Joshua Fraser hired six people in one quarter, five of whom succeeded. He uses four key steps: a detailed job responsibility document breaking down weekly to annual tasks, cross-functional review by CTO and HR, a structured Google Form for screening, and requiring candidates to submit a 30/60/90-day probationary plan with mandatory check-ins at each interval.
Chapters
So I have to make a quick video about hiring because in the last quarter alone we hired six people and only five worked out. But so far I'd say that's a pretty good number. And I have a few things to talk about what I learned from hiring. So we went up to 20 people, we went down to 10 and then now we're back up to 20ish. Almost a complete turnover of our business. Pre venture capital, pre techstars to now post techstars and post venture capital which has been a really interesting learning experience. But right now I'm just going to talk about some things that I know. If you're hiring people, these are tools that you can use and things that I would say are must have dones before you hire someone or give them an offer letter. And the first one that I've learned is you have to make sure you can keep that person busy enough. So if they're going to be part time, I'd recommend having at least this is how I've been working with it. So I'll get a Google Doc or Word document and I'll write the title of the job and I need to have a full to do list of their responsibilities on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis. And these are the things that they have to take ownership for and we have to hold them responsible for. And before I'll ever even send that out and give an offer, now I have my CTO and our HR department. They used to just be Evan. I've noticed the mistakes that I have made were when Evan wasn't present enough in that decision making. It's really hard to hire people in different departments in your company. So that's one thing. Always have someone review it. So that's one tool that we've been using. Another one is we always have a Google form that we make them fill out. And then I think that the third thing or the second thing that I would say in there is make sure that when that new person starts, 30, 60, 90 day check in is mandatory. So on that note, before we hire people, we actually ask them to create a 30, 60, 90 day plan and that will change your life. You'll see who's ambitious enough and wants the job bad enough when you ask them to do that because some people won't want to. So those are really big steps. And then have a format for it. If you just want to send me a quick message or comment on this, I'll make sure to send you our 30, 60, 90 day plan. We call it a probationary period. You can kind of do it, whatever you want. But let me know how it goes for you because this has been such a crazy thing. Q1, 2018, six people, Q1 or Q2, we have another, at least six people on the roadmap. Potentially more of good talent comes in and some of the products start to take off, like the state of education and our API and our data products. Our new property reports are wow, wow, wow. Amazing. So excited to get those things out. So, yeah, hiring tips that I'm learning are those two things.
