Our Biggest Hiring Wins and Fails

We’ve been building Memberstack for over 5 years now. In that time we’ve worked with and hired a lot of folks in lots of different positions. We have learnt a lot about hiring and processes along the way and now 5 years later we think we have landed on a pretty solid hiring process which you can check out here.

I also asked the team to share their biggest hiring wins and failsl so hopefully we can help you avoid some of the mistakes we made and learn from some of our hiring wins ➡️

Wins

Skill vs Passion -

💡 Skill level is super important when hiring but arguably so is ambition, motivation, excitement, passion and energy the candidate brings to the job.

“Hired a really ambitious and fast-learning 18 year old. His skill at the time wasn't so great, but you could always see him improving and figuring things out on his own, so I hired him and very quickly started raising his responsibilities (and pay). He owned absolutely everything and is still to this day the head of web at my old company.”

Use Loom -

💡 We use loom in nearly every step of our hiring process. It saves so much time and still delivers the same message.

“Send candidates loom videos instead of requesting to get on face to face calls.”

Expectation Setting -

💡 Be really thorough with your expectation setting, it’ll help you, your team and your new hire.

“Onboarding a new member to your team is a big thing, for you, the team and the new hire. Get really specific with instructions so everyone involved is really clear on what is expected. If you’re asking the candidate to send a loom video, send them one first, if you’re asking your new hire to write a daily standup, send your one first. It’s easy to forget how ‘normal’ your processes are when you’ve been doing them for so long but imagine being completely new. Same goes for the first day, week, month, quarter of onboarding. Write out what you expect from your new hire for the first day, the first week, the first month so they’re aware of what they should be achieving”

Fails

Hiring Calls -

💡 We, like many others, had a good few calls throughout our hiring process. Calls that didn’t always feel that productive or useful to both the hirer and the candidate. Whilst it’s still important to communicate with the candidate via video, loom videos make this part of the process feel more productive.

“I wasted so much of my own time and other people's time talking on interview calls. They were stressed, I was bored, and although I tried to make it a pleasant experience I was only able to hire a handful of the hundreds of people I talked with. I would not do it again! And I will not do it again! haha”

Hiring based off years of experience -

💡 The amount of time someone has spent in their line of work can be super important, but not always the most important, give folks who have less years behind them a chance because they could easily be as good, if not better! It’s not a one shoe fits all, take each person as they come.

“Hired someone fully based off how many years of experience they had at the price point, and ignored pretty much everything else. Guy was absolutely terrible at his job but we put blind faith in him for months causing us to lose a lot of money in the process (both from his salary and just costly mistakes he made)”

Evaluate candidates with more than 1 team member -

💡 Always have a minimum of 2 team members review and communicate with new hires.

“I took on the hiring process, onboarding and first couple months of communication and task setting by myself and therefore questioned my judgement when communication didn’t feel quite right. Now we have minimum of 2 team members being a part of hiring, reviewing and communicating with a new hire for the first couple of months so if something isn’t quite right, it’s not all on one persons shoulders to make a decision.”