Michael and I have been at this game quite a while at this point. Nevertheless, one thing I realized is that I often repeat myself to both people whom we are hiring or whom we are telling about what we do. We have a very specific type of person whom we like to hire. Further, both Michael and I have our very own styles of management (or in my case, lack of management) and we compliment one another greatly. It still remains though that it takes a special type of person to gel with us when it comes to a working environment.
It seemed easiest to put this in a blog post and if you're reading this down the road after I pointed you here, thanks for understanding that I rather summarize this once than explain it over and over again. So, who is that type of person that we like to hire? In summary, independent is probably one of her or his strongest characteristics. We have hired almost exclusively for people who were able to think for themselves. Our favorite comment to most potential hires is that we do not run a kindergarten nor do we want to have that type of behavior in our respective organizations. We also make clear that we like to give direction and not orders. We are happy to lead but we do not want to micromanage. If you are able to work independently and self-motivate, you will fit in wonderfully with us. This doesn't mean that we do not take on management tasks when necessary or that we leave people alone and lost. What it means is that we want people to feel free to make decisions and get things done without us being in the way. At the same time, we want to be able to trust our teams blindly and let them learn by making mistakes if necessary.
We also don't adhere to conventional work environments. I couldn't care less whether you're in the office or working from Tanzania. There are times when the team needs to be together but we completely understand when someone has a specific type of environment from which they deliver their best performance. You want a home office? Go for it. You want to go for two weeks to some remote part of the world and work from there? Be my guest. On the flip side, we expect everyone to live near the office. This may seem contradictory to what I just wrote before. What I mean though is that there are times when you need to be in the office, a lot. Days or weeks in a row you may need to be with your team getting things done. Therefore, having your family in Berlin for example and working in Hamburg isn't going to work for us. We don't expect nor require people to be in the office every day for a set number of hours. What we do demand though is that people are flexible for us just as we are for them. Is the workload light? Work in your underwear from home. Is the workload heavy? Please be in the office working with your team. So many tasks in software startups require that people are together, cranking things out, at times day and night. This doesn't allow for a distributed team, or at least not at the beginning. Once the companies get larger, say 50 employees or more, you can also have distributed teams but that in our case means one office here with a team and one office there, with a respective team. It's not 50 people working exclusively from home offices.
We also like to hire up. I can imagine nothing better than my direct reports all being able to replace me. As much as it sucks to have a boss who does nothing, that's my goal. I want to lead my company....on the fundraising front.....recruiting the best people........and giving the team direction and motivation to reach our mutual goal. Obviously, I do not stop working but I want the people working for me (and Michael) to be able to run the business without us. In every startup you yourself at the beginning do everything. This is the case now at Receeve. But if you want a company that can scale to greatness, the CEO of the company needs a second layer of employees all able to replace him. I am fine with this. I have done my job well if everyone working for me is better than I am. Are they out for my head? Hopefully not initially but I really enjoy having people work for me who ultimately go on to start their own businesses or become C-Level executives elsewhere. This is the reality of hiring the best. And if they ultimately replace me as CEO, I hope it is because it is best for the company and someone who replaces me makes sure that my shares are worth far than they would have been had I stayed on.
Finally, and this may seem like it's paying lip service to the current situation in the job market, we like a multi-cultural team with both women and men. For us though, it's never been for show. We truly feel that multi-cultural teams with a goal of having as many women as men are a healthy approach to hiring. In software, it's really hard to get enough woman applying for development roles but we've made it work in the past and want to continue doing our best to push this in the future. Teams just work better when they are diverse and everyone brings something different to the table. It also leads to a company culture that we enjoy and have repeatedly created.
One thing you'll notice is that I haven't given much attention to skillsets. Obviously, we presume people are applying for roles for which they are qualified. At the same time, we rather have someone who is less experienced and willing to learn versus know-it-alls. One way or another, we really look at a person's skillset last. We far more prefer figuring out who the person is and how they will fit into our team. We also want them to be making as much a decision about working for us as we are about having them work for us. If in an interview you aren't asking as many questions about us as we are about you, we get concerned. We like to be interviewed back when we have someone in for a role. The questions you ask show us what you care about and how you think. I also like to be challenged. If you don't have the willingness to challenge me in the interview process, why would you ever do so down the road?
If you are considering a role with us, I hope the above helps to give you a sense of what we are looking for before applying or interviewing with us. If you just read it to see how we work, thank you for your interest and I hope there is an insight or two in here that help you in your approach to hiring.