I’m reading an article about Tae Lee of ZEFR, he talks about how they’ve have grown 2000% in headcount in the last 2 years. I’m sitting here thinking about this and seeing how quickly everythings changing, it’s totally crazy. When I transferred from the UK to work as a Recruiter/Business Development Manager at Modis in SF, the .com boom was literally recovering. I heard stories of those heady days when VC’s were throwing money about, kids in flash cars. That all died, when I came everyone was burnt from the startup bubble and nightmare that most tech workers post 2003 went through. People wanted security, a steady job with a firm that has some history to it, trading publicly etc etc…its funny now when i look back that engineers then were looking for stability – but that was another time another era, and thats the point. What this guy is having to do is unimaginable and no doubt hopefully most of you will face the same issues.
Scaling – everything right? they’ve grown that quickly, that fast. I can’t answer for any area other than recruiting. When i talk to founders about hiring initial teams and growth,i insist that they keep their hands in it, from that initial reach out in an email or even linkedin or through a discussion group or whatever format it is, I talk about pitching to engineers like you pitch to your investors. A lot of you instinctively do this especially if you’re good at hustling, also if you are Joe Blow CEO co-founder of the internet.com backed by “xxxxVenture Parnters” and i get an email from you I am highly likey to open it, if you are Cindy Smith recruiter at awesome startup in SF, i’m less likely to want to engage in a conversation with you. Don’t say it, and I know some of you are thinking it, that quite frankly (that is if you spoke with an English accent) you don’t really have the time and would rather just build your product or fund raise, cant anyone just do it and get a really awesome person. The answer is no and don’t take my word for this is what Tae did and at that headcount he still gets involved!
“Hiring is STILL my most important job.
In terms of hiring, the only difference between when we were 20 employees versus 200 is that I spend more time recruiting than ever before. It’s not that your managers can’t hire good people, but there are many reasons why you need to be involved. One, as the C-level executive of the company, you may be able to attract talent that your managers cannot. Two, the difference between the ‘A’ level players and ‘B’ players is unquantifiable. One right hire can completely change the dynamics of your business. It might even change what your company will be selling in a few years. You don’t want to completely leave that up to someone else’s hands, do you? Lastly, nobody in your organization has a better sense of cultural fit than you. The newer and further the manager is to you, the sense of culture is diluted – which brings me to…culture is not organic. You must define it and protect it ruthlessly as you grow.” Tae Lee ZEFR
Due to feedback, I am going to update my wordpress site so that you can follow my blogs, this will literally be in the next 4 weeks bear with!
in the meantime – email me with your name_blog in the subject line
hiregrind@gmail.com apologies for the inconvenience – i know it looks totally crappy.
rubybhattacharya 