Episode Transcript
Katy Culver:
All right, today on how we built our team, we have Noah Wisnia. He has spent the first half of his career in product management before finding this deep calling as a relationship first recruiter. And Noah's had quite a multifaceted career going from architecting multimillion dollar financial platforms to now growing startup teams over 300% every year using tech enabled hiring, which is why we're so excited to have Noah on the podcast today. He's helped hire over 500 people at startups and considers himself fortunate to have been the second in the 14th hire at a few different companies. So outside of work, Noah can also be found speaking at conferences, mentoring and career coaching folks and giving product feedback to founders, especially in the recruiting tech space. So Noah, without further ado, welcome to the podcast.
Noah Wisnia:
Awesome, Katie. Thanks so much and thank you to the Holdover team. This has been a long time coming, so I'm really happy to be here. And that was a killer entry. You nailed it. Thanks, Katie.
Katy Culver:
Of course, yeah. I mean, we've been talking to you about hiring for what feels like ages at this point. And I know you have a lot of takes on how founders and other leaders at startups can really build a best in class hiring practice. And when we talked recently, you mentioned that hiring is broken from inception. which is a pretty bold statement, right? So can you explain what you mean by that? And maybe we can dive into there first.
Katy Culver:
Okay, cool. No worries. And by the way, too, like, if you ever want to start over, you're just like, whatever, just feel free to stop and restart. We can edit all this stuff out. Um, okay, cool. Um, where was I? Okay. So you've said before that hiring is broken from inception, which is a pretty bold statement. Can you talk me through what you mean by that and kind of break it down for us a little bit.
Noah Wisnia:
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for recounting that. And I believe this for a long time, but I've seen it in practice so many times in so many places. It's hard not to get on board once you hear about it. If we start with the wrong target or the wrong idea in a job description, we're not sure what we're looking for and we're perusing and exploring, while that journey might take us where we want to be, not having the right kind of direction to head in. as you go, as your funnel widens out, it's just going to take you more and more in a broad spectrum in the wrong direction. So before we bring in the tools and the recruiting and it's like, you got to stop and think like, what is the pain point I'm looking to solve? You don't just need warm bodies anymore in a seat, right? You need somebody who can actually take your business to the next level. And doing that well means they have a specific set of skills, strengths or abilities that either you need off of your plate as a founder, as a leader, as a high manager. Uh, or that you just completely lack in your business. And so getting, getting the target persona, right. Or the job description, right. Keeping it succinct, making it really speak to that audience is, is where we can very frequently go wrong. And if everybody, as we tend to do is just copying what somebody else did, then are you really actually speaking to your problem? Are you just reiterating something somebody else had a problem with that kind of sounds like what you need solved, but you don't really know.
Katy Culver:
So going back to that initial moment when you create a job description, but that's even a step after you've identified, we have a gap on our team. Right. And you've obviously worked with so many different startup hiring teams for hired, hired for hundreds of roles at this point. How often would you say that piece is broken up front and how much do you typically have to do the coaching?
Noah Wisnia:
the metrics. I'll give some anecdotals. I don't know if there's too much you can even find on Google about this. I'd say 80% of the time, the job description is off. And the things that it's often are based on the level of hire that you perceive that you need based on imperfect feedback from other experts or just guessing it yourself, Googling it, looking at companies that you aspire to be like. But remember, all those things are some degree of separation from what your day to day is. even if they know you quite well. So I think like, you know, I'm throwing out a rough ballpark number there, but what else is wrong? Titles and levels, very frequently incorrect in those job descriptions. But then specifically, there's a lot of fluff in there that really doesn't need to be there. It's kind of table stakes. Speaking specifically about startups, you know, like you expect somebody to be able to use a Mac or PC, you expect somebody to be able to use Google, the Google Suite or the Microsoft Suite depending on what your stack is, right? Get that stuff out of there. Ask that question, hey, how long have you used the map? That's a simple question in your early screening. Focus on the things that are really core to, what is your pain? And if you're not sure what your pain is, stop and say, what are we struggling with? If it's a sales role, is it that we need to grow accounts or maintain accounts? If it's a customer success role, is it that we... We know our subject matter expertise, but we don't really understand customer success in the SaaS world or vice versa. We have great SaaS, but we don't really understand our area of focus or industry that well with that customer team. It's engineering, like, do you need a front end person or a back end person? Like, get those broad strokes right, and then spend the time to say like, well, what specifically do I hope for this person to be able to solve? That process of saying, what is my problem, effectively bullet that out. Those are your must haves in your job description. Now, how do you get to year's experience in time? It's like, well, do you need somebody to do the work or do you need somebody to lead the team? Do you have a team? Do you need somebody that knows how to hire those people because you don't? That's where recruiting or recruiting software and solutions like Dover offers, and there's other providers out there that do it too, can start to really help you to refine that story. Even if you don't have a full job description, but having a really precise job description starts with what is my pain point? And, What are the characteristics or the things that I do know that make that up? And if you don't know, then do go and ask an expert, but tell people, Hey, we don't have a job description yet because we don't know what we're looking for and fall on your knee to say, maybe you're that person. Maybe you can help me. How can I help you in return? Right? Do something that says, Hey, look, I'm not an expert at this, but this is the problem we're facing. They're going to ask you if they're decent, some sharp questions. It's going to make you ponder and think maybe you'll have the answers. Maybe you won't, but it'll move you closer to understanding that. core problem. That core problem is what do I actually need somebody to be able to do for month one, month three, month six. We've all heard this area 69 a day plan to get where I'm going with this, but then year one, year two, goodness gracious, maybe we'll actually start thinking about year four, year six, keeping people. What are the foundations of what I need today and how does that person grow with us to solve those problems from here on out? That's what a job description is about. From today forward, what is this person gonna be? And too often we're going out and we're like, ah, I like this company, this sounds good. Close enough. Nope. Close enough is gonna take you wildly off as you progress through the funnel. We can talk a little bit about that, Katie, if you want to. But if my direction is off just a little bit, I ask people like, what's a good analogy? Let's say I'm looking through my binoculars, right? And I'm looking at something miles and miles away. And it's kind of blurry. Well, I know I got to get closer, right? Because that's the extent that my inoculism has reached to. Or let's say I'm looking over here and I'm seeing nothing. That's like my three year old would be like, hey dad, I don't see anything. I'm like son, you've got to be over here, right? You got to just tweak it a little bit and don't move that job description. And that consistent look is going to tell you as you meet people, I am or I'm not on the right target. And if you're not, be honest with people. Tell them, hey, we have the wrong target. We're terribly sorry. Thank you so much for your help in us figuring that out. Maybe down the road, we will be interested. And tell them what you are looking for. They might know somebody. Then you've kind of solved that first piece of the puzzle that's so broken. We're out there meandering about, talking to people, trying to figure it out, as opposed to like taking a beat and saying, we actually know what we know and what we don't know. And we're trying to solve that with hiring. That's
Noah Wisnia:
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I'm going to start with an analogy that I hope will connect the last point to this point really well. We all likely wrote a paper at some point in our life, or maybe we did some equations, right? Depending on what our focus was, whether it was college or high school, gosh, think back to even grade school where you were expected to cite your sources. And where I'm going with this and the pain of getting the first point wrong is if you cite a bad source. and you're not a subject matter expert and you don't know better, or you cite the source incorrectly, then the rest of your work is going to be based on some fallacies or some inaccuracies. Let's take that to a really modern concept for a second, and then I'll get to your question. Chat GPT. When we Google things, do we just trust what Google says? I don't know. I mean, Twitter's going through a heck of a lot right now. But when we Google or when we search things on Twitter and we look up tweets, we just take... everything we say at CFA, sometimes we do, and that leads to a lot of misinformation. So if you're just trusting a job description from some other place to be close enough, here's what I think my analogies are kind of hitting at. The time you take having those early conversations is very precious, right? Because you're trying to figure out what you don't know. Okay, sometimes those conversations are helpful. But again, kind of a point I made earlier, being really candid with people, we're still figuring this out, we don't know if we have the JavaScript line. While that might scare some candidates off, let's be honest, if you don't know, the right candidate is willing to sort things out with you. Right, so that's just kind of unlock mentality number one, is like if you're not sure, and your audience knows you're not sure, you could probably partner better with the right person, and that's probably gonna be a recurring theme in your business as you figure out what they're actually gonna be doing. But speaking to the point you made, Katie, about like your time investment, If you're constantly having these conversations and figuring it out, that time evaporates quick. So if you're not super diligent about a consistent set of things that you're going to ask doing that, then you're already introducing bias that's beyond what we all bring to the table, which is, oh, I think this school, this company, or this pedigree, or this technical staff, or this experience is what I'm looking for. But you might find if you ask a consistent set of questions to people, if you are going to do this exploratory exercise, then you can come away with more structured data that's going to inform the first exercise we talk about, which is writing a really clear, concise, compelling, even, job description. And the cost here is time. And it's not just the time that you're not doing something else. This is what people forget. Just take your hourly rate as a human. doing the thing that you're doing. Maybe you're paying yourself okay. So then take the thing that you could be doing with your time and to track that from the 30, 60, 90 weeks, months time you spend figuring stuff out in what you're hiring for. And then do that to the next person at your company who's got to talk to the person and the next person. That's an extremely expensive exercise. If we get like a dollar cost average for what your team's time costs, you can actually quantify this. And you can actually say, oh, these are not just dollars out the door. I'm paying people to not know what we're looking for in the first place. So if you're going to go about it that way, if you're not going to take the advice I'm giving, which is like spend the time upfront to get the targeting, right, and then move quickly. If you find that your targeting is wrong and be consistent, at least just be consistent, ask the same set of questions that focus on the problems that you've got and, and in that way, you can at least do that exploration because otherwise what happens is your funnel widens out. Right? You put more people in and more people in, and you don't have very clear criteria that let you thoughtfully and in a DNI centric and in a fair and equal centric and an unbiocentric way, move people from stage to stage. Humans are imperfect and we forget things quick. So the other point I'm going to make, and this kind of speaks to what Dover can help you do take notes. Take notes during the call that way you're not caught trying to do it afterwards. Tell people you're going to take notes. Say, Hey, I know it can be a little distracting. So if it's a problem, tell me, you know, like everybody's more used to this zoom, you know, Google meets environment. Take those notes that you can reflect back on what you learned. Make sure you're holding yourself accountable and ask the same questions that every candidate is okay to have exploratory conversations, but come back to the thing that you think is what you need, that's going to inform that whole cycle of better targeting, better use of your time and ultimately like also. helping the people that don't fit, understand why they didn't fit in a thoughtful way so that they might be willing to say, hey, I really liked the conversation with you. It was thoughtful. You sold me. It was compelling. You were structured. Maybe I know somebody can help you. More often than not, especially in early hiring, that's beneficial. Tools like Dover, again, can help. You can put your notes in the tool right away, right? They've got the ATS built right in and it's included for free. Super compelling, right? So they're not only finding you candidates, They're also doing that outreach, which you can tweak and refine, but then they give you a place to capture the essentials. Maybe you have an ATS. Okay, cool. Put it in there linked over up to it. These are ways that you can actually get more structured in your processes and how you do stuff while you think more structured about how am I going about my hiring time savings? We, none of us know the clock. If somebody knows, please call me and tell me. I'd love to find out. Maybe I wouldn't. I don't know. It's scary, but we all have a limited time to be successful. in our businesses, in our lives, in our worlds, or to accomplish our goals, maybe success is the long metric. So use that time in a way that respects other people's time, and very likely you'll get the same back in hiring principles, but also in success for your business by being targeted. Long answer. Sorry for that one.
Noah Wisnia:
Yeah, absolutely. Happy to answer that question. There was a little choppiness in the video. So I think the question there was like, you've heard some other things from early stage recruiters about persona. I think the direct here is, what does it mean hiring as a team sport? Why have I said that again and again and again? Look, if we think in sports ball terms for a second, and if you don't like sports ball terms, I'll try and keep it very sports ball-y and not specific. An amazing player can and has in history changed the course of a team and an outcome. They still needed those other people on the field court, you know, spectrum to be successful. There needed to be somebody who was good at passing or catching or hitting or throwing or running or whatever it might be. And the reason that's so important in hiring is because no one person has all the experience. that you need. If that was true, then you wouldn't be hiring. You wouldn't be looking for more expertise or more sharing of the workload, right? You wouldn't be looking to split that down. So hiring is a team sport. Look, recruiters, good or bad, hiring managers, good or bad, founders, good or bad. There's a dichotomy of understanding of what one person says they think they're looking for and they need. job description, giving everybody a consistent target to go after and how other people understand that. Unfortunately, no matter how much we understand, it's always going to be a subtle game of telephone until we've got telepathy. Okay? And so getting that target right and getting everybody to understand their role, and these roles can be vastly different, but making sure everybody is on the same page about who's looking for talent, what to expect in looking for that talent. So that there's, um, there's an understanding between a hire manager and the recruiter of like, what's the volume going to be, uh, and what problems are coming up when they're looking for a purple squirrel unicorn rock star that you should never be looking for, right? Like 90% of your hire is more than good enough. 10% they can grow and learn. Think about yourself. How often have you had to grow and learn, right? Put yourself in the shoes of the candidate for a second. Tiring as a team sport means. expect what's realistic of your teammates, hold them to high standards, but be there when they stumble or fall as opposed to saying, get off of my team. What does it mean? It means the recruiter's job in a traditional startup is anywhere from finding the talent to finding or doing research on what is and isn't available in the talent, looking up that talent, all things that Dover can do for you, by the way. They can help a lot. But then there's the internal movement of that candidate, making sure they have a great experience. Dover can do some of that, but also there's something to your brand and your persona and your culture that you need to be able to work in partnership with Dover. And then extending that great experience first touches first steps from the recruiter to the hiring manager or the interviewing team and making sure that the candidate knows what to expect from them, which means your recruiter needs to know what to expect to explain that to the candidate, right? You see the handoffs, you see where the sports ball's being passed or. or are shared to ultimately get to the goal, to score a point, to make a hire. Having the founder know when they're helping and when they're selling the business, which again, they built the thing, so they should, or the founders, versus when they might be in the way. Hey, you're really busy, you have a lot of things. And hiring is insanely important, so we need you to get those other things off your plate. But we need to have alternates so that your time isn't a blocker. Moving quickly and swiftly and fastly. These are all mechanics around teamwork, right? If you look at any great team in history, their timing is right, their synchronicity is right. They're in each other's minds as much as you can be, and they still make mistakes, right? Hiring as a team sport means after that recruiter's done and after that candidate's onboarded, it's not like their fault per se. That candidate doesn't stick around for a year. That comes down to the management and how clear we were about the opportunity and the skills they had. And so really unpacking like what part is everybody responsible for, or at least high level saying like, look, recruiters find the talent, get them excited and qualify them to these standards. And then we move them into the team to make sure that they can do the skills. They can have the interplay and the culture and the partnership. That's what hiring as a team sport is all about. No, I am team, right? There's the, you know, a bad recruiter can, can disable all that the wrong tool or system at the wrong point can also disable all that the wrong hiring manager can do the same thing, a founder blocking time, which is bring it up a few times because it's very frequent. Yeah. Hiring takes time. Everybody, whether it's the recruiter a hundred percent doing that. or whether it's the team as a part of that, it all takes time. And so knowing where that timeline is, are, can block or unblock the ultimate success in that candidate's journey as well. Team, team,
Noah Wisnia:
the whole way, handing off the person so that you stay in possession and ultimately score, you make the hire, you get them as another team member to be a part of that journey.
I'm curious, you've talked a little bit about founders, you know, in these contexts, obviously, you've worked with a ton of different startups. What do you think are some tips that you would have for founders on how to be most effective in hiring? Maybe like top three tips for founders on how to be best in class.
Noah Wisnia:
Yeah. Tip number one, we already said it, be really precise what you're looking for. The second you realize that that's wrong, tell everybody, tell them in a thoughtful way, but tell them clearly, this is what's wrong. Here's why it's wrong. And here's what we need to change. You're in charge. Even if you're not the expert, you're in charge, right? Everybody's going to ultimately roll up to you and maybe you to your investors or however your business is structured, the public, if you're, if you're public, but you need to lead with what you know and what you don't know and be clear. Then number two, trust people, hire experts and stay out of their way. Once you've given them a clear goal, they're going to show you whether they understood that goal or not through their work. And you can always recap and you can always say, dude, are we on target or not? And so I'll take a pause there and say, um, after you've established a very clear target, people can still misunderstand what that target is. Language is imperfect. And then as you maybe are are aware of or maybe not aware of as the founder, you go out to the marketplace, and there's 17 different synonyms for one job title. Right? And you search the wrong ones and you don't find the right candidate and you search the right ones and you find the right candidate and layer that to everything skills and experience and companies and go and search. S&P 500, we've all heard of that, right? You're going to find so many businesses with that name that aren't what you want to look for. Okay, that's a giant example. Go search Chime. Teeny, tiny example, you're going to find a ton. Right? So that precision and then trusting those people to do their work and come back to you is really important in the recruiting realm. Getting out of the way and giving ownership and then identifying when the results aren't what you expect. or how you perceive them and letting that person tell you why that may be is the conversation. The third point, the communication, right? Set clear targets, be very precise, hire people that know what they're doing or that appear to know what they're doing and trust them to do it. And then communicate, communicate. Don't jump to conclusions, ask questions. We all do it. It's innately human, but you're going to learn more by unpacking what happened. even though it's time consuming, and you're gonna be able to cycle back through and fix it from the beginning, from the first point. And so I think those three serve themselves. It'll also help identify number two, if you've got the wrong person in the wrong role, and then you can again communicate very clearly, this isn't working, let's try this other thing, and if it's still not working, we all know how that ends. But ideally, that communication cycle fixes the first and second.
Katy Culver:
Yeah. I mean, communication is critical and building any sort of strong functioning team. When you think about, you mentioned how founders, it ultimately all rolls back up to them, right? Like you're in charge, even if that's not your area of expertise, let's say you're, you know, from an engineering background and you're hiring your first marketer, um, or some, something of that context where you, you haven't worked in that function before. What are some tips for those types of founders where you're hiring for a role maybe you don't have as much experience with where do you begin to make sure you don't go down that route of Choosing the wrong job just job description wasting a bunch of time with the team and ultimately being pretty you know Not clear on what you're looking for
Noah Wisnia:
I think you start by asking that question, why am I hiring at marketer customer success? You're like, am I sure this is what I actually need in a business? Then next is, look, you're investors. Full stop. If you don't have investors, seek other founders at a similar stage and maybe that have made this progress, ideally similar industry. That's hard, but go to LinkedIn or buy a Crunchbase license for a second or go to a company like Dover and be like... Who are my competitors? Help me find this, right? Where would we source people from? They have great people. Go to a recruiter, ask them questions. You should be building your network as a founder always. That doesn't mean one person is right. Ideally, you find an expert and they know their stuff and you can save a lot of time. That is where I would have the exploratory conversations because it goes back to scoping. It goes back to what are the pain points of my business in the first place? It's okay to have those exploratory conversations then. And I wanna differentiate that from our earlier answers. Exploring by talking to candidates could also solve this problem. But because you're not sure about the direction or the industry, even the skill sets, you're likely going to stick your foot in your mouth, look maybe a little silly, but more importantly, like burn a lot more time and effectively than going to people and saying, hey, I'm thinking about hiring this. I'm not sure it's what I need. What would you do if you were in my shoes? Or how do you define this? It's a wildly different set of questions. So I think like there's a piece of it, knowing to ask the right question at the right time there that I didn't explicitly say earlier. Um, but I think like you're seeing kind of the same pattern that I've described, right? Be clear about what your target is. If you're not sure, unpack the problems and go to other experts. Don't be shy. Like people love to tell you their story, especially if they can be helpful and be seen as valuable. So leverage that always, always. If you don't like their answer, you don't have to use it. If you really appreciate their time, you can tell them once you've gotten to a successful result. You said this and it led us to this. Thank you so much. People appreciate the reciprocity. We don't take time enough in business to do that. And that's what takes an okay, higher or candidate experience from it didn't work out this time to next time it did. Or a business deal or a realization that you've been spending hundreds of hours trying to hire something that turned out not to do what your business actually needs here tomorrow, next month. Et cetera. So go back to the time saving. Your time is insanely valuable. So use that to scope, scope.
Katy Culver:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You've talked a little bit about, you know, let's say something changes and you end up talking to a bunch of candidates who may be super qualified for a different role. Um, and maybe, you know, they've showed interest in your company and down the line, they could be a good fit. What are some of the strategies that you've used to reengage candidates in that fashion? You know, over time, let's say things have changed. Maybe they've grown in their career as well. How can you take advantage of the candidates that are interested in one role for maybe a different role down the line?
Noah Wisnia:
Yeah. Look, most people, not all, but most people don't have a name, a visual or experiential photographic memory. There are a few out there. But even for those folks, I'd encourage them to remember no eye and team. Somebody else sooner or later will be doing the work you're doing today. And so why do I start there? Well, if you speak to somebody that's really compelling, the best thing you can do to win their favor. is be useful to them. And if you can't be useful to them to tell them when they might be useful to you so that they have a crisp takeaway. Nobody wants to be ghosted. We did that half a decade ago. Candidates did it. Companies did it creates a lot of psychological impact in the negative way for everybody. It hurts. It's frustrating. It's time consuming. It's costly when you really boil it down. So what can you do to help those folks? Tag them in your applicant tracking system. I talked to somebody for backend engineering. I think they're gonna be better for frontend engineering. Make a tag. Be consistent about your tags. You're not sure what to call it. At least make sure you can hand it off to the next person. Spell it the same, capitalize it, punctuate it the same. Be precise, because a little bit of structured data goes miles. Set a reminder for yourself. Set a timeframe that you look back at when you think you might need to front end, put it in your calendars and have to be in your applicant tracking system, ATS sorry, acronyms. Um, make the note, take the time, tell them when they should look back, when you think you might be hiring, right? Ask them, say, Hey, look, like I might forget this, but if you're really compelled by something today, I think this is when we might be looking for somebody with your skills. And if you can make a connection where you know that they might be valued, they're going to remember that you helped them. particularly when you come back around and you need something, whether it's them or somebody in their network, they're going to say, Hey, that person interviewed me. It wasn't good. I had a great experience. Then they helped me or they told me when I might timing might line up. Right. And I'm still not good for them. But I know, I know one or Susie down the road or, or Xavier, and they're the perfect hire for this. Why, why don't I just connect them? Right. Much of hiring, we hate to admit this, it's a bit of magic. It's a bit of time. When somebody is ready to move, when you need them, when you can afford them, when they can afford to take a cut for you, particularly for talking startups. Like somebody figures out the physics of that. Please again, please give me a call. But until then, like we have to do everything we can within our control. Sell, create great experiences, great communication, set intention and touch base. In systems like Dover and other tools that are out there or with recruiters, you can also extend that same edict. That's a cultural thing. Hey, we want to treat talent with respect. We want to close the door thoughtfully. We want to communicate. We don't let anybody's fingers pop. Set that reminder, even set an automated message. We haven't touched base in a while. I just wanted to make sure you knew I hadn't forgotten about you. That's not hard to write, you know, like even if you're kind of automating it, you took the time to think, to do that, make it more personal. Set the reminder, use tools that use machine learning to reach back out and say, I see you've made some changes. How are those going? Do you know anybody that does X? This is what we're looking for. Maybe it's even you. Those are not hard concepts. And if you, if you think that my movements today have reciprocal or, or detracted value, detracting value, that was not a word to track my behaviors. Let me try that again. If you see that your behavior today can. Let me try that again. If you see that your behaviors today can be reciprocal or they can detract from somebody else's experience, likely that's gonna amplify the ripple effect, right? We've all thrown a stone or a rock in the water and seen the ripple effects. That's where I was going with that concept.
