The Startup Hiring Framework
This framework does not help you hire the best engineers, it helps you avoid the bad ones.
The framework you see above is the one I have been using for the past 2 years for hiring engineers at CureSkin. It is based on an article written by our CEO. Let's jump into details.
*skills are explained in the order of their importance
Truthfulness:
The most important thing to look for in a candidate is if he/she says truth or tries to cover up around the lies, steps to identify:
Go over their resume
Most candidates write a lot of skills on their resume but know only a few, ask them basic fundamentals about each of them if they fail to answer 1 or 2 that's fine but if they fail to answer more that shows the candidate is lying on resume, they will try to explain that by saying something like "This only thing was done by my teammate so I don't know much about it". Drop that resume.
Why?
Those candidates who don't speak the truth can easily take up tasks and never do them, they will keep on taking tasks saying "I will do it" but never finish them until someone follows up with them and get it done.
Who is that someone?
THE MANAGER... Yes, that's what they are all caps and bold ending with three dots, they get things done by just followups and cost a lot, most of the times even more than an engineer.
You definitely want to avoid them to cut cost. So you hire truthful people who will say yes to only things they can do and will do them so you don't have to follow up with them and that avoids the need for a MANAGER.
Example:
Resume 1: CPP, GO, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Angular, React, MongoDB, SQL, SSR, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, AWS, Azure, Lambda, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Linode, Load Balancers, Autoscaling
Resume 2: Angular, Node.js, MongoDB, AWS
If resume 1 can answer the fundamentals of all of them he is a really good candidate, but mostly they won't be able to answer it. They won't know the fundamentals of more than 50% of things on their own resume, whereas resume 2 is short and they might know fundamentals because they added only things they know.
The 2nd candidate passes the truthfulness test, as there are 4 skills only each skill fills in a pass box in the framework, remember each box has to be pass to move ahead, one fail here means all fail.
Listening and logical ability
The second most important thing is to check if they really pay attention to what you are saying and are understanding it? what do they do when they don't understand? are they asking you for an explanation or are they moving to the task confused? are they understanding after you explained by simplifying it or still not able to understand?
Getting answers for all the above questions is necessary for a startup, one question fills one box pass or fail. You have a small team, a lot of work, no processes to train new people, no MANAGERS, if the candidate fails in any of the questions you can't hire them.
If they understand in one go "GOOD" type pass in the easy box, ask them a difficult to understand question we still need an answer for the remaining 3 questions.
After asking a dificult to understand question expected is they should ask for simplified explaination, if they are asking that they pass in 2nd box.
If they didn't understand and attempted to solve the problem, you wait, give them time, ask if they need help after a while, they will say "actually I didn't understand what I have to do?" they said this when you asked, this is very important.
This guy will take some work from you and will say "ok, it will be done in 2 days" you ask him if it is done after 7 days he will say "No, I am still stuck", you ask if you need help? can we sit together and finish it? and when you sit together you get to know he didn't even start it, you ask why AND this guy will say "actually I didn't understand what I have to do?"
You might want to hear this question but before starting not after 7 days, right?
Avoid hiring this kind of people. They are not only slow and confused they are making your company grow slow directly affecting the valuations and costing everyone who holds equity, they are much more expensive than your highly paid employee.
Now, the last one, you explain them and they understand after your simplified explanation "GOOD" type pass in the last box. The Box reads hard, it's not hard of candidate it's hard for you to explain it in simplified language.
Keep on simplifying the explanation until the candidate understands, if they understand after long time think if you will be able to explain this much every time. If yes then pass else fail.
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If they are not able to understand don't hire either you are not good at explaining or they are not good at understanding, either way, you won't be able to handle them and make them understand the task, slowing them down.
Let them go someone else might be good at explaining compared to you.
How do I test it?
I ask them logical oral questions like the bridge riddle or explain to them an easy to moderate coding problem verbally which they have to solve to get a box pass in problem-solving.
Learning
You don't need people who know some really difficult algorithms and have solved some really tough problems in past. You need people who can learn and get things done in the future. The superstars of tomorrow.
After the first check for truthfulness, we now know a bit about what the candidate knows.
Ask them a question on a skill they don't know give them a document where the solution can be found (not a direct solution). This will tell you how the candidate behaves when in the sea of unknown.
Are they trying to find the solution? are they reading the document? are they reading it from start to end or just the code in between? are they able to understand it? are they able to implement the learning and solve the problem?
Most people fail here after passing the first 2 checks, they get lazy and they don't even read the document they just scroll up and down, read some code in between which they don't understand because it is new to them and they will say "I am not finding the solution" which translates to "I don't want to work in a Startup".
Startups disrupt, not only in business but in everything they do.
They might keep moving from one cloud to other to save some cost. They might make a new project in some totally different stack because that's what needed. for example, a SQL person might need to write queries using GraphQL if they want to work with Shopify APIs.
How to check if they are able to learn new things?
For someone who knows how to query in SQL, ask to write a query in SQL and then ask them to convert it to a Mongo query, this can be a really simple query like counting documents or finding a document, not something difficult like a 250 line aggregate query.
For someone who knows JavaScript ask them to write a simple program like swapping two numbers in JavaScript and then ask them to convert it to Swift or GO or JAVA whichever language they don't know.
Problem solving
This is not only used to evaluate the candidate, that's only one part, you have asked him enough till now.
The use of this section in the framework is for raising the bar, you have 4 coding problems from easy to hard, expect the candidate to fail at 4th question that's fine you can hire him. Keep the 4th question same and the next person you hire should be able to solve it.
If he fails you can't hire him if he solves it you can hire him and move the 4th question to 3rd now and add a bit more difficult question for 4th box.
It is difficult for you to find such questions, I see people failing at the 2nd question and able to solve 4th and if many are failing at 2nd and solving the 4th I interchange them. You have to keep changing questions and their positions.
Raising the bar is a maintenance-heavy process
If you get all pass as shown in the cover image, don't lose that person, there are chances they won't do good even after checking this much but you have evaluated them on all necessary things now it's your turn to spend some time training them and make them superstars of tomorrow.
Notes:
Thanks for reading till here, the article ends here.
The framework mostly applies to hiring technical people but a few sections will also apply to other domains.
Connect with me if you are hiring in some other domain we will see how can we make changes and form a framework suitable for your domain.
Thank you for sharing Arjun Vedak, this is very useful.