A matter of experience

"How many years of experience do you expect?" This is a typical question raised by recruiters supporting us in hiring senior tech positions into one of the ventures we bootstrap at SCV.

When you join kickoff meetings with everyone introducing themselves, a lot of people start with something along the lines of: "Hi, my name is XYZ and I have 20 years of experience in IT."

But how can you evaluate experience? What are the criteria that create relevant Startup tech experience?

When I interview candidates I check the following boxes:

Intensity of work

Certain skills can be best learned in a high pressure environment you usually find in Startups during rapid growth periods. You are forced to make a lot of on-the-spot decisions, mitigate platform (growth) related issues, handle the tech budget, manage and motivate your team and adjust to the ever changing business directions.

Complexity of work

Building and running distributed tech teams across geographies is a very valuable skill to have in these 'decentralised' times. The experience of being part of teams that built both, B2C and B2B platforms ensures exposure to different architectures with different complexities.

Diversity of work

Having spent your whole professional life in tech may appeal to some, but I personally value someones exposure to other departments as well. Having spent time and thrived in e.g. Product or Operations besides tech allows the candidate to change his perspective and look at topics through different lenses.

Accountability

This is the most important 'skill' I am looking at. You can train employees and their skills over time, but the attitude of an individual barely ever changes.

My understanding of accountability is simple: Someone owns a topic from start to end or he does not. The more time I spend on micromanaging my team due to the lack of accountability, the less time I can spend on topics driving the overall Startup.

Thats why accountability becomes more important in higher positions.

Thanks for your time

• Focus