Startup CXO

Chapter 100Hiring Product Development Team Members

Hiring and building teams are the most important things you will do as a leader. People make an immediate impact (positively or negatively) and they make a long‐term impact; again, positively or negatively. There's no better way to create the culture you want than to hire people who will help you accelerate it. On the other hand, there's no better way to ruin the culture than to hire people who are not going to help you create or promote the culture you want. I certainly don't have all of the answers and I'm still learning and experimenting with what works, but after interviewing hundreds of candidates over my career and hiring 100+ people into product development roles, I've learned a few things that I'd like to share with you.

First, you need to be clear about what you're looking for in a new hire and this involves close collaboration with your team and with other functional areas. Obviously, you won't consider hiring someone to just plug a current hole or gap; you'll want to think about how the role can grow with the company as it scales. I'll talk a bit more about this in career pathing, but you need to have a roadmap in mind for the product development organization, the individual, and the company before you even start vetting candidates.

I've broken this topic up into some chapters: interviewing (Chapter 100), onboarding (Chapter 100), increasing the funnel and building diverse teams (Chapter 101), retaining and career ...