other words, guilt embraces and focuses on fixing whatever, whereas shame runs away and hides.
This is important to you because in both controlled experiments and real-world feedback the guilt prone tend to have more initiative, AKA leadership.
In all the groups tested, the people who were most likely to be judged by others as the group’s leaders tended to be the same ones who had scored highest in guilt proneness. Not only that, but guilt proneness predicted emerging leadership even more than did extraversion,
As a manager, no matter your level, it is important to remember that everybody makes mistakes, causes errors or just plain screws up.
When interviewing, learning about mistakes, errors and screw-ups along with reactions and subsequent actions is often more important than knowing what candidates did correctly or their greatest strengths.
Initiative is one of the most valuable components of MAP and it’s difficult to evaluate when interviewing; after all, candidates are unlikely to say they don’t have any.
And that is why smart mangers hire MAP, not skills.
What extracurricular activities do you look for in your entry level candidates?
Too many mangers chess team means a thinker/problem solver, debate team assumes good verbal and written skills, captain of anything indicates a leader.
Many managers would write that off as irrelevant at best and valueless at the least, unless it was an agriculture-related position.
Not so fast.
Consider Gamaliel Rizzo, an apartment dweller from Brooklyn who is studying to become a doctor. He says he spent more time honing skills like public speaking and developing business budgets than learning about farming.
“What amazes me is the degree to which they have made themselves relevant when by all expectations they should have simply ceased to exist.” –Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, historian at Iowa State University.
And it’s not just in the heartland that the FAA is thriving.
About 70 percent of its members live in rural areas, and 19 percent live in small towns. The fastest growing segment, however, is in urban and suburban areas, now making up 10 percent of the membership.
So what’s the take away on this?
If you want the unusual, look for the unusual.
If you want to hire people who think outside the norm then you should look for those who did things outside the norm.
If you need talent that will challenge conventional thinking and not cave to the nay-sayers look for the ones who went against the tide and persevered in spite of the cardinal sin of “not fitting in.”
It’s not that conventional activities, such as chess, debate and sports, aren’t good, but looking further, even if it’s not on the resume, will help you uncover the hidden gems that others miss.
Two weeks ago I posted interview questions from a discussion among entrepreneurs, asked how you would address them and said I would share the intel from the group’s further discussions. Of course, it took a week longer than expected because everyone was busy, but here is, to the best of my ability, an unbiased summary of their thoughts.
Although not black and white, the group seemed to generally fall into one of two camps—one opting for being open and candid and the other more focused on expediency, based on company needs and the position’s urgency.
Camp Open and Candid: Several attitudes seemed to be at work here. There was the general feeling that candidate’s deserved to know the negatives along with the positives; the feeling was that if negatives were glossed over the candidate was more likely to leave when they did surface and that in both the short and long run turnover was more detrimental to product development as well as team morale.
Several focused on the issue of trust, with the most adamant saying that omitting or avoiding was the same as an outright lie.
Regarding the difference between candidates who are available vs. those currently working, this group felt it was very important to “level” regarding any difficulties the company was facing. A few said that this was more important for candidates with greater financial responsibilities, i.e., mortgages, kids, non-working spouse, etc., but all agreed that they would want to know if positions were reversed.
All agreed that there were sensitive areas couldn’t be shared, but that it was wrong to use that as an excuse to avoid answering questions.
The general feeling regarding compensation (equity or money) was one of being as open as legally possible.
Camp Expediency: The general attitude in this group was one of extreme focus on moving the company forward. It was felt that first loyalty had to be to investors and making the vision a reality or there wouldn’t be a company.
Some felt that candidates applying to startups understood this and therefore wouldn’t expect anything else, while others said that is was naïve to hold startups to a different level of openness than was expected from established companies.
None felt that a candidate’s personal situation, currently employed, responsibilities, etc., should have any impact on the discussions and they assumed that anyone applying to a startup was familiar with the risks and working requirements.
On the subject of compensation, especially equity and funding, they were almost universally adamant that the information was confidential and should be kept so, with the exception of certain executive and critical hires.
Both sides offered solid reasons for their approach and none came over as advocates of the lie/cheat/steal school of thought.
My subjective reaction was that the first group took a longer term view of their current startup, as well as future efforts, and were concerned about damaging their personal brand by not walking their talk, while the second was more focused on the immediate situation.
Everyone agreed that ‘what do you tell candidates during interviews’ is too general a question, so here are some of the specific questions they voiced.
How safe is it to assume that everybody who applies to a startup has read/heard enough to know the pitfalls?
How much of the “down side” should be mentioned during an interview, especially with highly desirable candidates.
Should you bring up the need to pivot—often more than once—when the end result may have little relationship to the candidate’s stated interests?
What if the pivot is already on the drawing board, but not yet public?
How do you respond to questions about how company failure would affect their career?
What do you say to someone with desperately needed skills who is willing to start in that area, but wants to learn new areas in a reasonably short period?
What do you say when the candidate questions the option package and asks about option pool, investment rounds and dilution?
Should you hire if you still have some money, but your investors have lost interest and are recommending closing the company?”
Should the fact that the candidate would be resigning from a current position to join you make a difference?
How have/would you handle these questions in an interview you were conducting?
Come back next week to see responses from the group.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Back in the early 1980s when there were no cellphones, no email, no WWW and Apple was the hot young company with the great perks a friend of mine interviewed with them.
Wayne Jackson, CEO of software security firm Sonatype, has a 
What extracurricular activities do you look for in your entry level candidates?
Two weeks ago I posted 
