Learnings in hiring

Over the last nearly 3 months now we have been on a hiring spree. Some of this was additive, and some of it to replace people who moved to new things. This is important, because they are different in the way you think about it. Picking up an existing portfolio is very different to a net new investment to build out.

As is always the case, I personally learned a lot. I met lots of amazing humans, some of them surprised me in good ways, some in not so good ways. I made some mistakes in process. And we ended up with an awesome bunch of great people who will make us different and therefore better.

So, what went well?

• An incredible amount of interest from very strong candidates. Having been at the company for over a decade (total), left and come back, our external perception has not always been what we on the inside knew ... that while we have some quirks and don't always get it right, for the most part the intent is good, the bar for execution is high and we look after our humans.
• Two people who cold pinged me on Twitter were included in interviews. This might sound like an odd thing to call out, but social media is a notorious location to engage with potential employees, and while there are many conversations, they often are not suitable matches.
• Feedback after the fact was very strong on the experience. Even when unsuccessful, people were appreciative of the respect and personable engagement of the process and went away with the "I will be back" attitude, which I love! Just because this role wasn't The One, doesn't mean that's the end. Sometimes it's just the beginning!

What did I learn?

• As we had multiple roles open we posted one entry to apply for as the role descriptions are essentially the same, what varies is in the scope of the positions and level of expectation. I would not do this again. I had in my mind that we had a bunch of roles and a bunch of amazing people and if we lined it all up right it would be fantastic. Yes, but! Expectations, once set, are hard to change. I feel a little silly for not picking this up earlier, but that's learning.
• Product Marketing is an interesting discipline. It's a squiggly combination of technological passion with storytelling, project management, marketing, strategy and business. This means that often people joining are moving disciplines to build on having one or two of these and will grow into the rest. I observed several times that people are not always aware that changing careers or even disciplines within a career sometimes has an opportunity cost. You may have an amazing background with many years of success, and that is great, but when you land on Day 1 and those skills and attributes are building blocks for something different, it will take time to ramp, learn, grow and be effective. It's not good for you or a company to set you up in a "sink or swim" situation, far better to come in, be awesome and step back up quickly than wade through the mire and struggle against overwhelming expectations.
• I can only coach on this, but sometimes internal contacts or ex-employees are not your best place for guidance. Unless they are in the same team or the exact same role in a highly similar team, they can steer you wrong. And they did for a couple of people which was sad.

As a manager, hiring great people is the single most important thing we do. Good people, good outcomes. Hiring the right people who can adapt, learn and grow is key to a group's success. And so I put a lot into this. That means a lot of up front conversations, creating an interview set of people who will test different things in different ways with different perspectives, and having a model to compare and contrast how different people will bring different things to the team and company. It's a deliberate strategy from me to put other humans in front of you that you might find difficult, this is by design. Because guess what, that's what happens on a daily basis, you meet, interact and work with a wide range of diverse people, and not everyone is the same as you.

I tell people on the way in ... don't become one of us, make us a little different. Over the next few weeks, I become a little more different than I was last week. I can't wait.