The most important job interview question is, “When have you failed? Tell me about it.” The answer shows how one portrays their self to others, and what it’ll be like to work together. A job seeker can answer this question in one of three ways:

(1) beat around the bush, working the conversation to another topic,

(2) tell you story of how one almost failed but overcame it,

or (3) tell you a story of how one – for a reason or another – has failed before.

The world of work will not go as predictions of production indicate. It took me about 10-15 interviews with job seekers to learn that this is the most important question to ask a job candidate. Let’s examine the possibilities of how you can navigate this awkward question.

Failure 1

If the candidates beats around the bush and is unable tell you of a professional failure, you have learned that the candidate is one of the following:

(1) uncomfortable with the transparency of admitting failure (which may lead to an unwillingness to own up to mistakes committed in your company)

(2) in disbelief of failure’s existence,

(3) incapable of demonstrating the ability to explain the learnings from his or her failures in a traditional manner (Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.);

or maybe, (4) one has never truly failed before.

This answer does not necessarily mean you should not hire this person. You have learned of their mindset, and there is a job for every mindset. Maybe they are too shy to admit a mistake in a job interview? Or did the candidate seamlessly redirect the conversation to another relevant topic? If so, the candidate has demonstrated tremendous skill and character flaw in the same maneuver. No one is perfect. Many jobs favor the ability to communicate without admitting mistakes.

Failure 2

If the candidate tells you a story of how one almost failed but overcame it, you have learned that the candidate is one of the following:

(1) portrayer of the world in a permanently positive view (possibly doesn’t believe in failure),

(2) still not fully comfortable with the transparency of admitting failure but willing to meet you halfway (possibly doesn’t believe in failure; results! Why, man I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.),

(3) able to explain how one solved whatever difficulty of problem the example described;

or maybe, (4) one has never truly failed before (possibly does not believe in failure; if we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment).

Don’t underestimate the impact positivity can have on persistence and collaboration. Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough. Ask yourself, why did the job seeker choose to tell me this specific failure? Pay close attention to how one solved the problem, turning the failure into a success, so to speak. Hire this person if their example is the type of problem solving the position demands.

See also:

• 10 Most Common Illegal Interview Questions
• Identifying the 10 Soft Skills of a Great Intern
• How to Interview Someone in the HR Industry

Failure 3

If the candidate tells you a story of how one – for a reason or another –  has failed before, you have learned that the candidate can:

(1) talk about a time when one has failed, and call it failure,

(2) talk about a time when one has failed, call it failure, and explain what one learned to become a better worker (failure is success if we learn from it.)

(3) talk about a time when one has failed and blame someone else for the failure;

or maybe, (4) the candidate has never failed before and is lying (the only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.)

This may be the most candid answer of a well rounded human being, but it is not necessarily the right hire for every position. Will this candidate detail the wrong failure to an important client, partner or reporter? That question can only be answered by their body of work and the rest of the interview. To tell a true story of failing in a job interview is to understand that failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. I like working with these people, on most projects. However, many issues involve multiple people, and I see a red flag if the job seeker blames the majority of the failure on another person.  

________________________________________________________________________________

Everyday, learning from failures changes how I share input in the hiring process. As always, I learned from that to write this. I like to work hands on with people who answer with a story of almost failing but overcoming it, or a story of how one – for a reason or another – has truly failed before, but that’s just me, and I also understand the value in hiring a person who beats around the bush, working his or her way to a topic that isn’t “failure.”

I failed yesterday. And the day before that. And who knows maybe it’s a failure to say the most important job interview question is …

Tell me about a time you failed

David Smooke fails everyday.

Finding qualified candidates may seem like the hardest part of the hiring funnel, but what about the grueling and lengthy interview process? It’s no surprise that most candidates find the process broken or inefficient, and this rings especially true for developers.

Stack Overflow’s Annual Developer Survey provided us with specific information regarding developer’s feelings on interviews, allowing us to convey to recruiters and hiring managers alike what changes they can make to effectively interview technical candidates. Here are just a few mistakes to avoid when interviewing developer candidates for your company.

1. Ignoring the Pre-Interview Stage

35% of developers we surveyed said they wanted to be better prepared for the interview ahead of time, including being informed of who they will be speaking with. In the grand scheme of things, this is an easy fix for most recruiters and hiring managers. Sending out a quick email with the basic details (who they will be speaking with, how long the interviews are expected to last, etc.) ensures that the candidate is well-prepared and content, and only takes a few minutes on your end. Modern applicant tracking systems like SmartRecruiters even allow you to send the interview agenda and details to the candidate automatically, right after scheduling the interview, making this step easy and effortless. This pre-interview preparation also allows the candidate to ask questions before the interview, saving you both time and confusion in the long run.

2. Not Introducing Them to Anyone

47% of developers we surveyed said they wanted to be introduced to the team during the interview process. Programmers will pay very close attention to the people they meet, focusing on things like “Are they nice?” and “Are they smart?” While they don’t expect to meet everyone during their first interview, developers would ideally like to meet a few of their potential engineering team members and maybe even their future boss. Introducing them to members of the team is an easy way for candidates to get a feel of what the company culture is like as well as see if they can see themselves working closely with these people.

3. Taking Too Long to Follow Up After an Interview

We can all agree that no one likes being left hanging after a job interview. But with developers, this rings especially true. If the candidate didn’t get the job, communicating early on eliminates stress and uncertainty and allows the candidate to continue their job search. On the flip side, if you are interested in moving forward with a candidate you need to do it quickly – developers are in high demand and likely to have offers from multiple companies on their plate. Developers who are proactively searching for their next job don’t stay available for very long, and those who aren’t looking are constantly being recruited.

Ready to find technical candidates to interview?

Stack Overflow is the trusted destination site for software developers to find, ask, and answer programming questions. Stack Overflow helps employers reach, attract, and engage talent while helping developers find jobs they love.

With its seamless integration with SmartRecruiters, in a few minutes you can create your job ad and put it in front of millions of developers with targeted job listings.

Access Stack Overflow’s page on the Marketplace and make them a part of your hiring success today!

#####

This article was written by Rachel Maleady, Content Marketing Writer at Stack Overflow, where she covers topics ranging from recruiting to employer branding in the tech industry.

Hiring top talent is one of the biggest challenges for startup founders, especially at an early stage where having the right people on your team can be the difference between startup success and failure. Early stage technical hires must be able to hit the ground running when it comes to adapting to the requirements and pace of product development. With less time and resources to devote to the hiring process, it is extremely important that founders are aware of the common recruiting hurdles that most startups face. Here are the 6 most common startup recruiting mistakes and how to avoid them:

1. Hiring Generalists over Specialists

At an early stage, it is tempting for startup founders to focus on finding that elusive developer evangelist, who can write great code, lead the development of your product vision, and get tech enthusiasts excited about what your product offers. But waiting for that all-around star to come along may not be the best idea when faced with product launch deadlines.

Instead, seek out and hire talent that specialize in different areas of expertise, so that you can build a strong team that compliments each other’s skill sets. To do that, you must have a detailed know-how of what skill stacks your product requires at each stage and look for candidates that specialize in those areas.

2. Not Having A Comprehensive Job Description

Before you start reaching out to candidates for an unfilled startup role, you must have a detailed job description to guide you on what your requirements are for that position. You will then be able to accurately evaluate each candidate on up to what extent their expertise and experience matches your requirements.

A comprehensive job description must include the complete list of responsibilities, skill stack, personality traits, required qualifications, and any other capabilities that you’re looking for, along with how you see position as adding value to your startup.

3. Avoiding Structured And Challenging Interviews

You met this really interactive programmer at a technology conference last week, and your first instinct is to have a quick Skype interview with them and then make them an offer based on how it goes. This is how a number of startup founders end up hiring their early talent, not assessing candidates via structured interviews and proper screening.

Your initial Skype call or face to face meeting should only serve as a screening process, where you assess their creativity and temperament. Follow up with a structured, challenge-based interview where you have them provide the best possible solution to a technical process from their area of expertise, on the spot. This will reflect their resourcefulness and ability to adapt when faced with challenges in a startup environment. Finally, have a communications interview, where you assess their ability to collaborate with multiple stakeholders as well as their personality traits like willingness to learn and self-awareness.

4. Not Selling The Candidates On Your Startup Idea

For a disruptive startup idea, having an early stage team that is as passionate about the product as the founders, is key to the concept being adopted by the industry. If your early hires are not sold on the product, chances are they will deviate from the startup goals from time to time.

Make sure that you give all of your candidates an orientation in their initial interview on how your startup disrupts traditional business with its mere existence. Every single candidate must see your passion, progress and accomplishments on your way to being the next big startup idea, showing them that an opportunity to work with you is a great career move for them.

5. Recruiting Talent That Is Not A Cultural Fit For Your Startup

Working in a startup environment means having the ability to constantly learn and adapt, and at times managing multiple tasks resourcefully. Talent that are not strategic or cannot handle change will end up being bad hires for a fast paced startup culture.

A good indicator for the right cultural fit is if the candidate has prior experience working with a startup or an understanding of startup cultures. During the hiring process, have them spend some time in viewing how your team operates – giving them an idea of the pace, energy, and initiative that is required to get through the day at your startup. If at the end of the session they are excited rather than anxious, they’re definitely your next vital team member.

6. Not Utilizing Offshore Staffing Partners

Acquiring the services of an offshore staffing partner can help you source the right talent and reduce time to fill for an otherwise long unfilled position. Startup owners are often hesitant in utilizing offshore talent, due to there being a great deal of uncertainty when working with offshore teams.

The best way to get over that fear of offshoring is finding a partner with a hybrid team, having physical presence in the U.S. for continuous support. Your offshoring partner must also be exceptional at hiring and training talent that can adapt to any kind of working environment across diverse cultures.

Utilizing well-defined processes with clear objectives and end results when hiring an early stage startup team must be the top priority for founders, making sure that they cover every aspect of how the hires will potentially add value to startup goals. Have any other hiring suggestions for startups? Feel free to share your insights in the comments below.

Looking to scale your startup product development at an early stage? Download this ebook to learn how you can build an offshore software development team to power your startup!

This article originally appeared on Allshore blog and was written by Raza Naqvi from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. SmartRecruiters is the hiring success platform to find and hire great people.

If you’re recruiting a team for your startup venture, you probably have an ideal type of employee in mind. It’s possible that the type of employee who’s a great catch for a large corporation isn’t the one you want on your team – and it’s possible that the people you want on your startup team won’t be attracted by the same things as people who want to work at established companies. 

The biggest challenge for startups is finding the right people. It’s crucial to find people that have the skills, motivation, flexibility, and attitude to succeed in a variable, fast paced, and frenetic work environment.

Startups are not usually in a position to offer the high salaries, predictable hours, job security, benefit packages and perks that established companies can. You’ll have to work to find people who embrace challenges, and are willing to make big sacrifices for greater success down the road.

Below, we’ve put together a list of tips for succeeding at startup recruiting:

Write a hyper-focused job description

Your startup probably doesn’t have the resources to pay an executive recruiting agency to find the right people, so you’re going to have to take a grassroots approach. Therefore, the more detailed and articulate your job description, the more likely you’ll be to attract the people you want.

Look for entrepreneurs

Unless an applicant has a compelling reason for wanting to work in a startup, they might lack the creativity, drive, vision and resourcefulness you’re looking for. An easy starting point is to look for people who already have entrepreneurial experience – and don’t forget to ask about their own startup projects.

Hire versatile people

Rather than hiring someone with a fixed skill set, look for a jack-of-all-trades. You want intellectually curious fast learners who aren’t afraid of leaving their comfort zones. Populate your startup team with flexible, multifaceted people who are willing to take on a variety of tasks, and watch your talented staff grow off of itself.

Interview recent college grads

Recent college grads are often willing to take on the extra responsibilities and long hours that a startup business demands for the prospect of a meaningful work experience. They’re also often willing to work for lower salaries, and they’re excited by the prospect of growing with a new company. If you’re not willing to take a chance on someone with little employment history, look for people with around two years of experience who are looking for a new challenge.

Find people who want you have

Someone who eventually wants their own startup – or someone who has had a startup that failed – may see your job as a way to learn more about the ins-and-outs of creating a successful venture. These candidates can bring lots of enthusiasm to your startup, because they see it as a learning opportunity. They’re interested in all aspects of the startup process, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to help the venture succeed. The only downside? Down the road, they’ll probably leave the fold and go out on their own. In the meantime, having them on your team can be incredibly beneficial.

Hire independent workers

It takes a special kind of employee to jump right into a business venture and learn as they go. You probably won’t be able to provide extensive training, supervision and support, so look for resourceful people who can figure out what needs to be done and then do it, without a lot of hand-holdling.

The right people for your startup will come in all shapes and sizes. Look for talent rather than a specific role. You’ll be better off with people who believe in themselves, think outside the box, enjoy being challenged, and aren’t afraid to take risks.

This article was written by Scott Matthew from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. SmartRecruiters is the hiring success platform to find and hire great people.

Nearly every midsized company talks about the need to build a strong bench of internal candidates for the top management team. I agree:  nothing is better than home-grown talent. However, sometimes a candidate isn’t ready to be promoted and the company simply cannot wait. In those cases, recruiting is the only option but that alternative can be rife with risk.

With that in mind, the fastest way to get great executives onto the top team of a midsized company is by having a deep bench of external candidates built up over the years by means of purposeful networking. That’s an important tool used by top-performing private equity firms to turbocharge the growth of their portfolio companies. They build a network full of plug-and-play star executives just waiting to be tapped.

So how strong is your network?  Some CEOs get trapped in their own business, rarely getting out and engaging with peers and other industry leaders. Many people think they’re building a strong network when they’re at networking events, drinking wine while exchanging business cards and having light banter with people they don’t know. While meeting people is a start, at the heart of every strong network is a stable of verified heavy-hitters.

Building and maintaining a top-quality management team is one of the keys to a high-performance organization. Yet when hiring executives, most leaders of midsized companies use standard hiring practices: collecting a list of candidates they do not know, then putting them through an interview process. This is highly risky, even with the help of the best recruiters and diligent interviewing and onboarding processes. In fact, the in a recent survey by the Corporate Executive Board, they found that nearly half of the executives recruited from the outside fail within the first 18 months. Additionally, the cost of a bad executive hire is two to three times their salary in direct costs, plus potentially 8-10 times their salary stemming from bad decisions, according to Joseph Daniel McCool in his book Deciding Who Leads.

In some sense, it might be seen as crazy to hire a CEO outside of your network and trust him with a company worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars: yet this is a common practice. In contrast, some leaders build and maintain a network of executives they have seen in action. These are people with whom they have shared a foxhole, as well as connectors:  people who have a strong network themselves. When they find an ideal candidate through their network, such companies get more reliable results. Katie Solomon, director of human capital for San Francisco-based private equity firm Genstar Capital, says the firm has recruited 76% of its portfolio company executives through its network. For example, Genstar hired a particular CEO for one of its portfolio companies after he had helped them conduct due diligence on several potential investments.  In another case, Genstar hired a CEO whose prior company had a longstanding vendor-customer relationship with another CEO already in the PE firm’s portfolio.

A high-performance human network has two variables. One is the breadth and diversity of the network. The second is the number of proven high performers in that network. Make a written commitment of time and money toward building your own strong human network, and put someone effective in charge of it.  For midsized companies, a strategic HR leader is a natural pick.

Inventory your network of verified high-performers into categories: talk to each of your C suite executives and board members and refine your list. How many of these candidates are potential CFOs? How many potential product experts? How many prospective board members?  They might not be perfect for your needs today but they could someday qualify for a leadership role in your company based on your personal experience or that of someone you highly trust. Contact the more highly-connected members of your network and do an inventory with them as well. Then identify the gaps in your network by category and set goals to reduce those gaps.

Get out of your office. Trade shows and association are ideal opportunities to meet industry leaders and find commonalities. Moreover, there’s nothing wrong with identifying an industry leader then picking up the phone to introduce yourself and to suggest getting to know one another.  Most will say yes. Find or make opportunities to connect with these people. Perhaps it starts with coffee, but look for opportunities to do some work together, whether it’s an industry project, or some other activity.  As the relationship with each individual develops, find a project for which you can hire them to better verify their ability.

Midsized businesses led by CEOs who haven’t had other corporate executive roles in their past often believe that outsiders-and anyone who works for them—are “enemies” and not to be trusted. This mindset creates isolation and a weak or nonexistent network.  Leaders who seek growth know that many of the people who work elsewhere may shift companies in the course of their careers. Some of these executives could be the key to capitalizing on business opportunities, so they encourage a level of openness in their leadership ranks.  For example, Genstar, like other PE firms, often drives growth through acquisitions.  That requires its portfolio companies to regularly get on planes and meet industry leaders, driving the development of a stronger network even when no acquisition occurs.

While personally verifying an executive’s ability is ideal, any one person has only so much time.  Do not underestimate the verified networks of people in your trusted inner circle.  Identify people around you with very strong human networks (“connectors”) and focus your energy on building trust with them. Remember that just knowing connectors isn’t enough; they have to believe that you will treat their network well and that you deserve the benefits of decades of network development on their part. Before you hire each new leader, carefully evaluate the strength of their personal network.

Genstar illustrates this point well.  Although the firm has 16 portfolio companies, they restrict investments to four industries. That enables the firm to methodically concentrate its industry knowledge in the form of what they call Strategic Advisory Boards, or SAB.  Within each industry vertical, Genstar has built an SAB comprised of 6-8 of the most connected and successful industry leaders.  Genstar’s SAB provides the firm and its portfolio companies with a rich source of operating experience and strategic insight.  SAB members work directly with Genstar to source and evaluate potential investment opportunities as well as assist portfolio companies—frequently as board members—to develop strategic plans, expand market opportunities, source acquisitions and recruit executives and board members.  Most devote up to half their time to Genstar-related activities, and the remainder on their own pursuits.  Of the most recent eight portfolio company CEOs it hired, five came from the SAB network and the other three from the broader network that Genstar maintains through its principals and portfolio companies.

Genstar’s 2011 carve-out acquisition of Insurity, which was sold to TA Associates in October 2014, was originally identified as an acquisition opportunity by SAB member David Wroe.  David had been working with Genstar to identify insurance software and brokerage opportunities.  Following Genstar’s investment in Insurity, David subsequently served on the board and worked hand-in-hand with the CEO Jeffrey Glazer on several key projects.  Portfolio company Acrisure needed to strengthen its C-suite after completing 8 acquisitions in four months.  The CFO, COO and GC were quickly recruited, all through the network.  CEO Greg Williams says, “I have 20 years’ experience with private equity.  Plenty of them have capital, but the first criteria on my list was industry knowledge and connections.  Genstar has invested in accumulating people with decades of experience in the industry, and those people are available to me; some even sit on my board.”  The company is continuing to grow, making 28 acquisitions in just 16 months since partnering with Genstar.

A high-performance human network is required for high-performance business results. Like anything of value growing the strength of your network will take time.  There will be missteps, as you identify people who do not qualify as high performers. However, over time the number of verified high-performing people in your network will become a crucial factor in increasing the performance of your company.

This article was written by Robert Sher from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. SmartRecruiters is the cloud hiring platform to find and hire great people.

Today’s case studies about data-driven marketing present stories of leaders and their successes. After all, history is written by the winners (or their vendors). However, many CMOs may be feeling like they’ve been sucked into the jet engine of this Big Data thing, and are struggling to create some order from a chaos they’re chasing.

One form this pursuit takes is a rush to hire world-class data science/marketing analytics talent. This is hard because the envelope’s edge of this still-forming discipline encompasses so many complementary skills: domain expertise, infrastructure management, data acquisition and transformation, statistical modeling, visualization, and perhaps most importantly synthesis and communication. Yet this complex expression of the recruiting challenge makes us blind to three more fundamental talents, which if missing or out of balance you should get after immediately.

For short, we can call these capabilities “Experiencers,” “Optimizers” and “Builders:”

1. Think of Experiencers as artists.

They think in terms of customer persona portraits and journey map/purchase funnel landscapes to describe their work.

• When hiring for the Experiencer talent, look for a broad, dynamic sensibility for understanding and evaluating the customer experience. A good retail mystery shopper is an example of this orientation and level of skill. Also, really good analysts ground their cleanup and transformation work in clear, vivid, well-founded customer stories generating the data they work with.
• The most effective Experiencers don’t just tell stories based on anecdotes, but also think about numbers like volumes and conversion rates at different points along those stories, and prioritize suggestions for interventions. Like the best painters, they are masters of proportion.
• Look out for “experience fanatics” — they’ll fuss about font kerning like hawks hunt mice, but won’t be sensitive to a bigger problem that needs fixing more urgently; mostly they’ll hunker down in the domains they know (for example, in shopping cart abandonment).

2. Your team should also include Optimizers.

The quant traders of the marketing world, they think in terms of “selling” expensive media, and “buying” cheaper sources of demand.

• How can you recognize a strong Optimizer in an interview? Strong candidates will start by talking about trends in cost-per-lead (for example), and how they’re working to understand that better (through attribution analysis, for example). Weaker Optimizers start by telling you about their analysis.
• The best Optimizers keep their eyes on the big picture. They’re data “MacGyvers,” comfortable with messiness and incompleteness, focused on continuously better answers rather than tilting at windmills of analytic perfection.
• When working with Optimizers, beware of their tendency, like the drunk man who looks for his keys under the lamppost “because that’s where the light is,” to confine their efforts to data-rich channels. With these blinkers they often invest past the point of diminishing returns and miss other needs and opportunities.

3. Lastly, you need Builders who think first of the capabilities you need, technically and process-wise, for a successful analytic operation.

• If an interviewee dwells on a “target architecture” map or organization chart of all the goodies you might need to “fully harness the power of Big Data Analytics” (or some equally god-awful term), you haven’t found your Builder.
• Instead, look for someone who can also show you a practical roadmap for realizing a vision that’s sensitive both to where the greatest initial value and near-term feasibility in your business would be.
• The best ones should demonstrate a healthy “code-to-slide” ratio, and/or a track record of building strong teams, in their past and current work — that is, they have a clear idea where they’re headed, and a practical roadmap for getting there, but also momentum — a steady record of delivering progress against and value from such plans. To adapt a software business saying, Real Builders Ship.

The very best data scientists have all of these talents, developed well past threshold levels. But even if your data scientists can beat up your competition’s, they alone will be unproductive unless the rest of your marketing team’s mid-to-senior leaders (as well as key partners) don’t also have at least a spike on one of these dimensions and an appreciation for the others. With this balance, you’re more likely to be aligned on opportunities to pursue, fueled with the right data, and flexible enough operationally to realize the ROI your analytic investment promises.

This article was written by Cesar Brea (On Marketing) from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. SmartRecruiters is the cloud hiring platform.

Why should a college student with job offers in finance or from a big company like Google go work for a startup instead? That was the big question of debate at this weekend’s ‘Start @ a Startup’ event, which matched about 200 college seniors with 30 startups like Birchbox, Dropbox, Flipboard and Square.

Over snow cones and candy, the students—engineering majors from the Ivy League and largely East Coast-oriented schools like Georgia Tech, the University of Waterloo and Rice University—spent two days in breakout sessions, keynote talks and eventually job interviews. Forbes caught up with the event’s co-hosts, venture firm Sequoia Capital and nonprofit Business Today, as well as three visiting cofounders from the Sequoia portfolio to talk computer science learning, hiring outside of Silicon Valley and diversity issues in tech today. Some of their best advice is below, lightly edited for clarity.

Why is it important to have this event on the East Coast?

Bryan Schreier, partner, Sequoia: The idea came from the fact that there are very few computer science graduates in the U.S. each year, maybe 16,000 or 17,000, and most are from the Northeast. But if you go to Stanford for computer science, there’s a 45% chance that you’ll join a startup. With the Ivy League, it’s just 15%-17%. There’s an under-representation of startups compared to big banks and consulting firms. We want to bring as many startups as we can to the student population out here, to help the startups hire as many people as they can and level the playing field, and to be a service for these students as they look at the next big step in their lives.

Marco Zappacosta, CEO, Thumbtack: The software engineering market is more like a moviestar market or baseball than it is a blue collar profession in that there are returns to being even marginally better. The returns are multiple. We are hunting for the tiniest percentage at the very top, because the leverage is tremendous. We made three offers last year, lost one, and hired one intern.

Steve Garrity, CTO, Hearsay Social: None of us came here with a cap of how many people to hire. If they hit the bar, we’d gladly hire all of them.

Why should these students be joining your companies, instead of a larger company like Google or one they start on their own?

Matt MacInnis, CEO, Inkling: Going out on your own is achievable as a new grad, but statistically about as bad a chance as can be. How do you work with others, resolve conflict, and be a functioning member of a team? If you go to a mid-sized startup you get the best of both worlds. You have someone who will take you under your wing and coach you. It’s the best way to learn these lessons after school. On your own you will learn these lessons the most expensive way possible. You get coaching at Google, but you don’t see the high level peanut butter tying everything together.

Garrity: Imagine you want to go live in the wilderness and start your own civilization. You have three options. You could go try to do it right away and figure out which plants are poisonous. Is that animal harmful or is it going to be a pet? You could build your hut, and a bridge and a rope swing, and you might make it through and not kill yourself. Odds are you will eat the wrong berry or get chased by a tiger or not build your fire fast enough.

On the flipside you can go live in San Francisco, and you’re not going to learn much that’s actually applicable to living life in the wilderness. The berries are delivered to you packaged; the fire is a flick of a switch. Or in the middle, go live in a small tribe that is still living natively, but they say, ‘Hey, don’t do that.’ There’s tribal knowledge. ‘Don’t eat the red berries, go for blue.’ ‘Hey there’s a tiger, everyone go in the fort.’ In my keynote today I am saying that failure is dying, everything else is learning. On your own, the cost of your mistake is the business dying. At a large startup, you eliminate the dying risks, but don’t eliminate all the risks.

Schreier: Starting a company is so much harder than wanting to start a company. You need the right idea, the right time for the idea, and to be the right person for the idea. Recent grads that want to start a company, I tell them that’s fabulous and to go learn the skills until they have an idea that rips them from whatever they’re doing. Fantasizing about a startup is not enough.

What do you look for in young hires?

Zappacosta: We look for a quiet ambition, we don’t want you to wear it on your sleeve, but we want you to be intrinsically motivated and deeply curious, the type who asks questions to build your knowledge.

MacInnis: We talk about ‘No assholes’ and integrity. You want fundamentally good people who are also technical minds.

Garrity: There are companies where superstar assholes are tolerated. They get things done. That’s not even a fundamentally flawed culture, it’s just one one that we don’t choose.

How do you see an event like this in terms of improving the fundamental imbalance in gender and minority jobs in tech?

Macinnis: There’s two ways to solve this problem. There’s the cradle, where women continue STEM as a career path, and then there’s at the source of hiring, which is when someone’s coming out of their university, and can you convince that person that it’s the right career path for them? And then, can you get them? This conference helps solve the second problem. The first is more profound and tough to solve.  But if we have a shot at hiring a few more female engineers out of this event like this, it’s a huge home run.

Zappacosta: It’s also something you can only improve through outbound efforts. If we just hired based on incoming notes, we would perpetuate the culture. It’s only by coming to events like this and working to find people that you think are underrepresented that you change it.

Garrity: You get a different mindset with people from the East Coast versus the West coast, a different mindset. I want diversity on beliefs, viewpoints and backgrounds. I don’t need diversity on whether you have integrity or not.

How do you find that in a 22-year-old?

MacInnis: It’s like, “Yea, brah!” There are many short-hands, any single one of which is insufficient to avoid, but you get to understand how someone operates as a person.

Zappacosta: The hard part is how you test for your values. Early on, my cofounders and I would say, ‘Test for culture fit,’ and someone would say back, ‘I know we have a distinct culture, but I don’t know how to articulate it.’ So we had to sit down and come up with questions that are revealing of these values.

Garrity: We still haven’t cracked that code. My cofounder or I still interview everyone who joins the company. [As it turns out, a cofounder at all three startups still interviews every hire.]

What about the students outside the Ivy League who maybe need more help?

Schreier: That’s why we expanded a little bit outside the Northeast to schools like Rice and Virginia that are great programs. Technology levels the playing field, but finding people is part of the struggle.

Paul Dornier, Business Today: That’s also why I read all 1,800 applications. We all know there are students out there who would be a perfect fit for something like this who never hear about it.

Zappacosta: An engineer is a role where it’s easier to test true ability. We hired a guy out of Appalachian State. Who knows why he went there, and if we just saw that, we might have passed. But he did our coding challenge, killed it, and he got an offer. Engineering is more meritocratic than a bank or finance. 

And startups that aren’t backed by the likes of a big firm like Sequoia, at least yet? 

Zappacosta: As a startup, we had to compromise early on. There was a guy who was super effective but not a culture fit. We knew it, but it was a tradeoff we had to make. There weren’t a lot of people knocking on my door and I needed to fill that position now, and I didn’t know if I could do it without him. So we hired him, and it was worth it but it caused problems. [The employee’s no longer at Thumbtack.]

Garrity: We did some heinous stuff with our code base. I was the only engineer, working from 8pm to 6am. When we raised our Series A [funding round] from Sequoia and hired our first engineer, I spent all night refactoring our code base so he wouldn’t see it in the morning and quit, and I apologized that it was terrible. He asked me if my valuation would be any higher if the code was prettier, and I said no, investors didn’t look. So he replied that the code did its job, now we could work to make it better. You can do the same thing with employees, but there’s probably a line there if you can’t fix it too fast.

Macinnis: What they’re describing is technical and cultural debt. You take it on early because you won’t get the best at first. But eventually you have to pay it off, whether it’s by replacing people or code.

What do these college seniors know that you didn’t at that age?

Blair Shane, CMO, Sequoia: These students know what they don’t know, they’re aware of what they’re asking and learning each time, more than many students I’ve encountered in the past. And they know more about the stage of company, from seed to Series A or Series B.

MacInnis: The questions have been really smart. They’re mission driven, not money-driven, so their sophistication has impressed me.

Zappacosta: They just know a ton of companies! I don’t remember knowing this many startups when I was a senior in college.

What would you like to un-teach C.S. majors in the U.S. today?

Garrity: How to ship. People say, ‘Oh, ship software.’ ‘You did the project, now ship it!’ But that’s not at all how it happens. You have to build, test, deploy, support and deal with everything else. The assignment isn’t over. A couple people are starting to indicate they know that, but most kids coming out of any college—including Stanford—don’t get this.

Zappacosta: I think people do a bad job of distinguishing computer science as a science from software engineering that you do in the day-to-day. Students love algorithms, and that’s great, they’ll come into play. But there’s a ton of work you’ll do with systems so that the algorithm works for the actual product.

MacInnis: Being grades as an individual in school, versus a fluid team without a fixed assignment.

Schreier: A couple of startups are trying to address this problem. Koru takes people who are well-educated and puts them through a three-month intensive learning process the summer after they graduate, and then they have placement programs in companies like LinkedIn. They take you from a liberal education to being a field-ready data scientist, which is an incredibly powerful idea to help people get more interesting jobs straight out of school.

This article was written by Alex Konrad from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. SmartRecruiters is your workspace to find and hire great people.

From the Startup Rules of Josh James, founder and CEO of Domo, the all-star executive who also co-founded Omniture and took it from inception to IPO to sale for $1.8B to Adobe:

“Rule 45: No Unemployed Candidates. Always an Excuse. Too Risky. Top-Rated, Currently Employed Candidates Who Won’t Leave… PERFECT.”

With all due respect for your accomplishments, Josh, I disagree.

Consider the strong case for the traditionally “unqualified” hire. Not every company, particularly in the early stages, can afford to hire an established “superstar.” I maintain that most any company, particularly in the growth phase, is better off by discovering potential stars (we call them Champions) in the making and creating a healthy holding environment that allows and encourages them to grow. Our own company, Fishbowl, is neither public nor for sale, but we’ve achieved record growth (currently more than 70% through the last three tumultuous years), regional and national awards for product and management quality, and negligible turnover (under 2%) since we began in 2001. We’ve done all of this by doing the exact opposite of the strategy our Utah neighbor, Josh James, has described.

But our approach requires the right core ingredients. I’ve honed my skills in identifying the traits we describe as the 7 Non-Negotiables: Respect, Belief, Loyalty, Commitment, Trust, Courage and Gratitude. I’ve previously written about the “7 NN’s” with my paired leadership partner, Mary Michelle Scott (Fishbowl President) in Forbes and in HBR.

We’re looking for candidates who exhibit these characteristics, and we’re watching the way they interact—their body language, eye contact, whether they are articulate—a good listener—and whether they can express what they feel without feeling nervous. Can they demonstrate strong character traits when asked how they would handle various situations in former jobs or in life? I can sense an individual’s work ethic. We look for someone eager and hungry to learn, which has generally been a good barometer of the individual’s work ethic as well. In 30 minutes, I can judge a prospective hire with pretty much 99% accuracy.  Our managers (we call them our “Captains”) have honed these sensibilities as well.

Consider our recent new hire in accounting last week. She came to us from a minimal position at Blimpie’s. She’s a lady who’s smart—highly qualified—was formerly the CFO of a small hospital. But then she got really ill. Then the economy caused her to lose her home. The short sale of her house left her with a little money to work with, but the only job she could obtain was as the manager of a Blimpie’s store for $9 an hour.

I sensed her capabilities from the moment we met. She’d never used QuickBooks (our inventory control software integrates with QuickBooks, and we run our own company on the same products and functionality we sell). Most everything we do (other than our basic financial/accounting principles) was new.

She embraced the challenge. She learned our system (eagerly) and made suggestions that within four days produced the most accurate financial reports in her area of stewardship our company has ever seen. Today she initiated a new process with our Controller that will cause our past due accounts receivable to diminish and possibly disappear. When someone is this eager and excited to excel, and is given the environment to thrive in, miracles transpire.

This is not a rare occurrence for us. Out of 18 developers (yes, our software product developers) only 2 had ever had any serious programming experience before. More typically, these individuals came with prior experience in dealing with inventory. They dealt with playground equipment, electrical or plumbing warehouses and many came from our customer support and training department. They know things about inventory beyond what engineering or even marketing could teach them. The programming skills they were able to learn.

We employ 50 individuals in support who had never worked in customer service before. The majority of our sales people came with little or no prior experience in sales.

Could this approach work for other companies? Consider the following advantages our philosophy gains:

1. Less-established employees have room for growth. They are fresh and eager, not fatigued or scarred.

2. They have no bad habits to break; only good habits to learn. You don’t have to un-train them on the paradigms they’ve put in place somewhere else. They can blossom into anything.

3. They have the right attitude. With attitude, as they say, the aptitude will come.

4. New blood, whether young or old, can bring fresh ideas and perspectives to old problems. Their enthusiasm can be infectious. Their naiveté is some of the gold that they bring. They’re not afraid to ask, “ Why do you do it this way?” From the most innocent questions, we may go back to our roots and say, “That’s a good point. Why do we do that?” The newest employee may be the one who prompts a positive change.

5. You can build lifelong relationships. Some of our employees are young; some are older. But when your company is the place an employee has been permitted to blossom and shine, they will love working with you, most likely forever.  Thus, turnover is low.

Many companies will argue that the cost of taking someone on with no experience is prohibitive. We disagree. We employ the concept of agile programming through our entire organization. We use paired leadership and paired teamwork. Each new hire has someone to coach and train him or her, and within a few months, or weeks in some cases, they’re fully up to speed and online.

Could this approach work for you? At a minimum, I hope I’ve given you the reason to consider these possibilities as you make your next set of new hires. I maintain there are many all-star/champion employees within every company’s reach. You just need to recognize their potential, and then create and maintain an environment that allows them to be nurtured, developed and then to shine.

Sorry, Josh!

This article was written by David K. Williams from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Additional reporting for this article was provided by Fishbowl President Mary Michelle Scott. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.

FWD.us, an advocacy organization dedicated to moving the knowledge economy forward, profiled SmartRecruiters because we’re founded by an immigrant entrepreneur, taking Silicon Valley by storm (employing people like me), and have helped companies hire for hundreds of thousands of jobs, both domestically and abroad.

Here are the top soundbites on the state of immigration and recruitment for tech startups:

“Startups need talent like no one else because when you’re working for a 10,000 people company the risk is evenly distributed among 10,000 people,” said Natalia. “But for startups, if you have 30 people, 50 people, each individual contribution is a much bigger stake.”

“It’s hard for companies to acquire talent they need. It’s equally hard for people to find jobs they love,” said Jerome. “And we think there’s a much better way to make that match – to finally make hiring easy.”

“Tech doesn’t have to be a thing to be feared. It’s to make the process you already do and the life you already live better.”

Share this video on Facebook! Read more on the FWD.us Blog.

It’s funny the way counterintuitive measures so often prove to be the best solution. But then again, this has been true for centuries. “All behaviors contain their opposites,” said Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching around 6th century BC, and you should “learn to see things backwards, inside out and upside down.”

That said, in the 21st century, and arguably in centuries before ours, counterintuitive measures have been deemed irresponsible by those who undertake them and then fail, and genius by those who undertake them and happen to succeed. It makes business practices seem to be more luck of the draw rather than the result of a creative strategy that allows for trial and error.

Few entrepreneurs strike it rich on their first company. In fact, generally speaking, 75% of startups fail, meaning that if you’re looking to be the next Zuckerberg, the odds aren’t in your favor.

Of course, it isn’t the droves of failed ideas that make entrepreneurs so interesting. It is their never-ending ability to learn, relearn and then actually create. It is their insatiable desire for putting trial and error to the test – over and over and over until it works. And admittedly, I’m addicted.

You’ve all heard the Thomas Edison quote, rattled off at a reporter when asked how it felt to fail so many times: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

His determination gave us the light bulb, and his failures ceased to matter.

When building your company from the ground up, finding and hiring like-minded people is essential. Starting a business is not a one person initiative, you must trust your team to take responsibilities off your hands, so you, as the founder, can focus elsewhere.

No, employees don’t have to see the world exactly as you do. In fact, they shouldn’t see the world as you do at all. No one creative; no one striving for the success that comes from true, resilient and persistent trial and error; and no modern-day Thomas Edison ever sees the world exactly the same as anyone else. Instead, you need someone who isn’t afraid to take criticism, and someone who isn’t afraid to give it to you. You need someone who believes in your vision, values and mission, but who also stands their ground – so that when it comes to needing to do so for the company, you know that they will. What you need is someone with stamina, courage and a forward-looking worldview that is a daily encouragement for you and others toward excellence.

Hiring might not be rocket science, but it is indeed an art form, even a science per se, in and of itself. Here’s what has worked best for me, and what you should look for too, in new employees, no matter the role. These characteristics might sound similar to your own, and many of them might make you think these employees will be challenging to work with, but that’s the point. Passion is revealed in action, not in silence. Invest in that.

Intelligence

Hiring for culture is important, and a culture match is certainly essential. But, no personality fit can make up for brains. Rather, you need both. And, we aren’t simply talking IQ intelligence here – we’re talking emotional intelligence as well.

Look for someone who sees the future as clearly and boldly as you do – and who is able to take a blow every time someone claims that their vision is plain wrong (because they will). You need employees who can take criticism as well as you do when you pitch VCs, and who bounce back smarter and stronger from it. A work culture of constructive criticism combined with deserved accolades when the trial and error process works (or doesn’t) is essential. And you need the people there who can handle both the ups and downs – just like any successful entrepreneur.

Excellence

With the ability to take criticism well and build upon current knowledge (two things that come with both IQ-related intelligence and emotional intelligence) comes the capability to produce standout work that often times alludes bigger enterprises.

Excellence makes startups standout. Excellence takes startups from funding to the growth stage and from the growth stage to a leading position in the market. Indeed, excellence still matters. In an age in which timeliness and the first to publish, comment or act has everyone on the edge of their seat, you need people who use their collective education, surroundings and feedback in combination with a vision for the future to make decisions that drive real business results without sacrificing excellence.

Look for people who extend their interest in your industry to outside work hours. Are they networking within the industry? Do they have an industry following on Twitter or LinkedIn? Are they versed in the latest news and most up-to-date information within your specific field? Because if the answer to all of this is yes – it’s likely they’ve already generated excellence within the industry in one way or another, and your company culture can tap into that.

Bullheadedness

And in the face of it all, you want your next hire to have the guts to attack out-of-the-box ideas via action the same way you did in order to get your company off the ground. Starting a business is no easy task, keeping it going and on the forefront of innovation amidst the business behemoths in your industry is certainly no easier.

Look for someone who can see the holes in the wall, no matter how small, and who can invent ways to help others see them, too. Call them an idea person, a good salesperson, someone who is perhaps a little overconfident or overzealous, but whatever you call them, be sure it’s your company investing in their determination, the same way the VCs invested in you.

Of course, in order to accomplish this, you need job descriptions that accurately portray your company culture and the characteristics above. Your startup status should never mean that you throw together a vague job description. All hires must be strategic, and the best way to make sure that happens is to formulate a well-thought out job description. Doing that, in combination with using these three characteristics to weed out those who don’t have an epic startup mentality, will make scaling your startup a process that pulls in people who have the drive, ambition and frank determination to make an idea work – and encourage everyone else to make it work, too.

This article was written by H.O. Maycotte from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Learn more about SmartRecruiters, your workspace to find and hire great people.