Archive: Employees

Building a company requires great people, but where do you find them, and how do you get them in the door? Whether you are planning on hiring one, two or even twenty people in the next few months, what follows is a little bit of collected wisdom garnered from hiring for Freshbooks. We’ve only been at this for five years, so take our advice with a grain of salt. However, if you’re interested in putting together a team for building kick-ass web applications (and I know you are!) I think you’ll find a few gems in here.

Phase I: Lead Generation

1. Where to start

Strategy – Do you have one? You should. Hiring decisions are an integral part of a company’s overall strategy, particularly in the dot.com world of start-ups. Have a plan. Do not just go and hire blindly unless you are simply looking to fill some empty seats.

Look carefully at the points of pain in your organization. Where are the signs of wear and tear?

How many? Figure out whether you are going through a major growth spurt or simply looking to stretch your numbers a little.

2. Put out the bait

If you want to attract exceptional people, choose your bait carefully – narrow-cast your desired employable audience. Here’s how:

Go straight to their hearts. Speak to what makes them happy. Looking for developers? Make reference to obscure coding languages with high geek credibility.

Offer a casual dress code? Tell them they can wear their ThinkGeek shirts every day!

Make them salivate. Hack-offs? Choice of tools? Do not be afraid to put the wares out front.

Be specific about what you are looking for. Great people are driven, and know what they want. The more you tell them, the more likely it is that the potential employee will enter a mutually beneficial partnership with an employer that is suited to them, or recognize that this is not a fit for them and apply elsewhere.

3. Go hunting

It’s time to post that snappy job description, but where? The job description narrows the search, but you want to cast the net widely to ensure that your message gets to the right people. It’s hardly scientific, but here’s what we have used and our results:

Workopolis: A popular generic job search site exclusive to Canada that is similar to Monster. If you are trying to fill several positions with fairly flexible criteria this is probably fine, but in our experience all you will get for your trouble is a greater quantity of average quality resumes for an exorbitant price tag.

craigslist: An economic option: posting in Toronto is free, and most U.S. cities carry a very nominal fee, though the quality of applicants will vary widely (read: you are certain to amass some amusing resume-blunder gems).

LinkedIn: Good for finding people who are marketing- and business-oriented. This is especially true if you are looking for MBA-types. One small caveat: you will sicken very quickly of the sight of the word “synergy”.

University career sites: We have had varied success with university career sites. Pros: Postings are generally free. If you want someone smart, green and keen, this is the place to find them! Cons: If you are looking for someone with experience, a fresh grad won’t cut it.

Specifically for developers:

Joel On Software: Overall, the quality of resumes received through this site was much higher, as was the overall fit of the applicants. The simple fact that job seekers are aware of Joel Spolsky’s site means they are more likely to be interested in keeping in touch with what is going on in the software industry. It is highly recommended that you post on this site, especially if you are looking for savvy and self-motivated developers.

37Signals: We have found the quality and quantity of resumes through 37Signals to be disappointing, and not worth the cost.

Some final thoughts on job posting

Community presence is huge. Post your job description on websites that are community-oriented. Consider sponsoring events where ideal candidates are likely to congregate, such as industry-organized events, conferences, and profession-oriented blogs, etc.

Offer a bounty. Tantalize current employees and outsiders alike with the opportunity to profit from their excellent recruiting skills. Community bloggers will not need to be told twice to spread the word!

Use social networking sites. Put the word out to trusted colleagues and friends through places like Facebook and LinkedIn. Don’t be afraid to send out a group email with the job posting. While your friends might briefly hate you for it, they will vouch for you, and that friend of a friend who feels like they’ve just hit the dream job jackpot will love you.

Based on your budget and the amount of roles that need filling, consider a recruiter. Personally, I have yet to be swayed by the pitch of a headhunter, but seeing as I receive calls from their kind everyday, I have to assume that they must be able to convince at least a few hiring managers out there that their candidates are worth the, er, overhead!

Phase II: Candidate Qualification

4. Resumes

The roles have been posted, and now the resumes are (hopefully) pouring in. It’s triage time! Here are a few hints to make the process slightly less painful:

No cover letter? Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Cover letters are essential: they provide the candidate with a chance to let their personality shine through, and contextualize the content of their resume.

Typos, grammatical errors, and fragmented sentences = Fail. Why? The candidate’s resume is their calling card. It is the only thing we have to go on at this stage in the process and it’s a pretty darn crucial piece of information. When it is clear that the candidate failed to put their resume through a simple spell-check, or did not follow up on the errors that a spell-check does not catch, it indicates to me a laziness and lack of attention to detail on the part of the candidate that is hardly a desirable attribute in a would-be employee.

Long-winded resumes from fresh grads with no experience = Fail. If the applicant has only had one job since graduating, and her resume is six pages long, she is unable to grasp the concept of brevity. How is this candidate going to be able to communicate effectively if they require an entire page to describe their summer job filing at a doctor’s office? Brevity is key.

Look for a candidate who is enthusiastic about working at your company. A candidate passionate about their profession is great; a candidate passionate about making a contribution to your organization is better; the rest will surely follow. Look for specific reference to the position the candidate is applying for, but expect a line or two about your organization in a way that indicates that he or she has done some research.

Be wary of generic resumes. Nothing ails me more than reading through an application that outlines skills in the broadest sense so that it can be email-blasted to several company HR links at once. Even worse is the resume that refers to another company’s job posting!

5. Telephone interview

Why bother with a telephone interview? It’s a great way to further weed out applicants prior to the face-to-face interview stage, particularly if communication skills and customer facing-phone detail comprise a big part of the role. It also saves time for both the potential employer and employee. Here at Freshbooks, evaluating candidates involves a panel of interviewers and multiple interviews. While extremely vital to getting the right people in the door, it is a resource drain. A quick phone chat rarely takes more than ten minutes, only necessitates one interviewer, and can help prevent lower-quality candidates getting to the interview room.

To make calls more efficient:

Have a set number of questions handy. Tailor them to the role that the candidate is applying for: this makes it easier to compare answers among applicants.

Use common sense to evaluate the interviewee’s performance based on what the role requires. Is this person going to be on the phone all day with your customers? If so, you had better feel charmed by the warmth of their timbre across that telephone line!

6. Interviewing

And now, the pièce de résistance: the interview. Arguably this is the most important part of the process in hiring your organization’s future rock stars. Some people pride themselves on only needing one interview to “know”. This is pure hubris. Multiple interviews work best to solidify that you have the right candidate in front of you. Ask yourself what you are hiring for? At Freshbooks, we hire for skills and fit, and formulate the interviews accordingly.

Do they have the skills?

Make sure the candidate has the skills that they purport to have. Ensure that the interviewing panel for the first interview is comprised of staff from the department that the candidate is hoping to join. Developers should be assessing the merits of other developers. Chances are, regular folk, like me, are going to be unable to distill the candidate’s answer as to why the local-only use of first-class references is crucial when implementing binary trees with minimum weighted path length from weighted leaf nodes given in symmetric order in non-strict, statically-typed languages that don’t permit side effects. (Um, thanks Justin!).

Ask open-ended questions. Let the applicant do most of the talking.

Do not be satisfied with blank statements. “I boosted our sagging sale numbers”. How? Were you directly responsible for the company’s turnaround, or were you part of a team? Ask for specific examples. Probe further. And further. Ok…keep going…annnnd…let’s see where this rabbit hole leads.

Did the candidate do his research? Don’t expect him to know every little detail about your organization, but he should know enough to indicate that he has taken the time to get to know more about your product or service, and what drives your company. A standard question for those interviewing at Freshbooks is to ask whether they have tried the application. Points too for looking at the screen shots.

Cultivate a list of favorite questions Prune it according to what works and what doesn’t.

Give the candidate the opportunity to ask questions If they don’t have any, hoist a warning flag. Where’s the curiosity, the passion, and the excitement? This represents the candidate’s opportunity to interview the company. Who conducts an interview without asking any questions? Answer: someone who is wasting your time.

Watch for body language and eye contact. Need a gregarious outgoing marketer? If the dude in front of you hasn’t yet lifted his eyes from the hands folded nervously in his lap, chances are, he’s not going to be successfully converting visitors at your trade show booth into customers.

Personality has nowhere to hide in an interview Unless, of course, the candidate doesn’t have one. In that case, thank them for their time and move on to the next hopeful.

Are they a fit? Will you be able to sit next to this person day in day out without “going postal”? Check.

Ask the applicant if she has any favorite books or bloggers in their field. You want someone who follows the trends of their profession and is passionate about what they do. In other words, someone with drive.

Quality control. When conducting multiple panel interviews, make sure that you have one person who sits in on every session to ensure consistency on the part of the applicant, even if it’s just as a silent observer in subsequent interviews. Think of it as quality control as you’d be amazed how a candidate’s performance can vary from one interview to the next.

7. Debriefing

Immediately after conducting each interview, have a huddle session with your fellow panel members. Go over the pros and cons of the candidate in question.

Ensure the democracy of the exercise by allowing each panelist to have his or her say.

Form your own opinion, but be prepared to back it up. “I just didn’t like the guy” is not going to cut it.

Have the manager weigh in last. Although everyone’s opinion should have bearing on the final decision, ensure that it is clear who will have authority to veto a hiring decision. Generally, this should be the department manager.

Note: A manager who hires someone against the stated wishes of his or her team risks causing friction among the group and threatening the democratic nature of the panel hiring process. Be ready for the possibility of mutiny. You’ve been warned!

8. Reference Checks

The ubiquitous reference check is not given its proper due. Just ask any hiring manager who has had to put the brakes on a hire after a less than stellar reference call, myself included. It is not so much what the referee says about the individual, but rather what it says about the candidate who chose his or her referees so poorly.

You will want to keep the same things in mind when conducting reference checks as you do in interviews:

If possible – and this is important – get a minimum of three references, with the following criteria: a direct report, a peer and a subordinate. You want to ensure that the candidate can dish it out just as well as she can take it, and that she is a team player.

Ask open-ended questions.

Let the referee do most of the talking.

When listening, do not simply run down a list of questions Follow through on what the referee mentions about the candidate. Ask for qualifications to each statement. Details and examples are crucial. If too much time has passed for the referee to recall any useful details, ask the candidate for more contacts.

Funny story: In one case, I had a referee state that all she could remember about the candidate is that she “had a nice smile”. When it was decided that an additional reference was needed, the same applicant provided someone who, as became evident over the course of the call, was her significant other. Worse still, she was clearly present during the call, coaching his responses. Oops. Imagine if she was given access to the nuclear codes?! Ghastly.

Phase III: Closing the deal

9. Offer

Time to present the goods. What are you willing to offer your candidate?

Ask for the individual’s compensation expectations. This should take place face-to-face after the final interview in order to make sure that expectations are aligned. Make a decision on whether you will match their expectations, and if you are low-balling, be prepared to explain why.

Play up to your company’s strengths. In many cases, pay is not the be-all and end-all. Ask yourself what is it about your organization that makes it a great place to work? Benefits, a stellar office space, casual dress code, flexible hours, high ceilings. If you’re not sure, ask your colleagues (hopefully they won’t just stare at you in dumbfounded silence).

Tailor the offer to the individual if necessary. Perhaps you cannot meet the applicant’s salary expectations, but you know that she is planning on joining a gym in the neighborhood. Throw in one year’s membership cost. These small gestures play up to the applicant’s individuality and indicate that you are listening to what’s important to him or her.

10. Onboarding

Congratulations! Your work is done right? Wrong! The first few days are crucial in establishing a new hire’s sense that they made the right decision by accepting your offer. If establishing a company culture matters to you (and it should), have an onboarding schedule in place that ensures your new employee will be well integrated.

Introduce your newbie to everyone in the office. Don’t assume that they already know someone because they have met during the interview.

Work station is set-up and ready to go This seems like a small feat, but think back at how it felt when you started at that last company and you didn’t have a computer or desk of your own for the first two months? Pretty awful and insignificant, I’ll bet.

Take them out to lunch on their first day. Take the new employee out for lunch in the neighborhood. It’s a great way to get to know each other in a casual setting, and show the new hire around (and most importantly, introduce them to the local lunch options!).

Teach your staff to be gracious with new employees at all times Establishing a culture of inclusivity and openness is the best way to retain the interest of new staff in those crucial first few weeks. Ensure that they are smoothly integrated, and that the newbie feels comfortable enough to ask questions.

Building a web app? Have a program in place that provides exposure to the product, the customer and culture from day one. If you are building a web app, you already know how crucial it is for your team to know the product, but don’t underestimate the importance of knowing your users. Some companies have a mandatory rule about getting to know the company from the bottom-up (think Procter & Gamble) by starting in sales, no matter what role the employee was hired into. Support is like sales for web apps – it’s a customer-facing role that’s a great place to start for anyone joining your company.

Final Words

Hiring is a process: don’t forget. Like your software development process and your design process, there is room for continuous iteration and improvement. Surrender to the process and let it evolve.

Good luck building your kick-ass team!

I constantly get the same question, “How do you manage a virtual team and actually get stuff done.” At Wildbit, each of the 10 team members work from home or a coworking environment. We’re spread out across four countries and many timezones. With such separation, we still manage to get a lot done and enjoy our work.

Before writing this article, I had not given much thought to exactly how we work in a virtual environment. My first answer was simply practice and many mistakes. Although, the knowledge gained from those mistakes can be narrowed down to three main ingredients: The people on the team, the process that drives the team, and clear communication.

The people

Skip the resumes

You can have a good process and great tools, but it all starts with a team who can work well together. I have been running Wildbit for almost eight years. In that time, I learned to not hire just based on need or skill set, but to hire based on interests, personality, and a motivation to constantly improve. Hiring virtually makes this much harder. You can’t sit down and feel out a person or get to know them, you need to base their personality and passion other factors. For instance, we usually ask people what books they read, blogs they follow, or people they look up to in the industry. This helps us learn about their interests, but can also demonstrate their passion and dedication to their work. If people take time to write a blog, it tells me they are confident in their ideas and willing to work on their own. The key is to find people who love what they do, then provide the environment for them to express it.

Plan for mistakes

If you’re planning to hire someone remotely, be prepared for mistakes. Most people would love to work from home, but most people are also not cut out for it. We’ve had situations where very talented team members did not work out. Not due to their skills or interest, but their inability to work from home without supervision. Once this is realized, the process of trying to supervise and recover can be toxic. The manager tries to improve the situation while the employee has a constant feeling of failure. In these scenarios it’s very important to trust your gut and move on. In a virtual team, always make sure to plan for these mistakes and accept delays and cost.

Listen and learn

There is a psychological element to running virtual teams that is much different from the physical environment. Instead of reading body language, we have to pay close attention to habits and read between the lines. I can quickly notice from an IM conversation when someone is not motivated or is losing interest. Even the smallest things like emoticons, punctuation, and frequency of participation can reveal a lot. The trick is to know each person, their usual habits, and when they start changing those habits. It’s pretty easy for someone to hide mistakes or poor productivity. By encouraging open and honest communication, the issues are most likely to surface sooner.

The process

If you hire the right people who enjoy what they do, most of the painful management issues go away. At the same time, a solid process is still necessary to improve productivity. A specific process should always be tailored to the needs of your company, but I can give some insight on what works for Wildbit.

Focus on results, not time

We’re a software company, so our process is specific. We work strictly in weekly iterations. Each week, each person is dedicated to one project. This clarifies communication across the team, sets expectations, and maintains focus. Everyone on the team always know what each person is working on, as well as our clients.

Weekly iterations also help us avoid hour tracking and baby sitting. Each week is planned based on a desired outcome, not the number of hours worked. This avoids tracking and posting hours and enables us to deliver results. At the end of the week, it is clear to everyone on the team if the expected results were delivered.

Schedules matter

A primary advantage to working remotely is a flexible schedule. While we don’t have rigid daily working hours, it is still important that each person has a consistent schedule. We try to have a range of time when each person will be available, with a plus or minus flexibility. This sets clear expectations across the team with some leniency to start work when the person is ready. In regards to leadership, a schedule also makes it clear when someone is slacking off. While we don’t use IM for constant conversation, it still provides a clear status of when someone arrives or leaves each day.

Coworking: Working alone, together

Unless you have the right office space at home, it can get really distracting. The question always comes up on whether an office away from home makes sense. My usual answer is that it depends on the person. Over the years, we have tried it all. The important thing is that each person has the flexibility to work where they are most productive and comfortable. With so many people working remotely these days, the concept of coworking has really caught on. I work at Independents Hall in Philadelphia, which provides a great balance between working at home and working in an office. As more of these spaces open, the rest of our team will be sure to jump on board.

Clear communication

With the right people and the right process, a solid communication process brings it all together. While there are plenty of tools to assist in communication, the real value is in setting communication guidelines. Nothing is more distracting than the Internet (I hate you Twitter). By focusing on communication tools first, it just feeds the fire. Here are some of our guidelines.

Daily meetings

The biggest disadvantage to a virtual team is not having the time to hang out. In the usual workplace, a lot of great ideas happen through daily chatter or over lunch. To emulate this environment, we setup very short meetings each morning in Campfire. It helps start the day, mess around, and catch up before we focus on work.

Kill the IM distration

Instant Messages do a great job of killing focus. Nothing is worse than tasks assigned over IM or someone distracting you in the middle of a thought. Over time, we learned how to minimize IM discussion. By not using IM, we are forced to use tools that encourage structured team discussion. We use Basecamp to post ideas or questions to the team, which can be answered at any time. We use Campfire to chat as a group, which keeps a record for future use. And we use FogBugz to assign and organize tasks and iterations. We’ve also used Twitter to notify each other about the status of a task or situation.

Get to know each other

It’s not always about business. Nothing helps a team gel more than learning about each others personal lives. It’s easier when you work in the same office, but in a virtual team you need to make time for it. We’ve celebrate with shots of vodka in Campfire. We send each other pictures of our home offices. We remember birthdays or occasions and announce them to the team. The personal discussions are always overlooked, so be sure to make the time.

It’s not all virtual. No matter what, you always need some face time. There’s nothing better than a team retreat to hang out with the team, celebrate success, and focus on strategy. Our last retreat was in Cyprus, and it was well worth it. When planning a retreat make sure that most of the time is casual. It’s a time to relax and get to know each other, rather than pushing business needs. The strategic conversations will happen naturally.

People, Process, Communication

Our experience working remotely is just one example. It’s important to adjust based on the needs and structure of your team. As I said, it all starts with the right people. With a great team that really strives for quality, the rest just happens. The concepts and process that Wildbit has created over the years has come from each person on the team, instead of a single manager or leader.

I’m very interested in hearing ideas or strategies that have worked for other teams. If you have any thoughts or questions, post a comment and I will reply.

We live in an extremely exciting period of human history where it has never been easier or cheaper to start a web-based business. You just don’t need a bricks-and-mortar shop to make it big anymore.

However, there are still a massive number web start-ups that fail every year. How can you avoid becoming one of them and being plunged into the TechCrunch deadpool?

In this series for Vitamin, I’ll be sharing some of the valuable tips you’ll need to survive and thrive as a new web startup. I’ll also share some exclusive new content from our upcoming workshop, Start-up Clinic.

So if you’re itching to tell your boss where to stick it and start your own company, this series of articles is perfect for you.