Hiring people

1. Hire well:

It is your single most important people function
A structured process helps to make the right decisions
If one person is in charge of hiring, they should consult with feedback panels, and use a structured process to help run analytics behind the hiring process and decision making Structure your interview:
Common to assess people on knowledge of the role but this overemphasised
One of the strongest predictors is problem-solving ability
Ask an open-ended question and measure how they ask questions, structure problems, come up with a range of solutions, then land on an answer
Ensure the interviewee is comfortable, or better thrives, in ambiguous situations
Test for this by asking about a time they dealt with adversity
Growth mindset - i.e. a vivacious learner.
Ask for a time the interviewee experienced failure. If someone has the raw intellectual horsepower, they can scale and adapt

2. Measure Culture:

Use engagement surveys and making sense of the data
Work backwards from whatever it is you want to solve (common to measure engagement and retention)
Look at YoY changes
Shows a shift on how your people are feeling
Concentrate on the absolute score not making incremental % shift in one area as this is likely to provide huge effort for a small gain
Communicate
Own your results and how they are communicated to the team
Take one action
Use your data and analytics to ensure you are solving the right action
Communicate it again:
“You told us x so we did y” - people want to know that you took their feedback seriously
Measure some more
I.e. looking at bias or consumer preference surveys 3. Building resilience

3. Building resilience

As a leader:

Take action. Move from sinking into adversity to action-oriented
Resilient leaders bounce back fast. Set some short term goals to help feel a sense of team accomplishment
Be present. Our most painful thoughts are generally about the past or future. Rarely about the present. Pause and take five deep breaths for 30 seconds before a meeting

For your team:

You can't carry a company on your resilience alone
Create a sense of belonging and show that you genuinely care for your team and their growth
Create psychological safety. The fastest way to do this is to be humble - share how you’re feeling
Instil a sense of hope and purpose. Give the team agency and set milestone goals, not just revenue

Culture fit bias:

Important to define what culture fits is as it can bring a lot of bias.
Define it as values not likeability
Define company values by determining the behaviours you expect to see from an employee
A big red flag is when a hiring manager says “ I can’t put my finger on why they’ll be great.” This is likeability not culture fit.
As you scale this across departments assessing a culture fit will become more difficult. But defining values and good answers to questions about these values are the best way to tackle this

Transparency:

Critical for founders to be transparent.
There's a delicate balance between sharing raw data and letting employees find out information for themselves
Provide a narrative or context around shared data, but make it authentic
In Justin’s experience, low-production value presentations such as a simple screen share provide trust for employees over well-polished slide decks