Managing Startups: Best Blog Posts

Chapter 54. Snake-Oil Startup Recruiting

David Beisel

Everything in startups is selling. Selling to financiers. Selling to customers. Even for consumer-facing online services, UI and product design is about selling users on what actions you’d like them to take.

Recruiting new employees is one of the most important selling jobs that a founder/CEO does in the first couple of years of a startup’s life (and subsequently, for that matter). But earlier in a startup’s life there exists a real delicate balance in setting expectations for new people joining the company. With recruiting especially, it is important to sell reality amplified, not to sell at all costs.

Unlike with other constituents, where you often have some leeway to sell and then orient your organization to deliver, once you’ve “sold” someone into in organization, that person becomes part of the organization.

This means any miscommunications or disappointment about factors that were or weren’t included in bringing somebody on board are now incorporated into your organization itself. These dimensions of course include roles, responsibilities, and compensation, but they also include culture, working style, and environment. And the smaller and more embryonic the company is, the more meaningful an impact a misalignment can create. The last thing you want is to introduce a new individual into a startup who will soon develop resentment about being sold a misaligned permutation of reality, or worse, an empty bag of goods. It’s better ...