Likes & Launch

(Thanks to RunofPlay for the image, with timely football theme.)

The single most important thing to the USV Network is the people who comprise the 50+ companies.There is so much value built within a single team that is only further amplified when those teams get to work with peers one degree away. The knowledge base expands beyond just USV companies because each person in the network brings the expertise from their current company and every company they’ve worked at prior.

We got a snapshot into Amazon’s ‘Bar Raiser’ method during a discussion on hiring great product managers. Thanks to Douglas Hwang, Product Manager at Etsy, who shared a few insights from his time at Amazon. [Disclaimer: These are my notes from the discussion–not straight from the source.]

A core requirement of the Bar Raiser method seems to require internalizing this core idea:

“It is better to accidentally say no to good people than accidentally say yes to bad people.”

Now, this seems easy in principle, but can come under a lot of pressure in a fast growing company. You need an iOS engineer yesterday and your current team is already working through the weekends. Yes, Jason Fried’s Rework said “Hire when it hurts”, but this is beyond that. No, this is still not a good reason to hire an okay candidate.

Let’s look at it this way, hiring a bad candidate comes at a huge cost and hiring the best candidate is the least cost. So what resources are wasted?

• Money: compensation, new setup of accounts, desk space, equipment, free lunches, etc.
• Time: HR’s time on-boarding, interviewers time, team’s time getting them up to speed, manager’s time of training.
• Morale: Team’s disappointment, lowering the bar of quality, loss of faith it will get done.

Now all of these aren’t deal-breakers, as you grow, you will make bad hires. But the hit to resources will need to be compensated in other ways so just realize you’ll need to overcompensate for morale after a bad hire leaves.

The bar raiser method helps your team be more efficient at the top of funnel (candidates coming in) so that less time gets wasted with bringing on weaker hires. 

The hiring process at Amazon can consist up to (and sometimes more) of 7 interviews conducted by 7 different people, with two key decision makers. The first is the Hiring Manager;  she will be adding this candidate to her team so she is ultimately responsible for evaluating the candidate for their ability to get the work done. The second key decision maker is the Bar Raiser; who is from a different team and won’t be working directly with the candidate but is responsible for making sure “this person is raising the talent bar at Amazon.” Both decision makers must say ‘yes’ for a candidate to get hired.

The Bar Raiser has an important stake in bringing up the level of talent at the company, which removes a hiring manager’s bias to move quickly to fill a role directly on their team. This method may eliminate candidates who were a fit for the role but wouldn’t find a long-term home in the company.

Does your company have a set method it uses for more efficient hiring?

I’m interested to learn more of what’s worked or hasn’t and at what company size.