While Silicon Valley is home to a veritable army of savvy, bright, and headstrong entrepreneurs, there is a
separation between the men and the boys when it comes to founding, selling, and investing. Keith Rabois, known best for his roles at Paypal, LinkedIn, and Square, is among the elite. Last year, he joined Khosla Ventures, one of the Valley's signature investment firms.
Like some other top founders, including his PayPal Mafia colleague Elon Musk, Rabois is vocal about what more execs are realizing is a huge hurdle in building companies: recruitment. Just last night, Rabois fired off a series of tweets outlining his key principles of team building. Read on to see what one of the most successful team builders has to say about recruitment!
First principle: The team you build is the company you build.
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 16, 2014
Second Principle: When in doubt, refer back to principle 1.
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 16, 2014
Your company isn't your product, it isn't your website, and it isn't your mission statement. As Keith says, the people you hire build your culture and define your progress. Their networks make up your next hires. Recruiters, remember that your function is the most important one in defining your organization, and keep that in mind next time you consider giving an offer to someone who didn't completely blow you away.
Third principle: Always be recruiting. Do not delegate it.
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 16, 2014
Overwhelmingly, a company's primary source of hires will be employee referrals. This means that you must remind your co-workers, regardless of function, to be actively considering their networks and thinking about who might be a good fit at your company. Whether this means implementing a sleek Employee Referral Program, or merely sitting down with employees and helping them work through their networks, you must let recruitment sprawl through your organization and not fall solely to you.
Fourth principle: If talent is your most important priority, your calendar must reflect it.
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 16, 2014
It's not enough for you, or even your hiring managers or CEO to say that recruiting is a priority. Unless they are actively involved in the recruiting process and participating in interviews on a regular basis, it's all talk. One of my favorite recruitment anecdotes is Mark Zuckerberg spending several hours in interviews on the day before Facebook's IPO. Zuckerberg had time to recruit for his company on the eve of the most important day in Facebook's history, and so does anyone at your organization.
Fifth principle: To be extraordinary at recruiting, it is crucial to be extra-ordinary at assessing candidates.
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 16, 2014
Can you source Github, LinkedIn, and personal websites like a fiend? Great! It's not enough. You must infer from a day of interviewing what it would be like to have that candidate in the office on a regular basis. A great way to make sure you're comprehensively assessing candidates is to host pre-intervew pow-wows to make sure you're covering as much ground as possible, and also institute some sort of project/test that the candidate can complete on their own time, to give you a sense of their skills as they apply directly to the problems your organization is working on.
Sixth principle: Zero defects recruiting often means zero stars too.
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 16, 2014
Never stay too focused on the cookie-cutter resume stats. Perfect GPA, a handful of prestigious internships, mission trip to Zambia to plant trees. That's all great, but as Laszlo Bock of Google claims, many of these items are useless at predicting future success. Instead, search for passion, motivation, and culture fit when assessing candidates. You know who else looked great on paper? American Psycho's Patrick Bateman.
Seventh principle: Filter nearly all invitations. Attend only those where the audience is comprised of people you intend to recruit.
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 16, 2014
When it comes to deciding whether to attend conferences or recommend panel talks to your CEO, think carefully about who will be in attendance. Rather than a chance to pocket an appearance fee and fly to San Diego on a Tuesday, view it as an opportunity to disseminate your company brand and explain to talent why your organization is awesome and why they should want to be a part of it.
Eighth principle: Although people recite the adage, there is no "I" in "team," Michael Jordan retorts that there is one in "winning."
— Keith Rabois (@rabois) May 16, 2014
Yes, recruiting, like so much else at your company, is a team sport. That said, make sure you have an intimate understanding of the skills of your co-workers, as this will allow you decide who gets to take the game-winning shot. The team plays a part in convincing the candidate, but know when you, or someone else at your company, needs to step in and make the final sell.
What do you make of Keith's principles of recruiting? Leave a comment or tweet @EnteloRob!
