Hiring Mistake That Costs Startups Their Existence

Two years within my senior software engineer position, I was looking for a change. I kept applying to mid to large level software companies.

I wasn’t getting any interview calls.

I thought of attempting the startup route. There were plenty in my city. Most of them had secured $10M+ funding.

I was tempted. They were my easy bet because of two things:

• I had some freelance experience that put me above other candidates. I understood startup challenges better than my peers because I had worked with many startups outsourcing to freelancers in the past. My interview could be a breeze because they are concerned more with experience than my technical expertise.
• My expected salary range met with that of many startups in my city. There was nothing to lose!

Soon after I applied to some ten companies, I heard back from seven.

70% response rate was unprecedented! They all had their auto-responder campaigns well-optimized for applicants.

I hit a speed bump when I came to know this:

• Two of them wanted me to write a 300 words essay why I wanted to join them
• Three of them wanted me to make a video pitch to convince them about my motivation to join them
• The HR personnel of the rest two called me up, curious to know what prompted me to apply to their job portals!

So it was all about them.

But I wasn’t falling back on creativity either. I knew this was just a phase to pass on, and unless I do it, I wouldn’t have further rounds. While I successfully convinced the last two, the process quite drained me for the other five.

As I sat to write an essay about how much passion I felt for AI-backed image recognition vs C language audio processor, I recognized how much creative I was in tech interviewing! Though I had not worked on any of them, my essays were extremely convincing on how deeply I wished to board their cruise.

The three requiring video pitch totaled up to five dots that formed a pentagon. Each vertex of that pentagon was a technology that was unattempted. In the center of that pentagon was me, trying to decide the nearest vertex to jump on.

It was a bit difficult to record the videos though. It took almost two of my weekends because I edited them heavily. What if those startup founders looked for culture fit, and didn’t find that charismatic frown that their founder held?

I might not get a chance to explain how functional programming worked.

No matter how much rational the person at the other end was, I could not assume so without meeting them personally. I had to be perfect!

In the past, I had attended live codeshare interviews. Booking.com rejected me in a 30-minutes code share session. I had regretted doing code share rounds — it was too stressful to even begin the whole interview process if code-share was on the list of hurdles.

Yet here I was, recording myself, putting myself up on a completely different pedestal.

While recording selfie videos, I sincerely considered a career in media & journalism.

Long story short, I ended up reaching the final rounds in two of them.

One of them had my video pitch, but my selection hadn’t anything to do with my video. My 2 hours of code convinced them more than my 2 days of video recording effort. That mp4 lies somewhere in their cloud today. I hope they don’t erase it until the next audit (in case they become big enough to be audit worthy).

They ended up extending an offer which was 30% less than my stated expectations.

The other startup demanded a lengthy explanation of my essay. I delved into a 10-minute long justification of why I simply loved their culture, their choice of technology stack (that I had never touched in my programming life), and the product vision of their founder.

The final round was to be conducted by the founder himself. I was unable to respond to his last question: why I chose them over others. I tried, but fumbled for words, because I never anticipated it. I could see an inexplicable frown on his face.

The next day, their email read:

Unfortunately, at this time, we may be unable to proceed with you….

I loathed every word I spoke without conviction. I summed up this passion quo over here:

Six months later, their HR reinitiated contact and started actively following up with me about the same position. Apparently, their chosen candidate (the one with great passion) had left them. They wanted to save some precious jobvert bucks. So why not reopen older CVs from trash?

By that time, I had circulated my interview experience with at least three of my ex-colleagues and warned them not to waste their time with that startup.

In the next three months, I heard stories of investors pulling out due to their being unable to hire cost-effectively.

Final Words to Founders Who Intend to Hire Effectively:

• Your passion led you to found an amazing company. Stop exploring that passion in your future recruits. They can’t have it before they join you. They can’t have it after they join you. They can inherit it someday, but not to the extent that you possess. You and your startup share a parent-child relationship.
• With that established, remember how long it took you to come up with your brainchild? How long did you take to convince yourself about it before going to your angel investor? Your potential recruits can’t be expected to share that passion while writing that job application. If they do, it’s completely unnatural.

More often than not, your job applicants are normal people selling themselves for some bucks, just like you do to your investors & customers. Stop expecting them to be your doppelgangers.

• Hire tech people for their software skills, analytical abilities, and communication. Passion is important, but your tools to measure it are not perfect. Someone having an excellent Github repo for a node library is more passionate than someone who can write a convincing essay on why you are the next Facebook.
• Attitude is more important than skills is a myth that you want to believe in while hiring cheap. More skills + manageable attitude is the right combination to go for, with a caveat: You can’t measure someone’s attitude within the interview timeframe. You can rely on drastic signals, but subtle signs, positive or negative, are difficult to interpret.
• An effective leader can make the best out of a worn-out veteran developer. A rookie founder waking up on LinkedIn passion quotes solicits essays on why his company is better than the rest.
• Empty, misguided passion is more dangerous than a lack of skills. A recruit with fake passion clouds the real issues, creates a toxic workplace and demotivates the entire team.

OK, But What Happened to the Job Applicant?

I ended up interviewing at a mid-sized company where only senior architects interviewed me.

In the final round, after getting all my technical answers approved, I received the inevitable question: Why this company?

I took a brief pause. They were still smiling. I knew what they were really asking. I remembered my last time. Then I said.

I just saw this opportunity because it matched my skills. I think you had a fair time evaluating them. To be honest, I have never worked on this domain. In fact, I knew about this company only from your LinkedIn ad. But after all, in software, we are always motivated to deal with abstractions. Let’s see what I can do here.

They smiled. We shook hands.

The next day, my mailbox held the offer from the hiring manager.